It escaped my attention in the pre-Christmas release rush, but Sony Online Entertainment's H1Z1 is arriving on Steam Early Access soon. Real soon. Next week in fact, when DayZ suddenly gains its biggest competitor yet in the zombie apocalypse survival market. 

The beta will begin life on a hefty 64 square kilometre map before eventually expanding to 1000km2, including massive cities and different environmental biomes. Thanks to using the Planetside 2 engine H1Z1 will provide support for thousands of players in a server concurrently, all battling it for survival using a host of weapons and vehicles. It all sounds like hugely promising stuff, but before you start gunning down the hordes, check out the official H1Z1 system requirements to see if your gaming rig is up to snuff.

H1Z1 Minimum System Requirements

  • OS: Windows 7 64-bit 
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-760 2.8GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 980 3.7GHz
  • RAM: 6GB System Memory
  • GPU RAM: 512MB
  • GPU: Nvidia GeForce 260 or AMD Radeon HD 4850
  • HDD: 20GB Free Hard Drive Space
  • DX: DirectX 9.0c

H1Z1 Recommended System Requirements

  • CPU: Intel Core i5-2310 2.9GHz or AMD Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7GHz
  • RAM: 8GB System Memory
  • GPU RAM: 1024MB
  • GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 6870 
  • DX: DirectX 11

H1Z1 system requirements are identical to the current Planetside 2 thanks to running on the very same Forgelight Engine. Now, the Planetside 2 system requirements have changed slightly since it came out back in 2012, and the minimum requirements are now a little more demanding, presumably because of a range of visual upgrades or new, more demanding maps. The requirements for H1Z1 then are extremely CPU intensive, so by the looks of things you're going to need a fairly decent quad-core processor. Memory requirements are also pretty high, but it's likely that you might be able to get away with 4GB at a push, but once things heat up it could be a different matter.

GPU requirements are a lot less demanding, and the recommended cards that are beginning to show their age a little bit, so most people shouldn't have a problem running H1Z1 decently. In terms of the difference between Planetside 2 and H1Z1, the only change is that H1Z1 is 64-bit only, so if you're running a 32-bit OS then you're going to be out of luck. H1Z1 is a fully paid-for experience, so if you're on the edge as to whether this will perform on your PC, then it may be worth giving the F2P Planetside 2 a download to gauge performance.

Remember, you can always check out how well your PC can run H1Z1 System Requirements here, where you can check benchmarking and performance from other users. Compare your graphics card to the H1Z1 benchmark chart. 

If you want to quickly see how H1Z1 will run on your PC then remember you can now take GD with you to check any website against any PC using our Chrome GD Anywhere Extension.