It's no secret that AMD Polaris cards are old tech that barely keeps up with the latest games. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that the Polaris GPUs can't run the 2023 action RPG Forspoken.

Released on PlayStation 5 and PC a week ago, one of the requirements needed to play Forspoken on PC is the DirectX 12 feature-level 12_1 API. Although the Polaris cards support DirectX12 graphics, the antiquated Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 cards cannot handle the 12_1 specification, as noted by Reddit user xCurio.

The Radeon RX 400 series (GCN4) can only support the 12_0 feature level, which means that AMD PC owners have to upgrade to the Turing, RDNA2, and Xe-HPG architectures. Even NVIDIA's GM107 and GM108 GPUs fail to meet the requirements for Forspoken's 12_1 feature level. The minimum specs needed are a PC with an AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB card or an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB card. Both of these cards are RDNA 1 and Pascal architecture, respectively. However, the older GeForce GTX 960 and GTX 970 cards can run Forspoken, unlike their AMD counterparts.

Ultimately, this is a warning to all members of the PC Master Race. While AMD PC gamers will be kicking the air in rage over their aging GPUs, console players don't ever have to worry about minimum specs once they have the latest console version.

Owners with Polaris cards aren't missing anything, in any case. Their outdated GPUs may have actually spared them the time they would have otherwise spent playing the subpar Square Enix title.

Of course, this does suggest that Final Fantasy 16 might have similar requirements when it comes to the PC, presumably in 2024 if not later.