Update: EA has reached out and clarified that the game will be recommending 16GB of RAM, rather than 32GB. The original article continues below.
EA has released system requirements for its upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and for once they seem kind of reasonable. Well, at least until you look at the recommended amount of memory (RAM) to run the game.
If you want to run the game at the recommended spec, you'll apparently need 32GB of RAM, meaning that only hardcore video editors and professionals can really get the full potential from this interstellar character action game. Now, of course, the minimum required amount is 8GB, so your lowly mid-to-high-end gaming PC should still be able to scrape by.
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And, it's kind of a shame, too, because the rest of the system requirements are downright reasonable by today's standards. Developer Respawn's action game only recommends an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and an Intel Core i7-6700K, which should mean this game will be pretty easy to run at maximum settings.
Here are the minimum system requirements for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order:
- OS: 64-bit Windows 7/8.1/10
- CPU: AMD FX-6100 or Intel Core i3-3220
- RAM: 8GB
- Graphics card: AMD Radeon HD 7750 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 650
- DirectX 11
- HDD: 55GB
And, here are the recommended requirements:
- OS: 64-bit Windows 7/8.1/10
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 or Intel Core i7-6700K
- RAM: 32GB (!)
- Graphics card: AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
- DirectX 11
- HDD: 55GB
Will you really need 32GB of RAM?
So, that recommended RAM capacity, we don't think you'll actually need that. We recently did some testing to see how much RAM you need in a gaming PC, and even in the most memory-intensive games, we only see about 12GB of RAM usage for the whole system. It's unlikely that, if the game can run on 8GB of RAM, that a 32GB RAM kit will see a significant boost in performance over a 16GB kit.
That's not to mention the fact that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will be running on current console generation hardware, which only has 8GB of memory that's shared between the CPU and GPU. Now, sure, game consoles like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X have barebones operating systems that basically are suspended in the background during gameplay, but EA is recommending four times the system memory here.
It is entirely possible that we're completely wrong here and that 32GB of RAM will result in a transcendent gaming experience in Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. Who knows, maybe there's some unique graphics setting in the options menu that will eat up more RAM than most gaming PCs have. You can trust that we'll be putting this game to the test either way.
And, inflated system requirements like this are harmful to people who may not be super familiar with PC hardware. It's entirely possible that someone's going to see these system requirements and think they need to shell out hundreds of dollars for a 32GB kit of RAM that they really don't need.
We've reached out to EA and Respawn for comment, and we'll update if anything changes.
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