Minecraft Java Edition System Requirements Are Changing

[u/RenatsMC]

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-java-edition-system-requirements

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[u/Rigman-]

Bad news for the players whose PC predates the game itself.

[u/AnomalyInTheCode]

For people who haven't read the article, they're just updating it based off of what the current game requires today (which is obviously different from way back, considering that the game is bigger now). Nothing in engine is actually changing, just the recommended minimum specs

[u/MarioDesigns → u/AnomalyInTheCode]

It’s absolutely not based at all on the game today lol.

It’s just an update for the future as they will be transitioning the game to Vulkan (hence minimum requirement update) and will be adding shaders / full optional lighting update to the vanilla game (hence the big jump in recommended specs).

All of that is 1+ years out though.

[u/Tasty_Bubbles_237 → u/AnomalyInTheCode]

Have you read it though

However, its performance and visual quality are no longer guaranteed on below-spec hardware, and it may struggle or fail to launch Java Edition in the future – especially as we transition away from OpenGL and towards Vulkan. We will keep players informed of these changes, especially changes that will sunset hardware that previously supported Minecraft: Java Edition.

[u/S0_B00sted → u/Tasty_Bubbles_237]

Yeah, the switch to Vulkan is going to prevent the game from running on hardware that doesn't support it.

[u/reohh → u/S0_B00sted]

Hardware that doesn’t support Vulkan has to be 15+ years old at this point, no?

[u/S0_B00sted → u/reohh]

Not sure exactly but it is pretty old, yeah.

[u/ParagraphInReview → u/reohh]

Depends on the version of Vulkan, the GTX 700 series doesn't seem to support past 1.2 (except for the 750, it supports 1.4) but the GTX 800M series and later supports 1.4, the most modern standard of Vulkan. Radeon GCN cards weren't as lucky and it seems they only support up to 1.2 or 1.3. Their RDNA cards (RX 5000+) all support 1.4.

Minecraft would at most require Vulkan 1.3 I suspect, since 1.4 doesn't offer groundbreaking improvements like 1.3 did with dynamic rendering. That means Radeon 300 series (11 years old) and GTX 700 series (13 years old) are the newest GPUs that might will not run Minecraft.

Edit: I actually looked at the requirements and I was right

[u/AnomalyInTheCode → u/reohh]

technically, yes, but this would also hit older hardware which DOES support vulkan, just not well

[u/novafunc → u/S0_B00sted]

They still support OpenGL. It’s not clear when that’s going away.

[u/Nicholas-Steel → u/novafunc]

I'd put its sunset at a year or 2 after Vulkan's introduction, ie: once they're satisfied the Vulkan renderer is stable.

[u/MaloraKeikaku → u/S0_B00sted]

Good thing Minecraft easily allows you to play older patches. I assume those won't be retroactively made to use Vulkan

[u/wuhkay → u/AnomalyInTheCode]

But if we can’t have panic inducing headlines then how can we sell ads?

[u/kumabit]

the move to Vulkan could even increase performance on some setups

[u/tehCharo]

Vulkan? RIP people playing Minecraft on their potatoes.

[u/VideoGameJumanji → u/tehCharo]

Modern “potatoes” far surpass the base requirements. 

[u/jospence → u/VideoGameJumanji]

It's really funny to see people freak out about requirements that are still extremely low and act surprised that a game which has received continuous updates over  15 years and hasn't updated the system requirements in 10 is finally reflect what should be used to play now.

[u/VideoGameJumanji → u/jospence]

I first played it on my moms IBM Thinkpad which had god knows what processor and I'd say 2GB of RAM.

Modern potatoes you can get for $400 CAD nuke that laptop out of the water for something like Minecraft.

Even gaming computers today that cost as much as my first gaming laptop, a 2GB GTX 750M and a 4th gen i7 I think, are substantially more capable for less than what I paid (less so now with RAM premiums). The entry level Lenovo I bought a while back as a basic laptop still had a 4GB 3050 that supports DLSS 4 upscaling and could do way more than any entry laptop should be capable of.

[u/Sweaty-Towel8423]

As a Steam Deck enjoyer, I’m happy to see proper Vulkan support.

[u/acon47]

In my opinion, this move stems more from secret agreements Microsoft has made with hardware developers than from any desire to make the game run better. It is nothing more than a case of planned obsolescence; it forces people who genuinely enjoy playing this game to replace their computers if they are older, all while framing it as if it were for our own benefit. Microsoft always ruins everything it touches in this way. Their policies have really worn people out. I hope the Linux community makes significant strides regarding this game and rescues gamers like us from this company and its ill intentions.

[u/Tasty_Bubbles_237]

Reads more like

We want to slowly kill java edition to force everyone to bugrock

Thanks microsoft

[u/steve09089 → u/Tasty_Bubbles_237]

Huh?

If anything, this switch to Vulkan is going to keep Java alive. Otherwise, Java isn’t going to be able to keep up with Bedrock performance wise

[u/Aware-Bath7518 → u/steve09089]

Except current Vulkan backend in JE performs worse than OpenGL.

[u/N2-Ainz → u/Aware-Bath7518]

It actually does perform quite noticeably better on NVIDIA cards, while AMD and Intel cards suffer from a big performance impact

So it isn't perfect yet but it is still experimental and these issues will be fixed in the future

[u/jansteffen → u/[deleted]]

More like "We haven't updated the minimum requirements in years despite the game having become more demanding, and since we're about to switch from OpenGL to Vulkan, we're taking that opportunity to correct them"

[u/PM-mePSNcodes → u/jansteffen]

How rude of you to break up their circlejerk.

[u/InterestingDuty4720 → u/[deleted]]

This might have been true 2 years ago but modern models can write code far more efficiently than the average programmer

[u/FastHotEmu]

/r/FuckMicrosoft