Mass Effect 3 PC Requirements Revealed

System requirements for the PC version of Mass Effect 3 have been announced and I’m happy to say that I am going to crush this thing out of the park.

If you’re a console gamer, the only thing you really need to know about your system is where you keep it. If you can remember where your living room is, you’re pretty much good to go. Those of us who prefer to keep it real, however, need to pay a little more attention to what’s going on inside our boxes. And now, having finished with my obligatory button-masher zing, I present to you the PC system requirements for Mass Effect 3:

Minimum spec:

• OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7
• CPU – 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU)
• RAM – 1GB for XP / 2GB RAM for Vista/Win 7
• Disc Drive – 1x speed
• Hard Drive – 2.5 GB of free space
• Video – 256 MB* with Pixel Shader 3.0 support (Supported chipsets: NVIDIA 7900 or better; ATI X1800 or better. Please note that NVIDIA GeForce 9300, 8500, 8400, and 8300 are below minimum system requirements, as are AMD/ATI Radeon HD3200, HD3300, and HD4350. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.)
• Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible

Recommended spec:

• OS – Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1, Win 7
• CPU – 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (equivalent AMD CPU)
• RAM – 2GB for XP / 4GB RAM for Vista/Win 7
• Disc Drive – 1x speed
• Hard Drive – 2.5 GB of free space
• Video – AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB or greater, NVidia GeForce 9800 GT 512 MB or greater
• Sound – DirectX 9.0c compatible

The minimum spec isn’t too terribly outrageous, but I think this is a good time to point out that if you’re still rocking a gig of RAM and a GeForce 7900 series video card, you don’t actually have a gaming PC anymore – you have a word processor. Stop spending your money on games you can’t properly run and upgrade your hardware instead.

[It’s also kind of sweet that they still include minimum drive speed requirements. 1x? Seriously?]

UPDATE: As some of our readers have pointed out, the above specs reference the demo, not the full game. The full game, according to Gameranx, will require 15GB of drive space. Thanks to snfonseka for the heads up.

Mass Effect 3 comes out on March 6 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.