The minimum and recommended system requirements for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, explained.
Can your PC run PUBG? That question is easy to answer, and the good news is that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has surprisingly humble PC system requirements, at least for minimum performance. But what are the PUBG system requirements for playing at 60 fps? What kind of CPU and graphics card do you need to ensure the smooth performance you'll need to bag those chicken dinners? We can help you figure that out.
Below, you'll find the minimum PUBG system requirements as well as our own recommended system specs. If you really want to dial in your performance, check out our guide to the best PUBG settings for tips on optimizing your framerate. We've updated the guide with full retesting using the retail game on the Vikendi map, so the results are as up to date as possible. You can also watch our performance analysis to see benchmarks of Battlegrounds across all sorts of hardware:
PUBG minimum system requirements
Here's what you need to run PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on your PC, according to developer PUBG Corp. Note that these specs are slightly higher than they used to be: a Core i3-4340 has been bumped to a Core i5-4430, the former 6 GB RAM suggestion is now 8 GB, and instead of a GTX 660 the min spec now lists a GTX 960.
OS: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10
Processor: Intel Core i5-4430 / AMD FX-6300
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 2GB / AMD Radeon R7 370 2GB
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 30 GB available space
Let's dig into the old and new minimum specs a bit. The previously recommended Intel Core i3-4340 is a dual-core CPU from 2013, running at 3.6GHz. Battlegrounds can run on a lower-end CPU without four cores, at least for bare minimum performance. But our detailed performance analysis showed us that PUBG can be quite CPU limited, so that really is a minimum requirement. The new min spec of an Intel Core i5-4430 is more reasonable.
The old graphics requirement is similarly basic: the GTX 660 was released in 2012, and is hardly a powerful graphics card for modern games. Even at minimum settings, you may struggle to run Battlegrounds at 30 fps with one. The new GTX 960 minimum is again a little more honest if we're not assuming 'minimum' means 'hardly runs at 30 fps.'
PUBG recommended system requirements
Minimum settings are never the ideal way to play a game, and PUBG is no exception. Here's the kind of hardware we'd actually recommend playing Battlegrounds on.
OS: 64-bit Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5-1600 / Intel Core i5-7600K
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB or better
(DirectX, Internet connection and storage requirements don't change)
While PUBG will run just fine on Windows 7, at this point it's an old OS no longer being updated. Windows 10 isn't perfect, but it offers better performance and fixes most of Windows 8's missteps.
As far as your CPU goes, modest parts like AMD's Ryzen 5 or Intel's latest Core i5 will be more than sufficient, and in testing with the retail version even 4-core/4-thread Core i3-8100 and Ryzen 3 1300X ran the game well. If you're doing other stuff like livestreaming, however, you'll want to keep some extra cores handy.
Also worth noting is that dual-core CPUs (Celeron/Pentium, and earlier Core i3) may struggle, particularly with minimum framerates that are likely to crop up in the games' most demanding moments. There you'll see more of a performance dip than you would with a quad-core CPU.
Now for the graphics card. What will it take to run Battlegrounds at 60 fps or better at 1080p? According to our performance analysis, the 1060 3GB is powerful enough to run PUBG at an average 60 fps at 1080p Ultra settings, while dropping as low as 39 fps in its most intense moments. At 1080p medium, though, it averages over 100 fps and should never drop below 60.
The previous-generation GTX 970 isn't too far off the pace of the GTX 1060 3GB, but if you're shooting for 60 fps with a more entry level graphics card, expect to drop the settings down to low to achieve that framerate. PUBG is still in active development, despite leaving Early Access, though we don't expect performance to change as much going forward. Regardless, the GTX 1060 3GB and 6GB deliver a great value for your dollar.
AMD's GPUs are also good, though often a bit behind the equivalently priced Nvidia GPUs. Earlier versions of PUBG favored Nvidia more, but the retail release with the latest drivers shows the RX 570/580 and Vega cards mostly on par with the GTX 1060/1070/1070 Ti.
Something else to note is that the 144fps framerate cap has been removed, which opens the doors to higher framerates and advantages for those with better hardware. We're not going to say everyone should rush out and upgrade their GPUs and monitors, but if you've played on a 144Hz display with a sufficiently potent GPU (like GTX 1070 / RX Vega 56 or above), there's a very different feel to the game. Fast hardware is no substitute for skill, but there's a good reason esports pros almost universally run on 144Hz and higher refresh rate displays these days.
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