Let’s talk about Unreal Engine 5 and graphics cards. There is a lot of uncertainty out there on what you can and what you cannot play based on the graphics cards you have in your PC. Several newer games out there, like Far Cry 6, are listing minimum PC requirements to have graphics cards like the NVIDIA GTX 960. While these lower end graphics cards make games playable, is it actually realistic for games using Unreal Engine 5?
That will depend on a lot of factors. As mentioned in a previous article, “Will My Graphics Card Handle Unreal Engine 5?”, we learned that we need to depend on games to understand their specific requirements. It will be unique to the game. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, which is to date the only Unreal Engine 5 game with system requirements announced listed their graphics card requirements:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s minimum requirements: Graphics Card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s recommended requirements: Graphics Card: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8GB / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
When we look at the minimum system requirements, we see two graphics cards:
- AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Right there, we know that the NVIDIA GTX 960 won’t meet the minimum specifications of a game using Unreal Engine 5.
Here are the specs GEFORCE GTX 960 compared to a GTX 1060 6GB
| GEFORCE GTX 960 | GTX 1060 6 GB | |
| CUDA Cores | 1024 | 1280 |
| Base Clock | 1127 MHz | 1506 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1178 | 1708 |
| Memory Clock | 7 Gbps | 8 Gbps |
| Standard Memory Config | 2 GB | 6 GB |
| Memory Interface | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
The AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB has the following features:
- Compute Units: 36
- Base Frequency: 1257 MHz
- Memory Speed: 8 Gbps
- Max Memory Size: 8 GB
- GDDR5
Comparing the minimum specifications to the recommended specifications, we can see a big difference from the minimum specs:
| GTX 1080 Ti 11GB | GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8GB | |
| CUDA Cores | 3584 | 2560 |
| Base Clock | 1471 | 1610 |
| Boost Clock | 1582 | 1770 |
| Memory Clock | 11 Gbps | 8 Gbps |
| Standard Memory Config | 11 GB | 8 GB |
| Memory Interface | GDDR5X | GDDR6 |
When thinking about the graphics card, you also have to consider the resolution and frames per second (FPS) you would like to have while gaming. If you’re typically used to 1440p resolution and high frames per second, you require higher performance from your graphics card. If you would like 4K resolution, even more performance is required.
Having a game’s minimum requirements for a graphics card will likely leave you stuck on 1080p at lower frames per second and the lowest possible graphics settings. Anything less, like the GeForce GTX 960 depicted above, would not be playable with a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.2: Heart of Chernobyl, which is based on Unreal Engine 5.