Riot Games · 2020 · Tactical Shooter
Valorant is Riot Games’ free-to-play tactical shooter, deliberately built to run on very modest hardware so its competitive player base isn’t gated by GPU price. Its low system requirements make it one of the easiest titles to run at high frame rates.
That’s exactly the point for a game built around split-second reaction time and consistently high frame rates over visual fidelity.
| Requirement | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i3-540 / AMD Athlon 200G | Intel Core i3-4150 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200 |
| GPU | Intel HD 4000 / AMD Radeon R5 220 | NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 / AMD Radeon R7 240 |
| RAM | 4 GB | 8 GB |
| Storage | 25 GB | 25 GB |
| OS | Windows 10/11 64-bit | Windows 10/11 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 Valorant, not just whether you clear the minimum?
Check Your PC for ValorantOr 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.
Competitive tactical shooters are deliberately light on hardware so more players can hit high, stable framerates, which means even a modest GPU clears the recommended spec — the bigger lever for competitive play is a high-refresh-rate monitor and a CPU that keeps the 1% low framerate steady during firefights.
The jump from 4GB to 8GB of RAM between the minimum and recommended spec is where Valorant 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 25GB, plan storage for Valorant 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.
Valorant recommends 8GB of RAM; 12 of the other 15 games we cover recommend more. 2 others ask for the same amount. Its 25GB install ranks #14 of 16 by size, so 13 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valorant (this page) | 8 GB | 25 GB | NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 / AMD Radeon R7 240 |
| Overwatch 2 | 8 GB | 50 GB | NVIDIA GTX 1060/1650 / AMD R9 380/RX 6400 |
| Apex Legends | 8 GB | 75 GB | NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 |
| League of Legends | 4 GB | 16 GB | NVIDIA GTX 560 / AMD Radeon HD 6950 |
The Bottleneck Calculator treats Valorant 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 5 3600 + RX 6600 | Balanced | GPU-limited |
| Ryzen 5 5600 + Arc B580 | Balanced | GPU-limited |
| Ryzen 5 7600 + RX 9060 XT 16GB | GPU-limited | GPU-limited |
| Core i5-13400F + RTX 4070 Super | CPU ~25% | GPU-limited |
| Ryzen 5 9600X + RX 9070 | CPU ~17% | GPU-limited |
| Core i7-13700K + RTX 4080 | CPU ~26% | GPU-limited |
Estimate Valorant 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.
4GB is the publisher's stated minimum, meaning Valorant 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 Valorant, the GPU is the more common limiting part at higher resolutions and settings — our PC Bottleneck Calculator breaks this down by your exact CPU and GPU pairing instead of a generic rule of thumb.
Plan for at least 25GB free, not exactly 25GB — 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 Intel HD 4000 / AMD Radeon R5 220 as the minimum and NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 / AMD Radeon R7 240 as the recommended graphics card for Valorant. 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 10/11 64-bit for both the minimum and recommended specs of Valorant.