System and GPU Requirements for Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) Developers

The purpose of this article is to dive deep into the system and GPU requirements for Unreal Engine 5 (UE5).

Topics Discussed:

• Unreal Engine 5 System Requirements
• Will My Processor Handle Unreal Engine 5?
• Will My Graphics Card Handle Unreal Engine 5 Game Development?

Unreal Engine 5 System Requirements

This article is meant as an analysis for developers, not gamers. You should read more here if you’re a gamer and want to see if your graphics card will handle UE5 games. The system requirements for Unreal Engine 5 can be found here and below:

• Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit version 1909 revision .1350 or higher, or versions 2004 and 20H2 revision .789 or higher.
• Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD, 2.5 GHz or faster.
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics Card: DirectX 11 or 12 compatible graphics card
• RHI Version: DirectX 11 (Latest Drivers), DirectX 12 (Latest Drivers), Vulkan: AMD (21.11.3+) and NVIDIA (496.76+)

The system requirements for Unreal Engine 5 that are listed are a little vague compared to what we see for game system requirements. Therefore, we will go through a list of compatible processors, and graphics cards that would meet these requirements. Before diving into that, let’s review a typical system at Epic that a game developer would use:

• Windows 10 64-bit (Version 20H2)
• 64 GB RAM
• 256 GB SSD (OS Drive)
• 2 TB SSD (Data Drive)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
• Xoreax Incredibuild (Dev Tools Package)
• Six-Core Xeon E5-2643 @ 3.4GHz

This system spec is very beefy. It has 64 GB of RAM, a separate SSD drive just for the operating system, a GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, and six-core Xeon processor at 3.4Ghz. By separating the OS drive from the data drive, they are maximizing IOPS (input/output per second) for game rendering. That is also the purpose behind the 64GB of RAM, high-end graphics card, and high-end workstation-grade processor. Most of this hardware is to help the developer with faster rendering times. The GeForce RTX 2000 series graphics card is used for performance and has the technology for raytracing.

Will My Processor Handle Unreal Engine 5 (UE5)?

The system requirements call for a quad-core Intel or AMD, 2.5 GHz or faster. There are a lot of processors on the market and it’s pretty easy to tell if they would meet this requirement. The important thing to look for is how it will compare to the Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2643 listed from the Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) system requirements list. 10th generation or later i5 and i7 processors are good comparable processors to the Xeon E5-2643. Any of the processors listed below will have good performance for Unreal Engine 5 (UE5):

• 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processors Product Specifications
• 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processors Product Specifications
• 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i9 Processors Product Specifications
• 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processors Product Specifications
• 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processors Product Specifications
• 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i9 Processors Product Specifications
• 11th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processors Product Specifications
• 11th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processors Product Specifications
• 11th Generation Intel® Core™ i9 Processors Product Specifications
• 12th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processors Product Specifications
• 12th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processors Product Specifications
• 12th Generation Intel® Core™ i9 Processors Product Specifications

It is only when you get into 8th generation processors that you start to see below 4 cores. These processors are denoted with i5-8XXX, such as the Intel® Core™ i5-8310Y Processor. This processor only has two cores, so it would not work well with developing games on Unreal Engine 5.

Will My Graphics Card Handle Unreal Engine 5?