Slightly Mad Studios has been beavering away during the last few years on what could well be the racing game to end all racing games, Project CARS. The team are going more in-depth than we've ever seen in a simulation racing game, and the results are truly stunning.

The attention to detail in Project CARS looks unbelievable, and it easily seems capable of taking on the mantle of best-looking racing game. We had a inkling that you'd need some pretty hefty system requirements for Project CARS to start looking its absolute best, so read on to see if you've got a gaming PC advanced enough to meet the official Project CARS system requirements...

Project CARS Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66 GHz or AMD Athlon II X4 940 3.0 GHz
• RAM: 4GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 1 GB Graphics Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 or AMD Radeon HD 5770
• DX: DirectX 10

Project CARS Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 8 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core i7-3770S 4-Core 3.1 GHz or AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHz
• RAM: 8 GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 2 GB Graphics Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 2GB or AMD Radeon HD 7790
• DX: DirectX 11

Like The Crew's system requirements we talked about last week, these Project CARS requirements are pretty massive. To squeeze by the minimum system requirements for Project CARS you're going to need a relatively decent PC bought within the last five years, sporting a fairly powerful quad-core processor. The GeForce GTX 260 and the AMD Radeon HD 5770 graphics cards might be starting to show their age now as they're beginning to crop up as the minimum requirement with increasing regularity, but they should be just about enough to see you through here. As is fast becoming the norm you're going to want a 64-bit system running with at least 4GB of RAM.

Project CARS recommended requirements are where things really leap up though, and those processor requirements are eye-watering. Only a few games have been this demanding on the CPU, with Watch Dogs being one of them. The Intel Core i7-3770S or the AMD FX-8350 are both extremely high-performance processors, but it would be surprising to us if you couldn't max out Project CARS with slightly lower-end hardware. The GPU requirements for Project CARS are a little more reasonable, with a mid-range modern GPU enough to see you through, while you're going to want 8GB of of RAM to back it up. 

Remember, you can always check out how well your PC can run the Project CARS System Requirements here, where you can check benchmarking and performance from other users.

Compare your graphics card to the Project CARS benchmark chart.

What do you think of these pretty massive requirements for Project CARS? Do you think Slightly Mad Studios might be over-egging the processor requirements? Cheers Dan987000 for the heads up!