Two days before the beta opens, Activision put out the readiness post: how to download it, what your PC needs, and what changes about launching the game. Most of it is housekeeping. The part that matters is that the PC bar is now published in full, and one item on it will stop you playing online entirely rather than just running badly.
Confirmed. Every specification, time and platform behavior here is published by Activision on the official Call of Duty blog and its own support article, and IGN independently reported the restart and standalone install changes from the same post. Activision also notes these specifications apply to the beta and may differ from the full game at launch, so do not treat them as the October bar.
The PC bar
- Minimum Windows 10 64 bit, Ryzen 5 1600 or Core i5-8400, 12GB RAM, Radeon RX 470 or GeForce GTX 970 and 1060 or Intel Arc A580, 3GB video memory. An SSD is required, not recommended.
- Recommended Windows 11 64 bit, Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700, 16GB RAM, Radeon RX 6700 XT or GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or Intel Arc B580, 8GB video memory.
- Drivers Activision names the versions it wants: NVIDIA 610.47, AMD 26.7.1, Intel 32.0.101.8861. Check yours before Friday rather than during the queue.
- TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot both required. Activision states plainly that without them you will not be able to play the beta online. The Secure Attestation Wizard is the way to check in advance.
- Shader Preloading new on PC. Battle.net gets it from install, Steam still needs one compile on first boot and gets the benefit from the weekend two update onward.
- Separate install the beta downloads on its own, outside the main Call of Duty experience, so it will not arrive as part of a normal update. You have to go and get it.
Why Hardcore SnD cares
None of this is glamorous and all of it is the difference between a full stack at 11 AM PT and four players plus a group chat. Hardcore Search and Destroy is decided in the first two seconds of a peek, which is exactly the window a shader compile hitch lands in, and a one-life mode gives you nothing back when the frame you needed arrived late.
- Roster availability is now a hardware question TPM and Secure Boot are a binary. Anyone on your roster who has not checked is a coin flip on whether they play at all, and Friday morning is the wrong time to find out.
- Stutter costs rounds, not just comfort shader preloading is aimed at the opening-match hitching that has cost duels in every recent Call of Duty. If it works, your first map is worth as much as your fourth.
- Fewer forced restarts means fewer broken sessions data patches without a restart on PC and PlayStation 5 keep a scrim block intact. Xbox Series and Switch 2 still get the restart during the beta.
- Download early preload opens 9 AM PT on August 20, a full day before the beta. The separate install means it will not happen quietly in the background for you.
What is not confirmed yet
These are beta specifications. Activision explicitly notes they may differ from the full game at launch, so do not buy hardware against them. There is still no Hardcore playlist named anywhere in the official beta material, and no published mode matrix from Activision itself. Infinity Ward has promised beta patch notes covering gameplay adjustments, which is the page to watch if tuning moves mid-weekend.
Run the Secure Attestation Wizard, update your GPU driver to the named version, confirm the beta is on an SSD, and start the preload at 9 AM PT on August 20. Four jobs, all doable tonight, and every one of them is a reason someone misses the first session if it is skipped.
Sources to review
- Call of Duty: NEXT and Modern Warfare 4: Early Intel, PC Specs, Pre-loading, and More (Call of Duty)
- Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and Secure Boot for Call of Duty (Activision Support)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Beta Will Fix Issues That Have Plagued the Series for the Better Part of a Decade (IGN)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Beta (Call of Duty)