ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE on PC: hardware ray tracing, SSD and 32 GB of RAM

ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE releases today, October 1, on Steam at $69.99, and on PC it is not a game for every machine. Bandai Namco requires a graphics card with hardware ray tracing, an SSD, 150 GB of free space and Windows 11, and the recommended spec raises RAM to 32 GB. If you are coming from ACE COMBAT 7, the jump is big.

ACE COMBAT 8 PC requirements

These are the official requirements from the Steam page:

The minimum targets 1920×1080 with upscaling at 30 fps on Low; the recommended targets 1920×1080 with upscaling at 60 fps on Medium. Bandai Namco warns that framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes. On top of hardware ray tracing, the game needs DirectX 12 with Shader Model 6.6 or higher.

Which graphics cards make the cut

We checked the requirements against the most common GPUs. Grades are measured against the recommended requirement and assume 16 GB of RAM:

• RTX 4070: clears the recommended and grades B (Solid).
• RTX 3060 and RX 7600: clear the minimum but not the recommended, grading D (Struggles). The game will run, but with little headroom.
• RTX 3050: does not clear the minimum in our data.

Watch your memory: the recommended asks for 32 GB, and our grades assume 16 GB, which is exactly the game’s minimum RAM.

To put the series jump in perspective: ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN has a recommended spec of 8 GB of RAM and a GPU score of 9,500 in our benchmark. ACE COMBAT 8 asks for 32 GB and 21,750. In concrete terms, the GTX 1060 6GB scores 9,500, the same as ACE COMBAT 7’s recommended, and does not clear the new game’s minimum.

Steam Deck and launch notices

The Steam Deck news is not good: it does not clear the minimum on canirun and grades F, and Valve has not rated it yet. The game has no Mac or Linux version either. The details are on the game’s Steam Deck page.

Before you play, two official notices from the past few days:

• Crashes: Bandai Namco has reported unexpected crashes in the Steam version. While it investigates, it recommends using the graphics driver version the game shows at launch, keeping 16 GB or more free on the SSD where the game is installed, and making sure Windows virtual memory is enabled.
• Flight sticks: some configuration options that ACE COMBAT 7 offered for certain devices are not available in ACE COMBAT 8. The team says it is working on improvements for HOTAS players, though it may take time.

Can your PC run ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE?

Here is how your PC grades against ACE COMBAT 8 and ACE COMBAT 7, so you can see the difference on your own GPU:

Game	Rec. GPU score	Rec. RAM	Min. RAM	Your PC
ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE	21,750	32 GB	16 GB	?
ACE COMBAT™ 7: SKIES UNKNOWN	9,500	8 GB	4 GB	?

The full game page shows your grade with your detected GPU and RAM.

Sources: ACE COMBAT 8 on Steam, Product Notice, Flight Stick Support Update