Attention fans of Bioshock: Atomic Heart will be released on 21st of February and promises fast-paced shooter action paired with the supernatural abilities known from the Bioshock series. The first glimpses into the game promise a respectable look and you could assume that you need a high-performance PC for the game. Luckily that’s not the case.
Atomic Heart does not require current hardware
Developers Mundfish raised the system requirements above theirs a few days ago Twitter-Account published. It is very commendable that they list a total of six different configurations. And the good news doesn’t stop there: a graphics card with 4 GB of VRAM, such as the Geforce GTX 960 or the Radeon R9 380, is enough to play Atomic Heart.
With these, however, you can only achieve 30 frames per second and a 1080p resolution with the lowest settings. If you can come to terms with that, you definitely have the opportunity to play Atomic Heart yourself on an old gaming PC.
The system requirements at a glance
Even an HDD is sufficient, but Mundfish recommends using an SSD. If you still have 8 gigabytes of RAM installed, you can play the game, but there may be slight stutters when changing areas. Mundfish therefore recommends using at least 12 GB of RAM.
Robert Bagratuni, Atomic Heart’s Game Director, shared in an interview WCCF Tech, that the specified frame rates are the minimum refresh rates that can be expected in hectic battles in busy environments. This means that the performance in quiet regions should be even better than indicated in their table. He cites the Geforce GTX 1650 as an example. With this graphics card, which is almost four years old, you get at least 60 and a maximum of 100 FPS.
If you want to play the game with the highest settings and 4K resolution, you also don’t necessarily need the latest hardware on the market. You need either a Geforce RTX 3080 or an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT. The slightly older Intel Core i7 8700K and the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X are sufficient for the CPU.
If you are not yet sure whether you will like the game, then take a look at our preview. Our editor Dennis Michel played the PC version for four hours and shares his first impressions:
25:07
Atomic Heart – Played conclusion after 4 hours of gameplay
It looks like Mundfish has put a lot of work into optimizing Atomic Heart’s performance. Hogwarts Legacy, which was only recently released, has received mixed reviews in terms of performance so far. While some users report problems with the game – despite high-end hardware – others have hardly any problems with weaker systems.
Let’s hope Atomic Heart can be enjoyed by everyone as the developers promise. You can read more about the performance of Hogwarts Legacy here:
You have told us how well you are doing with Hogwarts Legacy and the result is inconclusive
It’s also worth mentioning that the Xbox Series S version runs at 60 FPS and 1080p resolution, which unfortunately is no longer a given either. The PS5 and Xbox Series X operate the game in dynamic 4K resolution and 60 frames per second.
Are you going to get Atomic Heart and is your PC game ready? Tell us in the comments!