Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth proves, once again, that 8GB GPUs are on their way out

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is headed to PC in a few short weeks, and ahead of the release, Square Enix has released the PC requirements for the game. There are a couple of interesting specs, but one stands out in particular. Even some of the best graphics cards, particularly those packing 8GB of VRAM, might struggle to run the game.

You can see the full system requirements below. At the bottom of the list for each of the configurations, there’s a note about VRAM capacity. For 1080p and 1440p, the requirements call for a GPU with at least 12GB of video memory when used with a 4K monitor, while at proper 4K, the requirements call for a GPU with 16GB of memory.

Square Enix

It’s a bit strange — if you’re running the game at a lower resolution, even on a high-resolution display, you shouldn’t need more video memory, but that’s what the requirements call for. The requirements list several 8GB graphics cards, from the Intel Arc A580 up to the Nvidia RTX 2070. In each case, these graphic cards are only listed for 1080p at the Medium preset or lower.

That provides some hints about how Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth may run when it releases on January 23. As we recently saw with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, 8GB graphics cards struggled with the game even at 1080p if you pushed the settings high enough. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth might be caught in a similar situation.

On high-resolution displays, lower-quality textures may also stand out. It’s possible that 12GB of memory is recommended to play with the highest-quality textures, even if you’re rendering the game at 1080p.

If that’s the case, there may be some odd performance with graphics cards like the Nvidia RTX 3080. Despite being capable of running most modern games at 4K, the 10GB of VRAM capacity may pose issues at higher graphics settings and/or resolutions. That’s what we saw with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, with cards like the Intel Arc A770 outperforming the RTX 3080 at the highest graphics preset simply due to VRAM.

Outside of video memory, the system requirements have one other major restriction. You’ll need at least an AMD RX 6000 or Nvidia RTX 20-series GPU to play the game. RX 5000 GPUs and any GTX graphics cards aren’t supported. The game is likely using some form of ray tracing, as the specs specifically call out support for DirectX 12 Ultimate as a requirement.

Since it started as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, the requirements of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth make sense. The PS5 uses shared memory with 16GB of GDDR6 total, but up to 12.5GB of that can be allocated to the GPU. Similarly, it uses an RDNA 2-based GPU, which has dedicated ray tracing hardware.

You might need to upgrade your PC if you want to play Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. If you want to see if the game is worth picking up, make sure to read our full Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth review.