Buckle up petrolheads, it's Dirt time again. After going a bit arcade-y with Dirt 4, Codemasters is going back to gritty, hard-as-nails simulation with Dirt Rally 2.0. The system requirements are out now for Dirt Rally 2.0 and a graphical overhaul sounds like it's on the cards based on these demanding system specs...

Dirt Rally 2.0 Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core i3-2130 3.4 GHz or AMD FX-4300 3.8 GHz
• RAM: 8 GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 1 GB Video Memory
• GPU: GeForce GTX 650 Ti or Radeon HD 7750
• DX: DirectX 11
• HDD: 50GB Available Hard Drive Space

Dirt Rally 2.0 Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• CPU: Intel Core i5-8600K 3.6 GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz
• RAM: 8 GB System Memory
• GPU RAM: 8 GB Video Memory
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
• DX: DirectX 11
• HDD: 50GB Available Hard Drive Space

Well, well, well,  this is the overhaul we've got on our hands. The system requirements for Dirt Rally 2 are worlds apart from Dirt 4's system specs in 2017. This hopefully means Codemasters has done plenty of work underneath the hood to provide even more detailed rally racing visuals.

If your chief concern is getting Dirt Rally 2.0 to even run at all then you'll be needing a far more powerful system than previously, albeit still low-end by today's standards. Codies officially suggests you'll only need a dual-core processor with multithreading as a minimum, alongside a low-end 1GB VRAM DX11 graphics card. That's a nice, forgiving set of system specs for DR2.0 that should ensure Dirt Rally 2 works across most PC gaming systems.

The jump to the recommended specs for Dirt Rally 2.0 is humongous though. I can't actually remember seeing a difference in specs this huge. Dirt Rally 2.0's recommended system requirements are the 8th most demanding system specs in PC gaming, according to our 100 Most Demanding PC Games List. From a lowly dual-core CPU and 1GB video card at minimum, Codemasters says you'll need an 8GB graphics card and a six-core processor with at least 3.6GHz clock speed. This is what we call a '90 over jump into hairpin left, steep edges'. 

The previous Dirt games can actually run pretty great at 4K provided you weren't overgenerous with the MSAA settings. MSAA has the capacity to tank performance and this can be dialed down as the resolution goes up, offsetting the aliasing while providing greater image quality. That said, based on Dirt 4's performance at Ultra Quality with 4x MSAA, we'd say these recommended specs for Dirt Rally 2.0 are aimed at maxing out the graphics settings at 1080p resolution. They're definitely on the high side but we reckon you'll get plenty of performance headroom at 1080p with these video cards. Drop a few settings down to High and GTX 1070 and Vega 56 should comfortably hit 60fps at 1440p.

In reality, something like the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or the Radeon RX 480 should run Dirt Rally 2.0 at nearly max settings on 1080p with a stable 60fps frame rate.

As always, you can check out how well your PC can run Dirt Rally 2.0 System Requirements here, where you can check benchmarking and performance from other users. Compare your graphics card to Dirt Rally 2.0 GPU benchmark chart and we also have a Dirt Rally 2.0 Frames Per Second system performance chart for you to check.