What WARDOGS asks of a PC

The WARDOGS PC requirements start at a GeForce GTX 1660 or Radeon RX 590, a Core i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 3500 and 16 GB of RAM, and BULKHEAD recommends a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT with a Core i7-12700K or Ryzen 7 5700X for 1440p Medium at 70 fps or more. The best graphics card for WARDOGS is the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GRE Gaming OC, £529.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026), which averaged 86.6 fps at 1440p Ultra in Tom's Hardware's June 2026 GPU hierarchy against 58.2 fps for the RTX 3070.

No independent outlet has published per-card WARDOGS benchmarks at the time of writing. This guide maps the official tiers onto Tom's Hardware's 11-game averages and prices the route to the recommended spec for three buyers: a GTX 1660 PC, an AM4 PC with a Ryzen 5 3600, and no PC at all.

What are the WARDOGS PC requirements?

The WARDOGS minimum spec on Steam is a GeForce GTX 1660 or Radeon RX 590, a Core i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 3500, 16 GB of RAM, 50 GB of storage and 64-bit Windows 10, aimed at "1080p Low @ 60fps (Upscaled)". The recommended spec is a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT, a Core i7-12700K or Ryzen 7 5700X, 16 GB and Windows 11, aimed at "1440p Medium @ 70fps+ (Native) or 4k Medium @ 60fps+ (Upscaled)".

• Upscaling is built in: the minimum 60 fps target and the 4K target assume upscaling; only the 1440p target is native.
• Presets for both ends:GamingBolt reports a "Potato Mode" built to hold 60 fps on low-end PCs and an "Overkill Mode" for high-end systems. BULKHEAD's July 2026 devlog says "Performance has been a priority for the entire team since day one".
• Early Access: BULKHEAD expects it to run around 1 to 2 years, so the spec may change before full release.

What is WARDOGS and why is it so popular?

WARDOGS is an "All-Out Warfare" first-person shooter for up to 100 players, made by BULKHEAD in Derby and published by Team17, and it has been in Steam Early Access since 10 September 2026. Three teams fight over a central control zone; holding it scores points, and the first team to 100 points wins.

• Sales:3 million copies "in just over 2 weeks", per BULKHEAD's Steam post of 26 September 2026.
• Players: a peak of 428,666 concurrent players on its first weekend, according to VGC; Dork ranks it the third-biggest Steam launch of 2026 by that measure.
• Reviews: Very Positive, 81% of 54,984 Steam reviews on 28 September 2026.
• Price: £36.99 Standard and £45.99 Supporter Edition on Steam UK at the time of writing (September 2026), rising at full release.
• Format:PCGamesN reports teams of about 30 to 33 players and main bases about 3 km from the zone, so vehicles and helicopters matter, and calls the result "half Battlefield, half ARMA, and a bit king of the hill".

Proximity voice chat works across all three teams, per the Steam page, so a headset with a clear microphone is part of the kit; see best gaming headset UK 2026.

Which graphics cards meet the WARDOGS recommended spec?

Every current graphics card in this guide meets or beats the WARDOGS recommended tier on Tom's Hardware's numbers: the RTX 3070 averaged 58.2 fps and the RX 6700 XT 54.3 fps at 1440p Ultra, and the cheapest card here, the RTX 5060 at £374.99, averaged 59.8 fps.

Tom's Hardware's June 2026 hierarchy averages 11 games at native resolution on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, at Ultra where BULKHEAD targets Medium, so the table ranks headroom over the recommended card rather than predicting WARDOGS frame rates. PCGamingWiki, a community wiki, lists no ray tracing in WARDOGS, so raster is the right measure.

Compare Electronic's WARDOGS spec tier to graphics card map

• Video memory: the RTX 3070 has 8 GB, so every 8 GB card here matches it. The RX 6700 XT sets a 12 GB bar, which the RX 9070 GRE and RTX 5070 equal and both 16 GB Radeons exceed.
• Value: the RX 9070 XT costs least per frame at £5.74, then the RX 9070 GRE at £6.12. The RTX 5070 costs £50.00 more than the RX 9070 XT and averaged 20.9% fewer frames; the full case is in RTX 5070 vs RX 9070 XT.
• Steam's common cards:the RTX 3060 (3.92% of Steam's August 2026 video card table) and RTX 4060 (3.60%) sit 28.0% and 18.2% below the RTX 3070, between the two WARDOGS tiers.

Which graphics card is best for WARDOGS?

The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GRE Gaming OCis the best graphics card for WARDOGS at 1440p: at £529.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026), it averaged 86.6 fps at 1440p Ultra in Tom's Hardware's June 2026 hierarchy, 48.8% above the recommended RTX 3070, with the 12 GB of video memory the RX 6700 XT sets. The Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB (£389.99) and Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Eagle OC SFF (£718.99) also clear the tier; the wider ranking is in best graphics card UK 2026.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GRE Gaming OC - best graphics card for WARDOGS

AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE has 48 compute units, 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus at 432 GB/s and a 220 W board power, and AMD specifies a 650 W power supply. TechSpot's 15-game test (2 June 2026) measured 84 fps at 1440p, about 5% behind the RTX 5070, which costs £189.00 more on Amazon UK.

BULKHEAD targets 70 fps at 1440p Medium on an RTX 3070, and the RX 9070 GRE carries 48.8% more raster headroom than that card. It suits buyers upgrading a 1440p PC that already has a 650 W supply.

ASUS Dual Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB - best value for WARDOGS

The ASUS Dual Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB costs £439.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026) and averaged 67.3 fps at 1440p Ultra, 15.6% above the RTX 3070, with twice its video memory. AMD rates the RX 9060 XT 16GB at 160 W with a 450 W minimum supply, the lowest of the four picks.

PC Gamer measured 142 fps for the 16 GB RX 9060 XT against 123 fps for the 8 GB model in Resident Evil Requiem at 1440p High with upscaling and frame generation. The RX 9060 XT 16GB suits a GTX 1660 PC with a modest power supply.

ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 5060 OC - cheapest recommended-tier card

The ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 5060 OC costs £374.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026) and averaged 59.8 fps at 1440p Ultra, 2.7% above the RTX 3070. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5060 has 3,840 CUDA cores, 8 GB of GDDR7 at 448 GB/s and a 145 W graphics power, with a 550 W supply listed.

The RTX 5060 is the only one of the four picks that runs the DLSS Frame Generation BULKHEAD's patch notes confirm. Its 8 GB equals the RTX 3070 with no margin, and the RX 9060 XT 8GB averaged 4.5% more for £15.00 more. It suits buyers who want the recommended tier for the least money.

ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC - best for 4K and high refresh

The ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC costs £668.99 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026), against AMD's UK launch price of £569.99. It averaged 116.5 fps at 1440p Ultra, 100.2% above the RTX 3070, and 65.8 fps at 4K Ultra; Tom's Hardware calls it "the cheapest way to get into 4K 60 FPS native gaming".

The RX 9070 XT is 34.5% faster than the RX 9070 GRE for £139.00 more, and AMD rates it at 304 W with a 750 W supply. It suits 4K monitors and 1440p panels at 144 Hz and above.

Can a GTX 1060 or GTX 1660 run WARDOGS?

The GeForce GTX 1660 is the official WARDOGS minimum, which BULKHEAD targets at "1080p Low @ 60fps (Upscaled)"; the GTX 1060 falls below it and carries no promise. No independent outlet has published results for either card in WARDOGS at the time of writing.

• No DLSS:GTX 10-series cards have no tensor cores, so they cannot run DLSS (Tom's Hardware), and the Turing-based GTX 16-series lacks them too; the upscaling the minimum target assumes has to come from AMD or Intel.
• Drivers:NVIDIA's Game Ready support for GTX 10-series cards, including the GTX 1060, ended in late 2025, with security updates until October 2028.
• Other GTX cards:the GTX 1650, 2.49% of Steam's August 2026 video card table, is also below the minimum. GTX 10 and 16-series cards together make up 10.62% of that table.

GamingBolt's reported Potato Mode, built to hold 60 fps on low-end PCs, is the best hope for these cards. Which old parts to keep is covered in how to upgrade an old gaming PC.

Is WARDOGS CPU-heavy?

WARDOGS looks CPU-heavy on Compare Electronic's reading of the spec sheet: BULKHEAD pairs a mid-range graphics tier with a high processor tier, and a 100-player match with vehicles, building and destruction is simulation work for the processor. No independent outlet has measured CPU scaling in WARDOGS yet, so this is inference.

• Same graphics card, newer processor:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's beta specs recommend an RX 6700 XT with a Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700. WARDOGS names the same RX 6700 XT but asks for a Ryzen 7 5700X or Core i7-12700K.
• Medium settings expose the processor:TechSpot's May 2026 analysis found the Ryzen 7 9800X3D 27% ahead of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in Marvel Rivals at native 1440p Medium, against 6% at Ultra. The WARDOGS recommended target is Medium.

Processors that clear the recommended tier

• AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, £299.00 (AM5): 85.6% in Tom's Hardware's August 2026 CPU hierarchy, and 20 to 24% faster than the 5800X3D in TechSpot's testing.
• Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, £293.97 (LGA1851): 77.5% in the same hierarchy, above the Core i7-14700K (76.4%), a chip two generations newer than the Core i7-12700K.
• AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, £267.45 (AM5): the Zen 5 successor to the Ryzen 7 5700X, boosting to 5.5 GHz against 4.6 GHz (AMD).

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D costs £5.03 more than the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and TechSpot found it 13% faster in CPU-limited games, so it is the new-build pick; see best CPU for gaming UK 2026.

Does WARDOGS support DLSS, FSR and frame generation?

Yes: BULKHEAD's Season 1 patch notes (9 September 2026) confirm DLSS Frame Generation, and PCGamingWiki, a community wiki, lists DLSS 4.5, FSR 4 and XeSS 2 upscaling with quality modes from Ultra Performance to Anti-Aliasing, on DirectX 12 with no HDR.

• Official notes:"DLSS Frame Generation can now be turned off without restarting", and the same patch "Fixed two crash paths in the frame generation pipeline".
• GeForce:DLSS upscaling runs on every RTX card, including the recommended RTX 3070. DLSS Frame Generation needs an RTX 40 or RTX 50 card, and NVIDIA's up-to-6X Multi Frame Generation is RTX 50 only and not confirmed for WARDOGS.
• Radeon:FSR 4 is AMD's machine-learning upscaler for RX 9000 cards, extended to RX 7000 cards by FSR 4.1 in July 2026 (TechSpot). Compare Electronic found no official confirmation of AMD frame generation in WARDOGS.

How much RAM and storage does WARDOGS need?

WARDOGS needs 16 GB of RAM and 50 GB of storage at both the minimum and recommended spec, according to its Steam page. Steam's August 2026 Hardware Survey puts 16 GB on 41.20% of PCs and 32 GB on 37.45%, while the 7.46% with 8 GB fall below the WARDOGS floor.

• 32 GB is optional: Ace Combat 8 and Silent Hill: Townfall recommend 32 GB this autumn; WARDOGS does not. The Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 32GB costs £209.99 for AM4 PCs and the Patriot Viper Venom DDR5-6000 32GB CL30 £429.99 for AM5. Tom's Hardware reported memory prices "doubling or tripling" in 2026; see the 2026 RAM shortage explained.
• Storage: Steam lists 50 GB without naming an SSD, unlike Gears of War: E-Day, which requires 115 GB on an SSD. The Kingston NV3 1TB (£129.98, rated at 6,000 MB/s) and Lexar NM790 2TB (£259.99, 7,400 MB/s) are ranked in best NVMe SSD for gaming UK 2026.

Is WARDOGS on Steam Deck, PS5 or Xbox?

WARDOGS is a Windows game on Steam today, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions due in 2028, according to Pure Xbox, and no Steam Deck rating listed on Steam at the time of writing (September 2026).

• Steam Deck and Linux: Steam Deck HQ reports that BULKHEAD is working on Proton support. The game uses kernel-level anti-cheat.
• Windows 10:the minimum spec allows it, but Microsoft ended Windows 10 support on 14 October 2025, and consumer Extended Security Updates run to 12 October 2027. Windows 11 runs on 70.97% of systems in Steam's August 2026 survey.

How much does it cost to reach the WARDOGS recommended spec?

Reaching the WARDOGS recommended graphics tier costs £374.99 on a minimum-spec PC, reaching both the processor and graphics tiers from an AM4 PC costs £1,410.43 through a move to AM5, and a complete new PC costs £954.00 prebuilt or £1,836.29 as a faster self-build, at Amazon UK prices in September 2026.

• Minimum-spec PC: a graphics swap leaves the processor at the minimum. A Core i5-8600 has no drop-in route, because 12th-generation Core chips use a different socket; a Ryzen 5 3500 is AM4 and can follow the AM4 route.
• AM4 PC:reaching BULKHEAD's processor tier means leaving AM4. A Ryzen 7 7800X3D, an MSI PRO B650M-A WiFi(£151.45) and 32 GB of DDR5 (£429.99) cost £880.44 before the graphics card, and the DDR5 kit is almost half of that. The existing case, storage and power supply carry over if the power supply meets AMD's 650 W figure for the RX 9070 GRE.
• Upgrade beats replace:the graphics-only route with the RX 9070 GRE costs £529.99, £424.01 less than the whole Veno Scorp PC, and ends with a graphics card 44.8% faster by Tom's averages, although the processor stays below the recommended tier.

New AM5 build that beats the recommended spec: £1,836.29

The same build with the RTX 5060 costs £1,681.29, which is £727.29 more than the Veno Scorp prebuilt with the same graphics card; the DDR5 kit alone is £429.99. The full comparison is in build vs buy a gaming PC UK 2026.

What is the cheapest PC that runs WARDOGS well?

The Veno Scorp Gaming PC with a Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 5060 is the cheapest complete PC in this guide that meets both halves of the WARDOGS recommended spec, at £954.00 on Amazon UK at the time of writing (September 2026). The listing pairs the exact Ryzen 7 5700X BULKHEAD names with an RTX 5060, 16 GB of DDR4-3200 (the WARDOGS figure), a 512 GB NVMe SSD, a 650 W power supply, liquid cooling, Wi-Fi and Windows 11.

The Veno Scorp PC suits a first gaming PC for 1080p and 1440p Medium. Its 512 GB SSD holds WARDOGS's 50 GB with room to spare but fills quickly with other 2026 releases, so a second drive such as the Kingston NV3 1TB (£129.98) is the first add-on. Buyers chasing 1440p at high refresh rates get more from the self-build above, and more towers are ranked in best gaming PC UK 2026.

Who should skip a WARDOGS upgrade, and what should UK buyers check?

Owners of an RTX 3070, RX 6700 XT or faster card should skip a graphics upgrade: the card already meets the recommended tier, and a processor below the Ryzen 7 5700X is the better target. Steam Deck and console players should wait for a Deck rating or the 2028 versions.

• Power supply: AMD and NVIDIA list 450 W for the RX 9060 XT 16GB, 550 W for the RTX 5060, 650 W for the RX 9070 GRE and RTX 5070, and 750 W for the RX 9070 XT.
• Old motherboards: the RTX 5060 uses eight PCIe lanes, so a PCIe 3.0 board gives it a quarter of its PCIe 5.0 link bandwidth. The RX 9060 XT 16GB uses all 16 lanes.
• Consumer Rights Act 2015: a faulty card can be rejected for a full refund within 30 days, and the claim sits with the retailer, not the manufacturer (Which?).

Verdict

The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GRE Gaming OCat £529.99 is the best graphics card for WARDOGS: 86.6 fps at 1440p Ultra in Tom's Hardware's average, 48.8% above the recommended RTX 3070. The ASUS Dual Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB at £439.99 suits smaller power supplies, the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 5060 OC at £374.99 is the cheapest way in, and the ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC at £668.99 suits 4K. Pair any of them with a Ryzen 7 5700X-class processor or better. Another 2026 spec change is covered in Minecraft PC requirements 2026.