Will My Graphics Card Handle Unreal Engine 5 (UE5)?

Gamers want to know if their current graphics card will meet the system requirements of upcoming games that run Unreal Engine 5. Last week you may have seen Unreal Engine’s website for the debut of the “Introducing ‘The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience‘”. You may have started to think, “I wonder if my graphics card can support upcoming game titles with Unreal Engine 5 (UE5)?”.

So how can you rest assured that your graphics card will support games using Unreal Engine 5? We need to look at current games that have been announced with system requirements, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.  

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 

At the time of this article (December, 2021) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is the only game that has been announced for Unreal Engine 5 that has an official system requirements statement.  

There is good news and bad news about the minimum requirements for this brand-new game on Unreal Engine 5.  

The bad news is that according to the Steam Hardware and Software Survey: November 2021, the highest percentage of gamers using Steam have the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti ranks 3^rd on the list and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 ranks 5^th on the list. That means that a high percentage of players of Unreal Engine 5 games will be logging on using the minimum system requirements. Some won’t even be able to play at all.  

Future game releases in 2023 and 2024 will likely continue to push the limits and increase the minimum system requirements. This could push a large population out of being able to play new releases. Recommended system requirements will also increase. This will push gamers who have a good experience today down to the minimum system requirements category.

The good news is that there is a high percentage of players that will at least be able to play Unreal Engine 5 games using minimum requirements. On that same survey, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 ranks 2^nd, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 ranks 4^th. This means that there will be a fair population of players who will be able to play Unreal Engine 5 games slightly above minimum requirements, but still not at the recommended requirements.  

That being said, the GTX 1060-1070 series was launched from 2016-2017. That means if you have those GPUs today, you have gotten a good 4-6 years of gaming from them. Now, it’s time to upgrade. 

Isn’t this how it is supposed to go, though? Gaming pushes the limits of technology, making us push and extend our hardware so that we can experience world’s like never before. For all the unfortunate one’s who don’t have the minimum system requirements, check out these two articles: 

• Top 5 Graphics Cards for AMD and NVIDIA in 2022 | Good Tech Master | How to | Technology | Tutorials | Helpful Guides 
• Top 5 Gaming PCs Under $1,500 in 2022 | Good Tech Master | How to | Technology | Tutorials | Helpful Guides 

See the table below to find how your specific NVIDIA GeForce graphics card ranks for Unreal Engine 5: 

Is your graphics card not on here? Mention @goodtechmaster on twitter with your graphics card and find out how yours ranks.