Hardware and Software Specifications

Minimum and recommended hardware specifications and necessary software for developing with Unreal Engine.

Choose your operating system:

Windows

macOS

Linux

This page covers the hardware and software requirements for Unreal Engine 5. It also describes what is installed by the pre-requisites installer included in the Unreal Engine installer.

Recommended Hardware

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+)

Operating System

Latest MacOS Monterey

Processor

Quad-core Intel, 2.5 GHz or faster

Memory

8 GB RAM

Video Card

Metal 1.2 Compatible Graphics Card

Operating System

Ubuntu 22.04

Processor

Quad-core Intel or AMD, 2.5 GHz or faster

Memory

32 GB RAM

Video Card

NVIDIA GeForce 960 GTX or Higher with latest NVIDIA binary drivers

Video RAM

8 GB or more

RHI Version

  • Vulkan: AMD (21.11.3+) and NVIDIA (515.48+)

To get the most out of rendering features of Unreal Engine 5 such Nanite and Lumen, see the Requirements for UE5 Rendering Features section of this page.

Minimum Software Requirements

Minimum requirements for running the engine or editor are listed below.

Running the Engine

Operating System

Windows 10

DirectX Runtime

DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010)

Running the Engine

Operating System

macOS latest Monterey

Running the Engine

Operating System

Any reasonable new Linux distro from CentOS 7.x and up

Linux Kernel Version

kernel 3.x or newer

Additional Dependencies

glibc 2.17 or newer

The requirements for programmers developing with the engine are listed below.

Developing with the Engine

All 'Running the Engine' requirements (automatically installed)

Visual Studio Version

  • Visual Studio 2019 v16.11.5 or later (recommended)

  • Visual Studio 2022

iOS App Development

iTunes Version

iTunes 12 or higher

Developing with the Engine

Xcode Version

12.4

Developing with the Engine

Operating System

Ubuntu 20.04

Compiler

clang 11.0.1

Optional

IDE

Visual Studio Code, CLion, QtCreator

Software Installed by the Prerequisite Installer

The Unreal Engine includes a prerequisite installer that installs everything needed to run the editor and engine, including several DirectX components and Visual C++ redistributables. When you install Unreal Engine through the Epic Games Launcher, the Launcher automatically installs these prerequisites for you. However, you may need to run the prerequisite installer yourself if you build Unreal Engine from source, or if you need to prepare a computer with all the Unreal Engine prerequisites for a specific purpose—for example, if you are setting up a fresh computer to act as a Swarm Agent.

You can find the installer in the Engine/Extras/Redist/en-us folder under your Unreal Engine installation location.

Support for 32-bit platforms has been removed in Unreal Engine 5.

If you use Perforce to get the Unreal Engine source code, you'll also find precompiled binaries in the same Engine/Extras/Redist/en-us folder of the Perforce repository. The source for the installer is under Engine/Source/Programs/PrereqInstaller.

The following table lists the software that is installed by the prerequisite installer.

DirectX Components

Visual C++ Redists

XInput 1.3 (April 2007)

Visual C++ 2010 CRT

X3DAudio 1.7 (February 2010)

Visual C++ 2010 OpenMP library

XAudio 2.7 (June 2010)

Visual C++ 2012 CRT

D3D Compiler 4.3 (June 2010)

Visual C++ 2013 CRT

D3DCSX 4.3 (June 2010)

Visual C++ 2015 CRT

D3DX9 4.3 (June 2010)

Visual Studio 2019 redistributable

D3DX10 4.3 (June 2010)

D3DX11 4.3 (June 2010)

The most important DirectX components from that list are the XInput, X3DAudio, and XAudio dependencies. These aren't included in standard installations of DirectX (and aren't distributed with Windows by default), so they have to be installed manually or distributed with the application.

Some features of Unreal Engine that require DirectX 12, require at minimum Windows 10 version 1703 (Window Creator Update). For the best experience that supports features like Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, and Lumen when using Hardware Ray Tracing, we recommend using Windows 10 version 2004 or 20H2.

Graphics Card Drivers

We currently recommend using the latest stable releases from each card manufacturer:

Performance Notes

This list represents a typical system used at Epic, providing a reasonable guideline for developing games with Unreal Engine 5:

  • 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

If you don't have access to Xoreax Incredibuild (Dev Tools Package), we recommend compiling with a machine having 12 to 16 cores.

Requirements for UE5 Rendering Features

Some rendering features of Unreal Engine 5 have different requirements than the minimum specifications.

UE5 Feature

System Requirements

Lumen Global Illumination and Reflections

Software Ray Tracing:

  • Video cards using DirectX 11 with support for Shader Model 5

Hardware Ray Tracing:

  • Windows 10 with DirectX 12 support

  • Video cards must be NVIDIA RTX-2000 series and higher, or AMD RX-6000 series and higher

Nanite Virtualized Geometry

  • All newer version of Windows 10 (newer than version 1909.1350) and Windows 11 with support for DirectX 12 Agility SDK are supported.

    • Windows 10 version 1909 — The revision number should exceed or be equal to .1350.

    • Windows 10 version 2004 and 20H2 — The revision number should exceed or be equal to .789.

    • DirectX 12 (with Shader Model 6.6 atomics), or Vulkan (VK_KHR_shader_atomic_int64)

  • Latest Graphics Drivers

Virtual Shadow Maps

  • All newer version of Windows 10 (newer than version 1909.1350) and Windows 11 with support for DirectX 12 Agility SDK are supported.

    • Windows 10 version 1909 — The revision number should exceed or be equal to .1350.

    • Windows 10 version 2004 and 20H2 — The revision number should exceed or be equal to .789.

    • DirectX 12 (with Shader Model 6.6 atomics), or Vulkan (VK_KHR_shader_atomic_int64)

  • Latest Graphics Drivers

Temporal Super Resolution

Runs on any video card that supports Shader Model 5, but the limit of 8UAVs per shader has performance implications. Temporal Super Resolution shaders compile with 16bit types enabled on D3D12 that supports Shader Model 6.

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