As Battlefield 4 Beta on October 1st draws closer, DICE has revealed the system requirements for the game.

Minimum:

OS:                               Windows Vista SP2 32-bit (With KB971512 update)
Processor:                     AMD Althon X2 2.8 GHz
                                    Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or
Memory:                        4 GB
Graphics card:               AMD Radeon HD 3870
                                    Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
Graphics memory:          512 MB
Hard drive:                    30 GB

Recommended:

OS:                              Windows 8 64-bit
Processor:                    AMD Six-Core CPU
                                   Intel Quad-Core CPU
Memory:                       8 GB
Graphics card:              AMD Radeon HD 7870
                                   Nvidia GeForce GTX 660
Graphics memory:         3 GB
Hard drive:                   30 GB

At a first glance there is little difference from Battlefirled 3's system requirements, so if your PC has not been struggling with it at the lowest settings, then you should be able to play BF4 on no problem. Still, there are some changes in the minimal settings that are not very arbitrary.

30 GB space requirement should mean more in-game detail compared to the 10 GB base install of BF3 and might be more inconvenient for people who want to install the game on an SSD. 32-bit Windows is still supported, but as 4 GB is the system limit on RAM usage in such cases, do not expect the best performance even if other parts of your system are very powerful.

Judging by BF3 performance, old dual core CPUs in the minimum requirements should handle 30 FPS, but will not be enough for 60 FPS. Finally, the cryptic KB971512 update is specifically related to the graphics updates and addition of DirectX 11 support to Windows Vista.

On the recommended side things are somewhat clearer. Windows 8 is recommended due to the better DirectX 11.1 support and CPU optimisation it brings. Intel Quad-cores are quite obvious, while on AMD side this should mean Phenom X6 and higher end FX CPUs which are advertised as 8-core by AMD.

The use of mobile 8-core CPUs in next-gen consoles should mean better multithreading support in BF4 and other future multiplatform games. Both recommended GPUs are ~20% faster than the PS4's GPU and are more popular in 2 GB configurations. However, a 3 GB version of the GTX 660 is preferable due to its internal configuration, while HD 7870 can only be found in 2 GB or 4 GB versions.