Call of Duty Black Ops PC Requirements - will it run on my PC?

As with most PC games the combination of processor, RAM and graphics card all combine to either make for a worthwhile gaming experience or a really depressing one. Unless you're a true gamer, most home laptops will have trouble running Black Ops to its full potential. We take a look at the official word from Treyarch and also look at the details of what you'll need to ensure Black Ops will run on your computer.

Officially TreyArch have announced that the Black Ops PC version requires:

Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750 or better
Hard disk space: 12 GB free hard drive space
Memory: 2GB RAM
Video Card: Shader 3.0 or better 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT / ATI Radeon X1950Pro or better

Lets look at those in detail:

Processor

If you're not sure what processor speeds the Intel Core2 Duo covers, they range from 1.06 GHz to 3.33 GHz. As long as you're not at the lower end of that scale you should be ok.

RAM

Considering the low price of RAM these days, get as much as you can! A 32 bit installation of Windows 7 only supports a max of 4GB RAM, where as the 64 bit version supports up to192GB (with the Ultimate version of Windows). If you're an average Windows 7 user running the Home Basic version of Windows 7, you can use up to 8GB of RAM with the 64 bit version. Windows XP does not have a 64 bit version so you're stuck with going for 4GB of RAM at best. Some laptops will not even allow you to go above 2GB anyway. For optimal performance you should be playing Black Ops on a gaming machine.

However, as long as you opt for at least 2GB of RAM, Black Ops will run ok. More RAM can help to avoid stutter, flicker, slow load times and game speed.

Video cards for Black Ops

This is where you turn Black Ops from a decent looking game to an amazing one. A decent graphics card can make Black Ops look and feel a million times better. So what should you look for..

Video cards also have RAM associated with them (and sometimes even processors). Do yourself a favour and opt for as much memory as possible to offload work from your CPU and system RAM. The RAM on video cards ranges from 128 MB to 4GB, since Treyarch recommend 256MB, this is the absolute minimum you should go for. Nvidia GeForce graphic cards are probably the best around.

Some of the best graphics cards for Black Ops are: