A new protagonist, location and time period are all set to greet fans of the Mafia videogame franchise this October when the latest chapter is released, but before that they need to know one critical factor: is their system hardware up to the task. Thankfully a little less than a month before it hits digital shelves developers Hanger 13 and publishers 2K Games have indicated the system requirements for the game, showing how even if their games are set in the past performance requirements are rooted firmly in the now.



Showing due deference to Windows 7's continued position of dominance, Hanger 13 continue to support the now venerable Operating System, and the hardware requirements should also hold few fears for gamers. Whilst slightly more stringent on the AMD side (both in terms of CPU and GPU) minimums should be well within the capabilities of gaming systems bought within the past four years. The only potential snag will be CPU performance, especially with regards to AMD's APU range and Intel's i3-class CPUs; if you're in this group you should wait on performance feedback before even contemplating a pre-order.

When it comes to Recommended Specs meanwhile we see one of the first instances of an NVIDIA 10-series GPU on the list. Previously the GTX 970 has been the go-to recommendation thanks to its well-earned reputation as the price/performance king in its class, but that throne has been recently vacated in favour of the Pascal-based GTX 1060. Note that the R9 290X is the recommendation on AMDs side, showing just how much of a performance jump the new generation of cards has been over the old.

Just as the GTX 1060 supplanted the GTX 970 in NVIDIA's product stack, so should we expect it to replace the card in recommended specs for games the world over. And if that means we're getting premium experiences from an ostensibly mid-range card... well, who are we to complain?

Mafia III is due for release on October 7th 2016 for PC, PS4 & XBOX One.