The Blizzard officials have raised the minimum requirements for graphics cards for WoW: Forever. The good news: Most PC gamers should easily surpass the hurdle without needing to buy new hardware.
What is changing? On the official WoW website, Blizzard officials explain that WoW: Forever can no longer support certain generations of graphics cards. Anyone still using such an incompatible card in their system will need to upgrade their hardware in order to play the Classic Plus variant of WoW.
The reason for this adjustment: The new graphical enhancements of WoW: Forever require a feature that was introduced around 2012 in graphics cards: The support for RGBA16F UAV in compute shaders.
Which graphics cards are supported and which are not? With the release of World of Warcraft: Forever, players need a graphics card based on one of the following microarchitectures or newer:
- Intel Skylake (2015)
- AMD Graphics Core Next 1 (2012)
- NVIDIA Maxwell (2014)
Examples of compatible cards:
- AMD Radeon HD 7850 (2012)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9xx and 750/750 Ti (2014)
- Intel HD Graphics 530 (2015)
Examples of incompatible cards:
- AMD Radeon HD 6950 (2010)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760/770/780 and GTX 8xxM (2014)
- Intel HD Graphics 6000 (2015)
Most PC gamers who can play somewhat recent games on their machines should meet the new graphics card requirements of WoW: Forever. To put it into perspective: The official minimum requirements of WoW: Forever are significantly above the generations of graphics cards that are no longer supported.
On our YouTube channel of MeinMMO, you’ll find a fresh new video that focuses solely on WoW: Forever and the information known so far. Feel free to check it out:
WoW: Forever System Requirements
What are the official system requirements? For WoW: Forever, Blizzard has set the following system requirements:
Minimum system requirements:
- Windows 10 64-bit (May 2019 Update or newer)
- 4 cores, 3.0 GHz processor, Intel Core Haswell, AMD Ryzen Zen
- DirectX 12, 4 GB GPU – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 series / AMD RDNA 1 / Intel Iris Xe2-LPG Lunar Lake
- 8 GB RAM
- 128GB SSD storage space
Recommended system requirements:
- Windows 11
- 8 cores, 5.2 GHz Boost Clock processor, Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) or AMD Ryzen Zen 5
- DirectX 12, 8 GB GPU – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series / AMD RDNA 3 / Intel Arc B-Series
- 16 GB RAM
- 128GB SSD storage space
How do I find out what model I am using? Here’s a tip from Blizzard:
- Open the settings, select “System,” then “Display,” and finally “Advanced display” to see the model of your graphics card.
- Open the Device Manager and click on the entry “Graphics cards” to see the installed card on your system.
What is WoW Forever? The new, third pillar for World of Warcraft. WoW Forever is intended to sit alongside modern WoW and WoW Classic and fulfill the community’s wish for a Classic Plus variant. In other words: WoW Forever is the new “Vanilla” WoW, intending to take a new, alternative path at level 60.
So the story will not continue with Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. However, WoW Forever is also not a time-limited season that runs out eventually. Instead, the developers intend to expand WoW Forever with new content over the long term while keeping the maximum level at 60 (horizontal progression like in Guild Wars 2). More about this: Release, roadmap, beta – Everything important about the new Classic Plus of World of Warcraft
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