Halo: Reach runs at 60 fps in 4K on a 6-year-old graphics card

Halo: Reach
(Image credit: Microsoft / 343 Industries)

If you’re fed up with the spec requirements of modern games making some fairly hefty demands – certainly on the RAM and installation front – then Halo: Reach’s just-revealed PC requirements will make for a breath of fresh air.

The game is part of six titles that make up Halo’s Master Chief Collection that’s inbound for PC (complete with updated graphics) and with a new (third) PC test flight beginning, 343 Industries has detailed the minimum spec for the game, as well as the requirements for 1080p and 4K.

The goal with Halo: Reach – which was first released in 2010 – was to “optimize it to run on the lowest possible specs”, and indeed the recommendation for running in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second (fps) is laudably easy to meet.

All you need to accomplish fluid 4K gameplay is a PC with a minimum of an Intel Core i5 3450 processor with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 – that’s a graphics card which is now six-years-old, and not a flagship model at the time either. You’ll also need 8GB of system RAM.

On the AMD front, the 4K spec calls for an AMD FX-6350 CPU and a Radeon 480 GPU.

Check out the below image for the rest of the spec details, which are, it should be noted, for running the game on Steam (the Microsoft Store version will have slightly different specs, but they shouldn’t vary by much).

Halo: Reach

(Image credit: Microsoft / 343 Industries)

As you can see, to purely run the game at minimum levels at over 50 fps, you can get away with an incredibly dusty old GeForce GTS 450, which is coming on for a decade-old now.

Integrated graphics will also do the trick nicely, particularly with more modern processors as you can imagine, which are getting stronger and stronger built-in GPUs. The full spec details concerning integrated graphics will be provided at a later date.

Crossplay revelations

343 Industries also revealed some info about crossplay for Halo: Reach, and it will be supported between the Windows 10 and Steam versions, although not between PC and Xbox One initially – but that may change down the line (the possibility will be ‘monitored and evaluated’ over time).

The good news is that if you’re playing on both Xbox One and PC, you’ll be able to fire up the game on either and continue your campaign progress (although note that mid-mission saves won’t sync between console and PC).

Halo: Reach should be out before the end of 2019 rolls around, but that’s not certain. And equally, Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s release date is still unknown. The various Halo games it comprises of will be released individually, beginning with Reach, before the big collection is wheeled out as a package.

Via PC Gamer

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).