Serious Sam: The Third Encounter PC requirements: the minimum specs and which GPUs pass

Croteam announced Serious Sam: The Third Encounter today, October 21, and its Steam page already lists minimum PC requirements. That is good news for modest machines: it asks for a GTX 970 or a GTX 1050 and 8 GB of RAM. The game picks up the story right where The Second Encounter ended, “24 years after,” as the official teaser puts it. You can play it solo or in co-op with friends. It is still in early development, it has no release date, and Steam does not list recommended requirements yet.

Serious Sam: The Third Encounter PC requirements

These are the requirements Croteam posted on Steam:

It also requires DirectX 11. Steam lists Windows only, with no Mac or Linux version.

Which GPUs run it

Every popular GPU we checked clears the minimum, including the most basic ones on our list: the GTX 1650, the RX 580 and the GTX 1060 6GB. Everything above them also clears it, from an RTX 3060 up to an RX 9070 XT.

What we cannot tell you yet is how it will run on high settings. canirun grades are measured against the recommended requirement, and Croteam has not published one. For now we can answer one question: whether your GPU meets the studio’s minimum. For every card on the list, the answer is yes.

Watch two details in the minimum. The first is VRAM: it asks for 3 GB. The second is memory: the minimum is 8 GB, but our grades assume 16 GB. If you are on a budget machine, also check other games that run on low-end PCs.

What about Steam Deck?

Valve has not rated it yet, which makes sense for a game with no release date. Our spec-based estimate puts it at C. That is only an estimate built from the published requirements, not a real test on the handheld. We will revisit it on the game’s Steam Deck page once there is more data.

Can your PC run Serious Sam: The Third Encounter?

Compare your rig against the new entry and the two earlier Serious Sam games in our catalog:

Game	Rec. GPU score	Rec. RAM	Min. RAM	Your PC
Serious Sam: The Third Encounter	—	—	8 GB	?
Serious Sam 4	14,300	16 GB	8 GB	?
Serious Sam 3: BFE	1,900	4 GB	1 GB	?

To see how your detected hardware grades, open the full game page.

Sources: Serious Sam: The Third Encounter on Steam, Official teaser on Steam