"With less than two months until Dishonored's release, we want players to prepare their weapons of revenge. No, I'm not talking about our website, I'm talking about the rig PC players intend to play the game on." -Bethesda Blog. What they're really saying is they want to make sure your computer can play the game so that you'll buy it!
The game comes with some fairly demanding specifications--minimum NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850 for the GPU--so it's nice that Bethesda is giving users a chance to upgrade their rigs before the game officially launches. Ironically, the only difference between minimum and recommended specifications for the GPU come in the form of memory.
Minimum Spec:
- OS: Windows Vista / Windows 7
- Processor: 3.0 GHz dual core or better
- Memory: 4 GB system RAM
- Hard Disk Space: 9 GB
- Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible with 512 MB video RAM or better (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850)
- Sound: Windows compatible sound card
Recommended Spec:
- OS: Windows Vista / Windows 7
- Processor: 2.4 GHz quad core or better
- Memory: 4 GB system RAM
- Hard Disk Space: 9 GB
- Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible with 768 MB video RAM or better (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850)
- Sound: Windows compatible sound card
It's nice to see games that take advantage of multi-core CPUs. Previously, games would only utilize one or two cores at most, so to see a recommended specification calling for a quad-core or better is great thing. It means the AI is going to be great, as AI is what uses most of the CPU time.