Crystal Dynamics Details Tomb Raider PC Specs and Capabilities

Crystal Dynamics is going all-in on the PC version of Tomb Raider, with all kinds of acronyms for things that none of us really understand.

Detail tessellation! SSAO! Single sideband modulation! Bokeh depth of field with near-blur! One of those things has nothing to do with PC graphics, but you could probably slip it into Crystal Dynamics’ press release for the PC edition of Tomb Raider (kind of like I did here) and nobody would bat an eye. The eye-candy extravaganza is powered by “very high resolution textures,” high quality shadows, tessellation algorithms “to smooth out geometry,” improved cloth, wetness effects, post-filter effects, SSAO and adjustable LOD, plus all the stuff I mentioned above – except that one thing. For those who have it, Tomb Raider will also support AMD’s HD3D and Eyefinity tech.

It’ll take some fairly heavy iron to run the game in all its glory, but Crystal Dynamics says it’s worked in a lot of scalability options to keep the game viable even on low-end rigs. These are the details from both sides of that coin:

Minimum System Requirements:

• Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Vista,7,8 (32bit/64bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM: AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT or nVidia 8600
• Dual core CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 Ghz (4050+) or Intel Core2 Duo 1.86 Ghz (E6300)
• 1GB Memory (2GB on Vista)

Recommended System Requirements:

• Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
• DirectX 11 graphics card with 1GB Video RAM: AMD Radeon HD 4870 or nVidia GTX 480
• Quad core CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 565 or Intel Core i5-750
• 4GB Memory

Tomb Raider comes out on March 5 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.