By I-Hsien Sherwood | i.sherwood@latinospost.com (staff@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Feb 22, 2013 06:23 PM EST

The March 5th release of Tomb Raider is fast approaching, but can your PC handle the strain, or should you start upgrading it now?

For those who can afford a nice rig, the game promises to be beautiful. "Tomb Raider for PCs has been extensively optimized to heighten the gameplay experience; with the goal of taking advantage of the PC platform. Enhanced features include: full integration with Steamworks, increased detail tessellation, improved SSAO and post-filter effects, and very high resolution textures, shadows and cloths," said game publisher Square Enix and game developer Crystal Dynamics in a press release.

"Additionally, for PCs that are capable, the game will support AMD HD3D and AMD Eyefinity technologies, the latter of which allows up to six simultaneous displays off a single graphics card."

The recommended system requirements for PC:

Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
DirectX 11 graphics card with 1GB Video RAM:
-  AMD Radeon HD 4870
-  nVidia GTX 480
Quad core CPU:
- AMD Phenom II X2 565
- Intel Core i5-750
4GB Memory

The high-end graphics include:

"Very high resolution textures with up to 16x the amount of data
Detail Tessellation to enhance the detail on many surfaces in the game
Higher quality shadows
High quality bokeh depth of field with near-blur
Tessellation algorithms used to smooth out geometry
Improved cloth, SSAO, quality wetness effects, and post-filter effects.
LOD quality is adjustable for better quality on higher-end machines."

The minimum system requirements for PC:

Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Vista,7,8 (32bit/64bit)
DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM:
- AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT
- nVidia 8600
Dual core CPU:
- AMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 Ghz (4050+)
- Intel Core2 Duo 1.86 Ghz (E6300)
1GB Memory (2GB on Vista)

The low-end graphics include:

"Support for Windows XP.
A lot of scalability options to suit a range of machines."

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