Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy system requirements are out of this world

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy screenshot
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is out in a week, so there’s not long to wait now, and ahead of its release the PC system requirements have been made available.

The spec has just been posted on Steam, with one of the most eye-opening elements here being the amount of drive space which will be eaten up by Guardians of the Galaxy. To be precise, you’ll need 150GB free to install the game.

The full minimum and recommended requirements to run Guardians of the Galaxy on PC are as follows…

Guardians of the Galaxy minimum system requirements

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit Build 1803
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1400 / Intel Core i5-4460
  • Memory: 8GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 / AMD Radeon RX 570
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 150GB available space
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit Build 1803
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 / Intel Core i7-4790
  • Memory: 16GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super / AMD Radeon RX 590
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 150GB available space

Analysis: Storage troubles ahead perhaps, but smooth sailing elsewhere

The big ask, as mentioned, is that 150GB stipulation for drive space, which is a seriously hefty chunk. It’s bigger than a lot of demanding contemporary games, and could cause some concern for those who have a smaller SSD in their system (or a fairly full solid-state drive, for that matter).

Indeed, Guardians of the Galaxy demands as much room on your drive as Microsoft Flight Simulator, which also takes 150GB (with full updates on board) given its hefty wedge of mapping data.

Other games which require 150GB include Red Dead Redemption 2, and Stalker 2 when it emerges next year. So, while these kinds of demands are far from unheard of, it’s unexpected to see Guardians of the Galaxy being so hungry for drive space, and grumbling around the lack of priority given to optimizing installation sizes has predictably been spilled forth online. (Sadly, there are doubtless a ton of issues and bug fixing which must be handled ahead of tweaking for space, and often game development deadlines are tight to say the least).

Otherwise, though, the spec requirements are easy-going enough, with a GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 570 being a palatable baseline on the graphics card front. For the recommended GPU, you only need a GTX 1660 Super or RX 590, and this is for a game which promises to sport a load of graphical bells and whistles (plus, of course, DLSS should definitely help Nvidia RTX owners get the most out of the game’s frame rates).

The recommendation for 16GB of system RAM has become pretty standard these days, though it’s possible to run Guardians of the Galaxy with 8GB which is the minimum requirement.

In our early time spent with Guardians of the Galaxy, we came away not quite convinced, but those first impressions could change when it comes to release (and it’s not like we didn’t enjoy the game, either; it’s more a case of having reservations around the combat).

Via PC Gamer

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).