It's been more than a year now since SimCity came out and crushed our mayoral hearts, stamping on our ambitions with its cities that looked more like hamlets and its always-online requirement that made its launch such an unmitigated disaster. Since then time has whiled away but we're still yet to see the return of the truly great city-building game.

Step forward Cities: Skylines, a sprawling city building landscape covered in miles of jutting skyscrapers, picturesque suburbs, spaghetti junctions and all manner of architectural marvels. It's a town-planner's dream come true and with Cities in Motion developer Colossal Order behind the scenes we know it's going to be a thoroughly in-depth city sim. Before you apply for planning permission though you'd best check out you've got the tools for the job, so read on to check out the official Cities: Skylines system requirements.

Cities: Skylines Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP 32-bit
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2.0 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.1 GHz
• RAM: 3GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 512MB Graphics Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS or AMD Radeon HD 3850
• DX: DirectX 9
• HDD: 2 GB Free Hard Drive Space
• Other: Broadband Internet connection

Cities: Skylines Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0 GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz
• RAM: 4 GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 1024MB Graphics Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 6850

First things first, these are some pretty reasonable system requirements but it's worth bearing in mind they are significantly more demanding than their previous title Cities in Motion 2 from last year, so if you could play that it doesn't necessarily mean your rig can play Cities: Skylines. The minimum requirements for Cities: Skylines are in fact absolutely identical to the recommended requirements for Cities in Motion 2, so if your rig struggled with that then you may be in need of an upgrade.

As it stands though any moderately modern rig should be more than capable of running Cities: Skylines. The minimum requirements demand a GeForce 8800 GTX or a Radeon HD 3850 which are both cards that are beginning to show their age now. It shouldn't be a problem for most though and neither should the processor requirements which demand a dual-core 2Ghz processor which most PCs probably have by now.

The recommended requirements are quite a bit more demanding, particularly the CPU requirements, but you're only going to need these to push the Cities: Skylines graphics settings right up. The CPU demands are typical for a large-scale game like this, so if you're only to build an absolutely massive city then it will of course be more demanding on your hardware. Tweaking the level of detail settings should be enough to get people above the minimum requirements to a very playable frame rate, particularly with a strategy title that doesn't demand quick movements. 

Remember, you can always check out how well your PC can run the Cities: Skylines System Requirements here, where you can check benchmarking and performance from other users. Compare your graphics card to the Cities: Skylines GPU benchmark chart.