The dates for the first Battlefield 2042 playtests have been revealed. DICE will be holding the beta playtests between the 12th and 15th of August, with five of them lasting for three hours and the other for nine. The playtests are going to be a private event, with invites distributed by EA to select players. Originally slated to take place in July, these tests were delayed to early August to allow the developers to test out the cross-play functionality of the game.
DICE is planning to cross-play across PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5, with players having the option to opt out of the feature. Cross-play will also be available across the older Xbox One and PS4 consoles. The private playtests will include “a few thousand” players, followed by the open beta scheduled for September.
The PC system requirements for the same have also been announced:
Minimum specs:
OS: 64-bit Windows 10
Processor (AMD): AMD FX-8350
Processor (Intel): Core i5 6600K
Memory: 8GB
Video Memory: 4GB
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon RX 560
Graphics card (NVIDIA): Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
DirectX: 12
Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
Recommended specs:
OS: 64-bit Windows 10
Processor (AMD): AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Processor (Intel): Intel Core i7 4790
Memory: 16GB
Video Memory: 8GB
Graphics card (AMD): Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
Graphics card (NVIDIA): AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT
DirectX: 12
A few points stand out almost immediately. The memory requirements have been jacked up quite significantly. On the main memory side, you need 16GB of RAM for the ideal experience along with 8 GB of graphics memory. Strangely, none of the recommended GPUs come with that much memory. Both the RTX 2060 and RX 5600 XT are limited to 6GB of GDDR6 memory. I reckon you’ll have to lower the texture resolution to high on these cards. On the CPU side, the hex-core Ryzen 5 3600 is the recommended processor, with the Intel Core i7-4790 being the Intel counterpart. This isn’t surprising as the Frostbite engine powering the Battlefield games is highly scalable, easily leveraging more than eight physical CPU cores, while also benefitting from increased boost clocks.
Source: VGC
