Modern Warfare 4 on PC: 115GB, TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, and a 32GB Ray-Tracing Tier. Can You Run It?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 lands on PC on October 23, with the campaign unlocking a week early for pre-orders on the 16th and the DMZ extraction mode on the 20th. Activision published the final PC specifications in September, and they are a stranger document than the headline numbers suggest. The minimum graphics card is a GTX 970 from 2014. The top tier wants 32GB of RAM. Both of those are on the same sheet, and both are correct.

Here is what every line means, which of them will actually stop you playing, and the two BIOS settings a lot of people will discover the hard way on the 16th.

The three tiers, with what they are for

Activision gives each tier a job, which is more than most publishers do. The recommended line is not "it runs fine"; it is 90 frames per second in multiplayer on the High preset. The top line is not Ultra; it is ray tracing at High quality at 4K with upscaling.

	Minimum	Recommended (90 fps MP, High)	Ray tracing (4K upscaled, High RT)
OS	Windows 10 64-bit	Windows 11 64-bit	Windows 11 64-bit
CPU	Ryzen 5 1400, Core i5-6600	Ryzen 5 3600, Core i7-8700	Ryzen 7 3700X, Core i7-10700K
RAM	8GB	16GB	32GB
GPU	GTX 970, GTX 1060, RX 470, Arc A580	RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6600 XT, Arc B580	RTX 5070 Ti, RX 9070 XT
VRAM	3GB	8GB	16GB
Storage	115GB SSD	115GB SSD	115GB SSD

Three notes that sit underneath that table on Activision's page and get dropped from most reposts. Intel Arc cards need Resizable BAR on. Only Intel and AMD processors with the AVX instruction set are supported, which matters for a handful of people on very old Pentiums and Celerons and nobody else. And the storage line reads "at launch", with the standard warning that mandatory updates will need more; Call of Duty installs have a long history of growing past 200GB, so plan for the drive, not the number.

The driver line is specific too: NVIDIA 616.56, AMD 26.7.1 or Intel 32.0.101.8974, with a separate NVIDIA driver supporting Advanced Shader Delivery due October 21, two days before launch. ASD is the system that ships precompiled shaders with the install instead of building them on your machine the first time you play, which is the thing that made the August beta's first match feel like a slideshow for some people. The September PC blog recommends installing the Xbox PC app even if you buy on Steam or Battle.net, because that is how ASD delivers the shaders at install time and during updates.

TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot: two toggles, not a purchase

The line people are nervous about: TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are required, and "other security measures may be enforced". This is the Ricochet anti-cheat's requirement, the same one Battlefield 6 and Black Ops 7 already enforce, and the August beta turned players away without it.

What it is not is a hardware requirement in any practical sense. Every processor on the sheet, including the Ryzen 5 1400 and the Core i5-6600 at the bottom, has a firmware TPM built in; AMD calls it fTPM, Intel calls it PTT. It is off by default on a lot of boards from before Windows 11 shipped. Secure Boot is the same story: a toggle in the BIOS, usually off on boards that shipped in CSM or legacy mode.

The one real trap is this. Secure Boot only works when Windows is installed in UEFI mode on a GPT disk. If your Windows install dates from the Windows 7 or early Windows 10 era and was done in legacy mode on an MBR disk, flipping Secure Boot on will leave the machine unable to boot until you flip it back. Microsoft's mbr2gpt tool converts the disk in place without a reinstall, and it is the step to do first, on the 14th, with a backup, not on the evening of the 16th. Run msinfo32 and look at BIOS Mode (should say UEFI) and Secure Boot State; if both are already right, you are done with this section.

Our opinion: this is the right call for a shooter with a cash shop and tens of millions of players, and the people who lose out are the ones with the oldest installs rather than the oldest hardware. The spec sheet says the same thing twice over.

32GB on the ray-tracing tier, in this market

The number that is unusual for 2026 is the 32GB of RAM on the top tier. The recommended tier is fine with 16, which is where the overwhelming majority of players will sit. But if you are chasing the 4K ray-tracing target, Activision wants twice that, and this is the year to notice what that costs.

We checked Amazon's buy-box prices on October 10. A 32GB DDR5-6000 kit from the brands we recommend runs $470 to $530: the Patriot Viper Venom at $490, TeamGroup's T-Force Vulcan at $490, Corsair's Vengeance RS at $506 and Crucial Pro at $505. That is roughly double what the same kits sold for in the spring, for reasons we covered in the DDR5 shortage piece and have been tracking since. A year ago 32GB was a casual upgrade; now it is a graphics-card-sized decision.

So read the tier for what it says. The 32GB is attached to High ray tracing at 4K, on an RTX 5070 Ti or RX 9070 XT. If you have 16GB and one of those cards, run RT on at 1440p first and watch for the pagefile stutter before you spend five hundred dollars on memory because a table said to.

What our model reads for the cards people own

Modern Warfare 4 is not out, so there are no public benchmarks yet, and we have not run any; we are not a lab. What we have is the engine from Black Ops 7, the previous game on this IW engine branch, which in our catalog is GPU-bound even at 1080p and favours AMD by a card or so. We set a predicted profile for MW4 slightly lighter than BO7, to land on Activision's own target: an RTX 3060 Ti reads 123 fps at 1080p on our middle preset and 93 on Ultra, which brackets the 90 on High that the sheet promises. These are model outputs at native resolution with no upscaling and a 9800X3D-class processor, and we re-rate the profile the week benchmarks land.

GPU	1080p (Medium / Ultra)	1440p (Medium / Ultra)	4K native (Medium / Ultra)
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB	~48 / ~36	~35 / ~24	~21 / ~15
GeForce RTX 2060	~75 / ~57	~55 / ~38	~33 / ~24
Radeon RX 6600 XT	~91 / ~69	~66 / ~46	~40 / ~29
Intel Arc B580	~99 / ~75	~72 / ~50	~43 / ~31
GeForce RTX 4060	~115 / ~87	~84 / ~58	~50 / ~36
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti	~123 / ~93	~89 / ~62	~54 / ~39
Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB	~123 / ~93	~89 / ~62	~54 / ~39
GeForce RTX 5060	~127 / ~96	~92 / ~64	~55 / ~40
GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB	~143 / ~108	~104 / ~72	~62 / ~45
GeForce RTX 5070	~162 / ~123	~118 / ~82	~71 / ~51
Radeon RX 9070 XT	~166 / ~126	~121 / ~84	~73 / ~52
GeForce RTX 5070 Ti	~172 / ~131	~125 / ~87	~75 / ~54
GeForce RTX 5080	~184 / ~140	~134 / ~93	~80 / ~58
GeForce RTX 5090	~196 / ~149	~143 / ~99	~86 / ~62

The GTX 1060 row is there because it is on the minimum line, and 48 frames at 1080p Medium is what minimum means. The two cards Activision names for the ray-tracing tier read 73 to 75 at native 4K on Medium before any ray tracing, which is why the sheet says upscaled; with DLSS or FSR at Quality those cards render from 1440p, where they have the headroom to pay for High RT.

On the processor side, Call of Duty multiplayer has always been more CPU-sensitive than the campaign, and our model gives the sheet's minimum chips a hard ceiling: a Ryzen 5 1400 tops out near 113 frames in this game no matter the card, a Core i5-6600 near 150, a Ryzen 5 3600 near 206. From a Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-12400F up, the ceiling is above 270 and the card decides. The bottleneck checker will tell you which side is limiting for your exact pair, and once the game is out the MW4 page runs the same model on every combination we track.

If you are buying for it

Most people need nothing. The recommended tier is a 2020 graphics card and a 2019 processor, and 16GB of RAM. The purchases that make sense are the ones the fine print forces.

The drive first, because it is the one nobody budgets for. 115GB at launch, growing with every season, on an SSD, and Gears of War: E-Day is another 115GB this month. The Crucial P310 2TB is where we would put a Call of Duty install: PCIe 4.0, no heatsink needed, and the cheapest 2TB from a brand we trust on a market where drive prices have only gone one way this year.

If your processor is on or below the minimum line, that is the upgrade that pays off in multiplayer, and it is cheaper than the card. A Ryzen 5 7600X was $170 on Amazon on October 10, which is a remarkable price for a chip that clears the recommended tier by two generations, though it needs an AM5 board and DDR5. On an existing AM4 board, a Ryzen 5 5600 at about $156 is the drop-in answer; we covered it in the E-Day post.

For the ray-tracing tier, Activision names the RTX 5070 Ti and the RX 9070 XT as equals, and on Amazon today they are about $1,250 and $830. In a game where the publisher's own spec puts them on the same line, we cannot build a case for the four hundred dollars. The 9070 XT has 16GB, FSR 4 for the upscaled 4K the tier assumes, and a history of running Call of Duty well.

And the memory, only if you are genuinely aiming at that top tier. The Patriot Viper Venom DDR5-6000 CL30 is the kit we point AM5 builders at, and at $490 it was the cheapest good-timing 32GB kit in stock on October 10.

The game is $69.99 on Steam, Battle.net and the Xbox PC app, or as an Xbox and Windows digital code on Amazon at the same price; the Vault Edition is $99.99. Any pre-order gets the campaign on the 16th and DMZ on the 20th. It is not on Game Pass, unlike last year's Black Ops 7, so there is no try-before-you-buy route this time.

The short version

• PC launch October 23; campaign early access October 16 and DMZ October 20 for pre-orders; preload October 15 at 9am Pacific; NVIDIA's shader-delivery driver October 21. Not on Game Pass.
• Minimum: GTX 970 or GTX 1060, Ryzen 5 1400 or i5-6600, 8GB. Recommended, for 90 fps multiplayer on High: RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6600 XT, Ryzen 5 3600 or i7-8700, 16GB. Ray tracing at 4K upscaled: RTX 5070 Ti or RX 9070 XT, 32GB.
• 115GB on an SSD at every tier, before updates. A hard drive does not qualify.
• TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are required for Ricochet. Every CPU on the sheet has a firmware TPM; the only real trap is a legacy-mode Windows install on an MBR disk, and mbr2gpt fixes that without a reinstall.
• The 32GB line is attached to the 4K ray-tracing tier only. A 32GB DDR5 kit is $470 to $530 this week; try 16GB with RT at 1440p before buying one.