Call of Duty: Modern Warfare assaults your hard drive with the biggest install size ever on PC

(Image credit: Infinity Ward)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s system requirements have been revealed on PC, and as far as we are aware, this is the biggest base installation size ever witnessed in PC gaming.

Modern Warfare requires a drive-numbing 175GB of drive space, beating out the just-revealed install size for Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC which takes up 150GB.

While Activision noted in a blog post that 175GB number isn't how much space the game will take up initially, it's the number they recommend keeping free for post-launch content. It's unclear how large that initial download will be or when it will swell to its final size.

Both games could be a serious worry for those looking to install the titles on an SSD, if it’s a smaller solid-state drive that is (which some older models certainly are). Or indeed these sort of sizes could be problematic for anyone running short on drive space in general, of course.

As mentioned, this is the biggest installation size we’ve ever seen, beating out the aforementioned RDR2, and the likes of Final Fantasy 15 which managed to eat up 148GB (although that’s with the high-res texture pack included, the base install is a ‘mere’ 85GB).

As we discussed in our Red Dead Redemption 2 specs piece earlier on, large install sizes are an increasing trend with PC games, with a number of titles in recent times coming in at (or fairly close to) the 100GB level (Forza 7 needs 100GB, Gears 5 has an 80GB install, and indeed previous Call of Duty outings have been hard drive hogs on PC).

These massive installation sizes are being pushed further and further upwards by high quality, high-resolution textures in the main (although high-quality audio can bulk things up too).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare system requirements

As for the rest of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s PC specs, they run as follows:

Minimum

  • OS: Windows 7 64-bit (SP1) or Windows 10 64-bit
  • CPU: Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300
  • Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 / GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon HD 7950
  • HDD: 175GB
  • Memory: 8GB
  • DirectX 12

Recommended

  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit (latest version)
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X
  • Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon R9 390 / AMD RX 580
  • HDD: 175GB
  • Memory: 12GB
  • DirectX 12

You might recall that the specs for the game’s beta test recommended 16GB of system memory, so it seems for the release version, this has been downgraded to 12GB.

Again, requiring more than 8GB as the recommended spec is another trend with PC games, and indeed Red Dead Redemption 2 has this as its recommended system memory amount, too (as well as the likes of Battlefield 5 and Forza Horizon 4).

Further note that DX12 is compulsory, although the game supports Windows 7 in the minimum spec – head over here for our further discussion on the ins-and-outs of what might be going on with this.

Via Eurogamer

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).