Respawn Entertainment · 2019 · Battle Royale
Apex Legends is Respawn Entertainment’s free-to-play battle royale built on a modified Source engine, known for fast movement mechanics that reward a consistently high, stable frame rate.
Its requirements are modest by current standards, making it accessible on older hardware, though competitive players often target frame rates well above what the minimum spec can sustain.
| Requirement | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i3-6300 / AMD FX-4350 | AMD Ryzen 5 or equivalent |
| GPU | NVIDIA GTX 950 / AMD Radeon HD 7790 2GB | NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 |
| RAM | 6 GB | 8 GB |
| Storage | 75 GB | 75 GB |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 64-bit |
Source: the publisher's own officially listed system requirements (view source). Actual performance still depends on drivers, background load and in-game settings.
Want to know roughly what frame rate your own CPU and graphics card get in Apex Legends, not just whether you clear the minimum?
Check Your PC for Apex LegendsOr check every game in our list at once with Can I Run It?, or the balance of your CPU and graphics card with the Bottleneck Calculator.
Battle royale maps load dozens of players, vehicles and destructible objects into memory at once, so CPU load climbs sharply in the endgame even when the GPU still has spare headroom — this genre tends to be more CPU-sensitive in practice than its recommended GPU spec alone suggests.
The jump from 6GB to 8GB of RAM between the minimum and recommended spec is where Apex Legends stops paging textures and level data from disk mid-play — below 8GB, that shows up as short stutters and pop-in rather than a flat drop in average framerate. At roughly 75GB, plan storage for Apex Legends the same way you would for any modern title: an NVMe SSD keeps load times and texture streaming noticeably smoother than a hard drive at the same free-space total.
Apex Legends recommends 8GB of RAM; 12 of the other 15 games we cover recommend more. 2 others ask for the same amount. Its 75GB install ranks #8 of 16 by size, so 7 of the games we cover need more free space.
Games with the closest published requirements (recommended RAM, install size and minimum RAM):
| Game | Recommended RAM | Install size | Recommended GPU |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apex Legends (this page) | 8 GB | 75 GB | NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 |
| Overwatch 2 | 8 GB | 50 GB | NVIDIA GTX 1060/1650 / AMD R9 380/RX 6400 |
| Valorant | 8 GB | 25 GB | NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 / AMD Radeon R7 240 |
| Call of Duty: Warzone | 12 GB | 116 GB | NVIDIA RTX 3060 / AMD RX 6600XT / Intel Arc B580 |
The Bottleneck Calculator treats Apex Legends as one of the esports games. Here is which part would set the frame rate on 6 pairings from budget to high-end at high settings; each pairing links to its full page.
| CPU + GPU | 1080p | 1440p |
|---|---|---|
| Core i3-12100F + RTX 3060 12GB | GPU-limited | GPU-limited |
| Ryzen 5 5600 + RTX 5060 | CPU ~8% | GPU-limited |
| Core i5-12400F + RTX 5060 Ti 16GB | CPU ~13% | GPU-limited |
| Core i5-14600K + RTX 4070 Super | CPU ~8% | GPU-limited |
| Ryzen 7 7700X + RX 9070 XT | CPU ~26% | GPU-limited |
| Ryzen 7 7800X3D + RTX 5080 | CPU ~22% | GPU-limited |
Estimate Apex Legends FPS for your own CPU and GPU · Check every game against your PC · All CPU + GPU comparisons
What the parts in the table above do: CPU, GPU, RAM and SSD.
6GB is the publisher's stated minimum, meaning Apex Legends will start and run, but 8GB (the recommended figure) avoids the stuttering that comes from paging assets off your storage drive mid-session. Use our RAM calculator to check your exact total against everything else you run alongside it.
For Apex Legends specifically, the CPU tends to be the more common limiting part in practice, not just the GPU — check your exact pairing with our PC Bottleneck Calculator before assuming a GPU upgrade alone will fix low or inconsistent framerates.
Plan for at least 75GB free, not exactly 75GB — day-one patches, DLC and shader/texture caches routinely add several more gigabytes after install. Our Storage Calculator can help you plan an upgrade if you are close to full.
The publisher lists NVIDIA GTX 950 / AMD Radeon HD 7790 2GB as the minimum and NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 as the recommended graphics card for Apex Legends. To see how your own card is likely to perform at your resolution, try our FPS Calculator, and check memory needs with the GPU VRAM Calculator.
The publisher lists Windows 10 64-bit for both the minimum and recommended specs of Apex Legends.