Crosswind system requirements recommend "high-end" gaming PCs during playtest

The Crosswind system requirements are out, and you'll need a surprisingly powerful rig if you want to dive into this swashbuckling adventure as part of the alpha playtest. You'll need to get your hands on a Crosswind playtest key first, and then you'll get to explore ship-to-ship battles that are looking to put Skull and Bones to shame.

Crosswind doesn't demand the best graphics card on our buying guide, but it will certainly help improve the overall performance of the alpha playtest before the developer Crosswind Crew implements some hardware optimizations. Of course, the final hardware demands are subject to change, hopefully for the better, but here's all you need to get the game running now if you manage to get your hands on a Crosswind alpha key.

Here are the Crosswind system requirements:

The Crosswind minimum requirements are only slightly higher than the Ark Survival Ascended system requirements, which is fitting considering the base-building and survival mechanics at the core of Crosswind's gameplay loop. You'll need an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800 GPU paired with an Intel Core i7 8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, plus 16GB of RAM to get the game running.

There's no indication from the developer as to what performance this will net you, be that 30fps or 60fps at 720p or 1080p. In fact, the developer vaguely states you'll want to use "high-end systems and an SSD to ensure a smooth experience", which implies to us that you'll want to at least aim for the Crosswind recommended specs rather than the minimum if you plan on diving into the playtest.

So, if you really want to explore this Sea of Thieves rival and a possible contender for our list of the best pirate games on PC, you'll want an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU, an Intel Core i7 10700 or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU, and 32GB of RAM. This is a fairly major step up from the minimum requirements, but nothing your average, modern mid-range rig should struggle to match.

Regardless, you may want to exceed these demands given the game's alpha state. If you are in need of an upgrade, make sure to check out some of our buying guides, including our list of the best gaming CPUs.

The current Crosswing download size sits at 30GB of SSD space, almost one-third of that which was demanded by Sea of Thieves. However, once the game leaves alpha and approaches a full release, it's very likely that these storage space demands will double or perhaps even triple, depending on how much content is in the works. So, if you need some extra space, you'll need the best gaming SSD your gaming PC can handle, which will also optimize your loading times.

Take our Crosswind system requirements PC benchmark test to answer the question… Can I run Crosswind?

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