Can Your PC Run War Thunder? The Requirements That Actually Matter
What War Thunder's spec floors actually mean: the 2012 GPU minimum, the 4 GB to 16 GB memory step, the Mac client, and what recommended buys you.
Almost certainly, yes. The published floor is Windows 10 64-bit, a dual-core 2.2 GHz CPU, 4 GB of RAM and a DirectX 11 card at GeForce GTX 660 level — and most desktops built in the last decade clear it. The full minimum-and-recommended table for War Thunder is on the game’s main page.
What a spec grid cannot tell you is which of those floors is load-bearing. It is memory: 4 GB minimum against 16 GB recommended is a 4× step, the steepest jump on the whole sheet, and far wider than the gap between the minimum and recommended CPU or GPU.
How old can your graphics card be?
As old as 2012. The floor is a GeForce GTX 660 or a Radeon HD 77XX, both 2012 parts, and Gaijin writes the requirement as a DirectX 11 level card with those two as the examples — so the feature level matters more than the model number.
What a card of that class buys today is the supported experience rather than a good one. 720p is the minimum supported resolution and there is no lower fallback mode, and Gaijin attaches no frame-rate target to either tier. “Runs” means the client launches and the matches are playable.
The three floors, and what each one actually means:
- GeForce GTX 660 / Radeon HD 77XX — 2012 cards. Any dedicated GPU bought since clears the bar; a modern integrated GPU generally does too, a decade-old one generally does not.
- Dual-core 2.2 GHz — the same vintage as the GPU floor, and the requirement least likely to be the thing stopping you.
- 720p — the minimum supported resolution, and the only floor on the sheet with no workaround in the settings menu.
Is 8 GB of RAM enough for War Thunder?
It runs, because 8 GB is double the minimum — but it is half of what Gaijin recommends, and no other line on the spec sheet has a gap that wide.
The published figures are 4 GB minimum and 16 GB recommended. The CPU and GPU steps between the two tiers amount to one or two generations of mainstream part; memory quadruples.
Where that bites is mode-dependent. Naval battles and large ground maps hold far more of the battlefield in memory than an air arcade match, which is why one machine can feel fine in one queue and strained in another.
Gaijin does not publish what 8 GB costs you in practice, and it is better to say so than to invent a number. What the sheet does tell you is which side of the recommendation you are sitting on:
- 4 GB — the hard floor. Below it the game is not supported at all.
- 8 GB — over the floor, half the recommendation. This is the gap worth closing.
- 16 GB — the recommended figure, reached by changing the cheapest component on the list.
How much disk space do you actually need?
More than the published figure. Gaijin’s storage numbers describe the client as it stands today, and the install grows with each major update, so a drive sized exactly to the spec has no room for the next one.
Storage is also the one requirement where “recommended” buys you nothing in performance. A full 75.9 GB Windows install is the same game as a small one; it has simply already downloaded content that the smaller client fetches on demand.
Which route lets you pick between them is settled in how to download War Thunder on PC.
Three things to add up before you clear space:
- The full-client figure — 75.9 GB on Windows, the number Gaijin puts against a complete install.
- Update headroom — every major update adds to the install, so treat the published figure as a floor.
- Optional hi-res texture packs — a separate tick in the launcher, and another reason to leave room.
Is there a spec for each graphics preset?
No. Gaijin publishes two hardware tiers and one resolution floor, and nothing that maps a graphics preset to a specific card — so treat any hardware-per-preset chart you find elsewhere as somebody’s benchmark rather than a published requirement.
What the official figures do imply is narrower, and still useful. The recommended GPUs, a GeForce GTX 1060 and a Radeon RX 570, are both mainstream 1080p cards, which tells you the resolution the recommended tier is scoped to. There is no published tier above it for 1440p or 4K.
Ray tracing
Ray tracing arrived with the Firebirds update, documented in a Gaijin development blog on 8 November 2024. Four details from the official posts matter if you are weighing it:
- Three independent toggles — ray traced shadow maps, ambient occlusion and reflections, each with its own low, medium and high scalability setting.
- Medium is the developers’ own pick — Gaijin names the Medium RT preset as the performance-to-image-quality tradeoff it recommends.
- NVIDIA-only at launch — AMD Radeon and Intel Arc were enabled later, with the Hornet’s Sting update announced 9 April 2025.
- 20–25% — the reduction in the GPU cost of the RT effects Gaijin claimed for that same update.
There is no ray tracing line on the requirements page at all. An RT-capable GPU is the requirement, and the scalability settings absorb the rest.
Does War Thunder run on Mac or Linux?
Yes to both, and the Mac client carries its own published requirements rather than the Windows ones relabelled:
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| OS | macOS Big Sur 11.0 or newer | macOS Big Sur 11.0 or newer |
| Processor | Core i5, 2.2 GHz minimum (Intel Xeon unsupported) | Core i7 (Intel Xeon unsupported) |
| Memory | 6 GB | 8 GB |
| Video card | Intel Iris Pro 5200, or an AMD/NVIDIA analog | Radeon Vega II or higher, with Metal support |
The recommended memory is 8 GB, not 16 GB. The Mac sheet asks for more at minimum, 6 GB against 4 GB, and considerably less at the recommended tier. Read that as the Mac client targeting a narrower, more predictable range of hardware rather than as a lighter build of the game.
Both Mac tiers list the same OS floor, Big Sur 11.0 or newer. Nothing newer is attached to the recommended tier.
The listed CPUs are Intel parts, Core i5 and Core i7, with Xeon explicitly unsupported. Gaijin does not publish separate Apple Silicon requirements, so on an M-series Mac the official sheet does not directly cover your hardware — treat that as unlisted rather than as a yes or a no.
Mac client sizes are listed alongside the Windows ones in the install guide.
Linux
Gaijin publishes a Linux client and lists requirements for it separately. The parts that differ from the Windows sheet are a modern 64-bit distribution, Vulkan support on the graphics card, and graphics drivers no more than six months old.
What to do if your PC is under the minimum
Not open the graphics menu — every situation below is a hardware or operating-system fact rather than a setting, and no preset gets you around one.
| Situation | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Under 4 GB of RAM | The hard stop — below it the game is not supported | Add memory first; it is the cheapest fix on the list |
| Integrated graphics only | Modern integrated GPUs generally clear GTX 660 class; decade-old ones generally do not | Check the actual model against the 2012 floor rather than guessing |
| Windows 8.1 or older, or a 32-bit install | Not supported. The floor is Windows 10 64-bit | A 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 install, or the machine is out |
| A display below 720p | 720p is the minimum supported resolution, and there is no fallback mode | A different display is the only route |
| An Intel Xeon Mac | Xeon is explicitly unsupported on the Mac client | Not a settings problem — that CPU is off the list |
Which upgrade helps most before you install?
Memory, and it is not close. In priority order:
- Memory to 16 GB. It closes the widest gap on the spec sheet, and it is the cheapest part to change.
- A GPU at GTX 1060 or RX 570 class. That is the recommended tier, and it is what the 1080p experience is scoped to.
- Disk headroom above the full-client figure. Not performance — just never having to uninstall something to take an update.
The reassuring part is how wide the scaling range is. A machine that clears only the minimum queues into the same battles, against the same people, as one sitting three tiers above it.
What higher settings genuinely buy at the top of the trees is spotting range, because picking a hull out against a ridgeline is easier with more pixels on it. That is an edge, not an entry requirement.