Max Payne 3 System Requirements Explained

We announced the official Max Payne 3 PC system requirements on April 23rd and as you will remember they caused quite a stir.

The reason for this was because the MP3 system requirements had one of the most powerful machines money could buy listed in its specs. We explained that the top end machine was listed as something that could run Max Payne 3 to the Max but now a new set of requirements have since been refined in a recent press article...

Kevin Hoare, Lead PC Designer on Max Payne 3 had this to say

"In terms of the original list of specs we distributed, they were the extremes of the entire range that we had tested, from the lowest players could reasonably run, through to the most powerful rigs we could put together. We know that variety and customization is one of the strengths of the PC platform, so if you’re a hardcore PC player with an incredibly customized rig, our game is going to shine on your system. If you’re coming in at the bottom end, you’re still going to be able to have a great time playing Max Payne 3."

Here is a more comprehensive list of Max Payne 3 recommended system requirements

Max Payne 3 Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
CPU: Intel Dual Core 2.4 GHZ or AMD Dual Core 2.6 GHZ, or better
RAM: 2GB
GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce 8600 GT 512MB RAM or AMD Radeon™ HD 3400 512MB RAM

Max Payne 3 Low End Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
CPU: Intel Dual Core 3GHz or AMD equivalent
RAM: 3GB
GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce 450 512MB RAM or AMD Radeon™ HD 4870 512MB RAM

At this level, you will be able to comfortably run the game at 30 frames per second with a 1920 by 1080 screen resolution.

Max Payne 3 High End Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows 7/Vista (32 or 64 bit)
CPU: Intel i7 Quad Core 2.8Ghz or AMD equivalent
RAM: 3GB
GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce 480 1GB RAM or AMD Radeon™ HD 5870 1GB RAM

At this level, you will be able to comfortably run the game at 60 fps at 1920 by 1080.

Max Payne 3 Highest Tested Specs

OS: Windows 7/Vista (64 bit)

CPU: Intel i7 3930K 6 Core x 3.06 GHZ or AMD FX8150 8 Core x 3.6 GHZ

RAM: 16GB

GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680 2GB RAM or AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 3GB RAM

Kevin goes on to say that when you get to the top end of these requirements, that is when you will really be able to see Max Payne shine. This is because the PC version will come with screen resolution that is scalable, triple and even sextuple monitor support that also helps with higher screen resolutions. There will be various anti-aliasing choices, even scalable water quality, scalable shadow quality, increased detail for characters and vehicles and a scalable texture filter that further increases the visual quality of Max Payne 3.

MP3 will support DX11 also, including high end graphic features like Hull/Tessellation/Domain Shaders (which adds curvature to the character/vehicle models), Gather4 (for optimized shadow sampling / FXAA), Geometry shader / Stream Output and DX11 texture samplers to name a few.

Kevin explains that all of this is the reason for the giant 35GB install size. So while MP3 can still scale performance down to suit even reasonably low-end rigs, every asset is available at the highest resolution possible, from audio to video to textures.

We are looking forward to hearing your feedback and frames per second reports once you get your hands on Max Payne 3.

Special thanks to Taherookie for helping us always stay on top of the news. Thumb him up if you see him around.

Special thanks to anabigs for putting together the awesome picture of Felix Payne 3. Thumb him up too if you see him around.