Modern Warfare 4 PC Requirements: Can Your Rig Run It?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is rolling out on PC now, and Activision's official support page spells out exactly what kind of rig you need to run it — from a budget CPU and a GTX 970 at the low end up to a 32 GB, RTX 5070 Ti-class machine for full ray tracing at 4K. Here is every tier, straight from the Activision support article and the game's own Steam store page, plus the handful of places where the two listings don't quite agree with each other.

If you've already got a PC that clears last generation's mid-range bar, odds are good you can get in and play without touching your hardware. If you're closer to the minimum spec, or you're not sure whether your GPU driver, firmware settings or storage headroom are actually ready, the breakdown below walks through every number Activision and Steam both publish, tier by tier, so you can check your own specs against the real source rather than a third-party roundup.

Minimum requirements: what it takes to just launch the game

At the floor, Modern Warfare 4 asks for a Windows 10 64-bit PC (on the latest update) running an AMD Ryzen 5 1400 or Intel Core i5-6600, with 8 GB of system RAM. On the graphics side, Activision lists an AMD Radeon RX 470, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or GTX 1060, or an Intel Arc A580, each assumed to have at least 3 GB of VRAM. Storage is the number that will catch a lot of people off guard: the game needs a solid-state drive with 115 GB of free space, and that figure is for launch day only — Activision's page notes that day-one patches and future content updates will likely push the install size higher.

This tier is explicitly a "can it run at all" baseline, not a "can it run well" one. Activision does not attach a frame-rate or resolution target to minimum spec the way it does for the recommended tier, which is itself a signal that 1400-series CPUs and GTX 970-class GPUs should expect to drop settings and resolution to keep the game playable.

It's also worth reading the fine print on that minimum-spec listing closely. Activision's support page specifically calls out that trial, beta or Windows Insider builds of otherwise-compatible operating systems may not be supported, so running a preview build of Windows 11 isn't a safe substitute for a standard, fully updated install. The page also flags that these figures describe desktop PCs; laptops built around similar-sounding GPU model numbers can perform differently and, in some cases, may not be supported at all, since mobile variants of a given chip often run at lower power and clock speeds than their desktop namesakes.

Recommended requirements: 90 FPS at High settings

Activision's recommended tier is tied to a specific, stated performance target: 90 frames per second in multiplayer at High settings. To hit that, the support page calls for Windows 11 64-bit, an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i7-8700, 16 GB of RAM, and a GPU from the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti / Intel Arc B580 class, each with roughly 8 GB of VRAM. That puts the realistic buy-in for a smooth, high-frame-rate multiplayer experience solidly in last-generation mid-range GPU territory, not the current flagship tier.

If you're weighing whether an upgrade is worth it just to hit that 90 FPS multiplayer target, Pandromeda's hardware desk has a broader look at whether now is the right time to buy a graphics card or wait for the next refresh.

Ray tracing / Ultra tier: the 4K, high-fidelity target

For players who want high-quality ray tracing with 4K upscaled output, Activision lists a much steeper bar: an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel Core i7-10700K, 32 GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti with 16 GB of VRAM. Both of those GPUs are current-generation parts, so this tier is really aimed at people building or buying a new system specifically for Modern Warfare 4's best-looking mode, rather than an upgrade path for an existing mid-range PC.

The jump from the recommended tier's 8 GB of VRAM to this tier's 16 GB is also a reminder of how much headroom ray tracing and 4K upscaling eat into memory budgets. For more on how upscaling and frame generation factor into GPU buying decisions right now, see Pandromeda's explainer on what DLSS 5 actually does.

Full spec comparison: all three tiers side by side

Note that the 115 GB storage figure is identical across all three tiers — ray tracing and 4K assets don't add to the install size on Activision's page, only to the RAM, CPU and GPU requirements.

TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and the other requirements every tier shares

Regardless of which performance tier you're aiming for, Activision's page lists several requirements that apply across the board: DirectX 12 compatibility, a broadband internet connection, TPM 2.0, and Secure Boot enabled in your system's firmware. The CPU restriction is also stricter than it first looks — only Intel and AMD processors with AVX instruction support are supported at all, which rules out some older or unusual chips even if their raw clock speed and core count look adequate on paper. Players choosing an Intel Arc GPU have one more box to check: Resizable BAR has to be enabled, which on most modern motherboards means confirming it in the BIOS rather than assuming it's already on.

TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are the same platform-security requirements Microsoft uses to gate Windows 11 upgrades, so if your PC already runs Windows 11 cleanly, you've almost certainly already cleared this bar. If you're still on Windows 10 and have never checked, it's worth confirming in Windows Security before launch day rather than finding out at the main menu, since enabling either setting after Windows is already installed can mean reinstalling or re-encrypting drives on some configurations.

None of this is unique to Modern Warfare 4 — it mirrors the kernel-level anti-cheat requirements that have become standard across competitive multiplayer shooters over the past few years. What's worth remembering is that these are listed as requirements, not suggestions: Activision's page frames TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot as necessary to play at all, not as settings that only affect matchmaking into secure lobbies.

Where the Steam listing and Activision's support page disagree

Pandromeda cross-checked Activision's support article against the system requirements listed on Modern Warfare 4's Steam store page, and the two mostly line up — with a couple of small but real differences worth flagging rather than glossing over. For the recommended tier, Steam's listing names an Intel Core i7-8700K, while Activision's support page specifies the non-K Core i7-8700. Steam also lists an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 for the recommended GPU, one notch below the RTX 3060 Ti that Activision's page calls for. Neither difference is huge in practice, but if your CPU or GPU falls right in that gap, it's worth knowing the two official sources don't fully agree. Steam's product page also only lists minimum and recommended tiers; it doesn't publish a separate ray-tracing/Ultra tier the way Activision's dedicated support article does. Where the two sources agree — the minimum tier, the CPU and RAM figures across the board, and the 115 GB storage number — Pandromeda treated as settled. Where they disagree, both figures are reported above rather than picking one source over the other, since there's no way to know from the outside which listing Activision considers more current.

This article is strictly about whether your PC can run Modern Warfare 4, not where to buy it or which platform makes sense for your budget. Pandromeda's gaming desk has a separate rundown of Modern Warfare 4's launch-day platforms, pricing and Game Pass availability, including the full breakdown of where and how to buy it, if that's the question you're actually trying to answer.

Driver updates to install before you play

Activision's support page also calls out specific driver versions to install if you run into graphical issues: AMD Software 26.7.1, NVIDIA driver 616.56, and Intel graphics driver 32.0.101.8974. NVIDIA's side is worth noting on its own: Activision says an ASD-compatible NVIDIA driver became available on October 21, two days ahead of the PC release, specifically to support the game at launch. Before you install, it's worth grabbing the latest package directly from NVIDIA's GeForce driver downloads page, AMD's driver download page, or Intel's Arc graphics support page, since manufacturer driver numbering can shift slightly between regions and GPU families.

The timing on NVIDIA's side is also a useful data point if you've been putting off a driver update: Activision didn't just recommend a current driver, it specifically flagged that the ASD-compatible build needed for the game wasn't available until October 21 — meaning anyone who updated their GeForce driver even a week before launch may still have needed a second update right before playing. If Modern Warfare 4 won't launch, crashes on startup, or throws anti-cheat errors on day one, an outdated GPU driver is one of the first things worth ruling out, well before assuming it's a problem with the game itself.

When Modern Warfare 4 actually goes live on PC

There's a small wrinkle in the release-date messaging, too: the official Call of Duty site lists Modern Warfare 4's release as October 23, 2026, while its Steam store listing shows October 22, 2026. The one-day gap is most likely a time zone artifact around a midnight-local unlock rather than two different dates for the same release, but if your download unlocked a day earlier or later than you expected, that's the likely explanation rather than a bug on your end.

Should you upgrade before launch?

If your PC already clears the recommended tier — a Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700-class CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and an RTX 3060 Ti/RX 6600 XT-class GPU or better — there's no pressing reason to upgrade just for Modern Warfare 4. The jump to the ray-tracing tier is a much bigger ask, requiring a current-generation GPU and double the RAM, so it only makes sense if you're already in the market for a new build or specifically chasing 4K ray-traced visuals. Anyone building a system around that ray-tracing tier should think about the GPU first: both the RTX 5070 Ti and RX 9070 XT are current-generation cards, so pairing either with a last-generation CPU is a more forgiving trade-off than the other way around.

What to watch next

Expect the usual post-launch cleanup: day-one patches that nudge the 115 GB storage requirement upward, possible driver hotfixes if either AMD, NVIDIA or Intel find launch-specific bugs, and the chance that Activision quietly revises a spec line the way publishers often do in the weeks after a Call of Duty release. Pandromeda will note it here if any of the minimum, recommended or ray-tracing figures change from what's listed above.

Written byMara Lindqvist

Mara Lindqvist edits the hardware desk. She covers graphics cards, processors, memory and storage, the foundries and chip designers behind them, and what the numbers on a spec sheet mean for people choosing a PC. Specifications in her stories come from manufacturer spec pages and datasheets.

More from Mara LindqvistAll Hardware coverage