Bioshock hardware requirements revealed

It can't come quick enough really and, with Bioshock dated to hit shelves on the 24th of August, you can be sure that at least one member of bit-tech staff (Read: Me) is marking the days on his Bioshock calendar.

No, really.

The spiritual successor to System Shock 2, which is often considered to be one of the best PC games ever, Bioshock is still in the late stages of development over at Irrational Studios.

Casting players as a stranger in the vast, art-deco isnpired underwater city of Rapture, Bioshock allows players to investigate and interact with their surroundings in a variety of ways as they try to discover just what went wrong in the ocean metropolis which was previously believed to be a paradise run by the intellectual elite.

Available for both Xbox 360 and PC, the hardware requirements will be critical in helping a lot of gamers decide which platform they want to play on. Games this gorgeous don't run on just any old PC, you know?

Handily then, 2K games has released the finalised PC specs for the game - both minimum and recommended - so that gamers can see just what level of graphical grunt their PC will need in order to render what promises to be this years masterpiece of gaming.

The specs are as follows:

Operating Systems: Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista

Minimum System Requirements:
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
System RAM: 1GB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
Hard disk space: 8GB free space

Recommended System Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
System RAM: 2GB
DX9 GPU: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
DX10 GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX Advanced HD 4.0 or EAX Advanced HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

Important Note: Game requires Internet connection for activation.

Internet connection required, aye? Is it possible that the game will somehow be linked to Steam or is there something else going on there? We'll have to wait and see.

How does your gaming PC stack up against those specs? Got the power to push the settings to the max, or will you pick up the 360 version instead and cope with less-smooth controls? Let us know in the forums.