The PC hardware requirements for Dying Light: The Beast are heavy on the CPU side, but they're all over the place when it comes to the GPU

With ultra-realistic, ray-traced graphics being the norm for developers wanting to show off the power of their proprietary game engine, you expect PC hardware requirements for such releases to focus almost entirely on the graphics card. Unusually, though, the freshly-released system specs for Dying Light: The Beast go very much the other way, suggesting that the game will make mincemeat out of most CPUs.

Developers Techland posted the suggested PC requirements for Dying Light: The Beast on Steam, and they're certainly…interesting. Starting with the minimum specs, to achieve 30 fps at 1080p, using the Low graphics preset, you'll need the following PC:

• CPU: Intel Core i5 13400F / AMD Ryzen 7 5800F
• RAM: 16 GB
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 / AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT / Intel Arc A750
• VRAM: 6 GB
• Storage: 70 GB

Those graphics card requirements are pretty reasonable, as the GTX 1060 was released way back in 2016. The RX 5500 XT and A750 are more recent (2019 and 2022, respectively), but while the AMD card is roughly on par with the 1060, the A750 is a lot better than the other two. It's a bit of an odd combination, for sure, but it's all fine when you compare it to the CPU requirements.

Let's start with the Core i5 13400F. That processor appeared in January 2023, and it's a seriously potent little chip. In fact, it's the best budget CPU for gaming you can buy and way more capable than the usual 'minimum spec' chips you see for today's games. I can only assume Techland made a mistake writing Ryzen 7 5800F because that processor doesn't exist. No AMD Zen 3 desktop CPU has an integrated CPU, other than its 5000-series APUs, so there are no F variants.

It could be a Ryzen 7 5800 or 5800X, but either way, you're looking at an eight-core, 16-thread processor that was classed as being reasonably high-end four years ago. And this is supposed to be the minimum?

Scooting up the quality scale to 4K at 60 fps, on the High preset, the GPU requirements ramp up as expected: a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti or Radeon RX 7900 GRE. The CPU specs are just as high, though, with a Core i7 13700K or a Ryzen 9 7800X3D paired with 32 GB of RAM. Once again, Techland doesn't seem to know it's AMD chips, because the 7800X3D is a Ryzen 7 model.

Either way, you're looking at some mega hardware to enjoy Dying Light: The Beast at 4K, 60 fps on High. But then it goes all weird for Ultra, at the same resolution and frame rate.

That preset includes the use of ray tracing, and for that, Techland suggests you'll need an RTX 5070, an RX 9070, or an Arc B580. Wait, what? The B580 is a budget-level graphics card, that's slower than an RTX 5060. Oh, hang on, frame generation. Yes, that's right, Techland is saying that Intel's best GPU will be just as good as one of AMD's best GPUs as long as frame gen is involved.

I think it's safe to assume that Techland also expects upscaling to be used in conjunction with frame generation, and if so, one might argue that if you drop the render resolution all the way down by using Performance mode upscaling, then paired with frame gen, the three graphics card could be on par because the game will be quite CPU-limited in this circumstance.

Which could explain why the CPU requirements are so ludicrously high: a Core i9 14900K or Ryzen 9 7950X3D. I have severe reservations about those particular requirements, as we're talking about Intel's fastest gaming CPU and AMD's not-quite-fastest gaming CPU. The 7950X3D is certainly an odd choice, as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D would be a better choice—the dual CCD aspect of the recommended Zen 4 Ryzen isn't ideal for games.

Techland's system requirements for Dying Light: The Beast are, to be frank, a mess, and I wouldn't be surprised if it releases an updated chart before the game officially launches on September 19. I'm going to let them off the hook a bit, though, because the developers have done something that I don't recall seeing before: system requirements for laptop users.

Admittedly, they're just as goofy as those for desktop PCs, with the minimum specs (1080p, 30 fps, Low preset): low-end GPUs paired with quite potent CPUs. Mind you, when I say low-end, I mean really low-end. How about an 80 W mobile RTX 3050 or the iGPU in a Core Ultra 7 258V chip? Odd choices, considering that these are far less powerful than an Arc A750.

At least we don't have long to wait before we can determine for ourselves what PC specs are really needed to enjoy Dying Light: The Beast, but the messy system requirements suggest to me that it's probably worth waiting for all the reviews and performance tests of the game to be released before you hand over your cash.

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