Cities: Skylines 2 system requirements - Minimum and recommended PC specs
Performance issues at launch point to high specs needed.
Can you believe it's been eight years since the original Cities: Skylines made its way to digital store shelves?
The newest instalment in the city building simulator is now rolling out globally on PC, so naturally players want to know what system requirements are necessary to run the game.
Developed by Colossal Order, the city builder will continue to run on Unity, and was set to arrive on consoles simultaneously before being delayed a month out from release.
The reasoning was down to performance, enabling time to improve Cities: Skylines 2 on Windows - and yet, there still seem to be some prevalent issues.
It's by no stretch of the imagination unplayable, but early reviews indicate technical problems are letting down its core component.
This looks to be totally dependent on what build you are running these days, though, so let's take a look at the Cities: Skylines 2 system requirements, including the minimum and recommended PC specs.
Cities: Skylines 2 system requirements for PC explained
Looking at both the minimum and recommended specs for Cities: Skylines 2 (see below), it's clear that any mid-range builds are likely to struggle on launch.
The developer has been forthcoming with not hitting its intended target to help make the game run as smoothly as possible, and this is only at 1080p. As a result, frame rate will be the one to take the hit most.
A note regarding performance was provided by developer Colossal Order ahead of launch to temper expectations.
"Cities: Skylines II is a next-gen title, and naturally, it demands certain hardware requirements. With that said, while our team has worked tirelessly to deliver the best experience possible, we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted," it reads.
"We will continually improve the game over the coming months, but we also want to manage expectations on performance for the coming release," the studio added.
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Cities: Skylines 2 minimum requirements
See below for the official Cities: Skylines 2 minimum spec requirements set out by developer Colossal Order:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 X / Intel Core i7-6700K
- RAM: 8GB
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 480 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
- Storage: 60GB available space
- OS: Windows 10
Cities: Skylines 2 recommended specs
See below for the official Cities: Skylines 2 recommended spec requirements set out by developer Colossal Order:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X / Intel Core i5-12600K
- RAM: 16GB
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT / Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
- Storage: 60GB available space
- OS: Windows 10 or Windows 11
Cities: Skylines 2 is now available on Windows PC, with a next-gen console release set for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S scheduled for 2024.
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Authors
Matt Poskitt is a freelance journalist who specialises in arts and culture – be that movies, TV, video games, tech or otherwise. Matt headed up the games and entertainment section at T3 (Future Publishing), alongside being found across The Guardian, CNET, PC Gamer Mag, GamesIndustry.biz, Insider, iNews, IGN, TechRadar, PC Gamer Mag, NME and many more.
