Specs for Apex Legends

If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard of Apex Legends, then here’s your wake-up call. While it doesn’t have the player base compared to big titles like Fortnite or PUBG, probably because it’s not available on mobile (yet?), “Ape Legs,” as at least two of us in the office like to call it, isn’t fighting this battle sitting down. In less than one week of a February release, Apex has amassed more than 25 million players—and 50 million within a month. In March, Respawn Entertainment was ready with Apex Legends Season 1 – Wild Frontier.

Those of you who are familiar with the “games as an ongoing service” kind of deal, the concept of Seasons is very straightforward. For everyone else, Seasons is a way in which developers add new content to a game, whether it be characters, items, maps, cosmetics, or whatever to keep the player base involved. With the start of Season 1, Apex will get a new legend, Octane, and a Battle Pass, which is a seasonal system that rewards players with over 100 unique items just by playing. Please note that a Battle Pass is not required to play, and users who wish to continue playing without spending money are still eligible to earn one Wild Frontier Legend Skin, five Apex Packs, and 18 Wild Frontier Stat Trackers as part of the Season 1 rewards.

Now that we’ve covered the seasonal update, new players interested in Apex are welcome to join our squad, whether you’re on Xbox, PS4, or PC. Console players get an easy pass here, since if you own the console, you’ll most likely be able to enjoy consistent 60 fps-optimized performance. The tradeoff here is that it probably won’t be as visually appealing as if you were playing on a beefy gaming computer. So, exactly what kind of specs do you need to play Apex on a PC? Below is a table from the support page:

The recommended Core™ i5-3570K is a quad-core processor, and multiple reviews have shown favorable results with multi-core CPUs (aside from dual-cores, some of which have been reported to not even being able to start the game.) Since quad-cores have been the norm and now hexa-cores are starting to take over, I’d say you’re out of the danger zone. Mid-range Intel® users should aim for a Core™ i5-8400 or a Core™ i5-8600K if you can stretch your budget a bit. The AMD equivalent is a Ryzen 5 2600 and a Ryzen 5 2600X, respectively. Players gunning for the high-end and some future-proofing can consider a Core™ i7-8700K and above or a Ryzen 7 2700X. But as we all know, the GPU takes the spotlight in gaming performance.

There isn’t much time to enjoy the environment in Apex’s fast-paced FPS action unless you decide to set up camp, which the game prevents eventually with its shrinking safety zones. Due to the competitive nature of FPS, we’re going to steer players toward benefiting from a high refresh rate monitor paired with a capable graphics card, rather than the scenic cinematic route. We’ll have options for standard 60- and higher 120 fps performance for users who want a competitive edge, without sacrificing too much eye candy (if possible).

One quick question though: at what resolution are you playing? The higher the resolution, the more demanding it becomes. The list below is for the user who wants 60 fps performance with high settings. Players who are comfortable with lowering or turning off settings to ensure frames have priority over graphical details can opt for cards a step down or so. Please note that there are additional cards not listed, since the ones given are just the minimum.

• 60 fps/1080p High – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 8GB or AMD Radeon RX 580
• 60 fps/1440p High – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 590
• 60 fps/4K High – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 / Ti or AMD Radeon VII

Advancing to the next stage, we have the 120 Hz range that’s to be paired with an equally capable monitor. Choices here get slim because there are only so many cards capable of this type of performance. We’re also leaving 4K out because GPU technology isn’t quite there yet.

• 120 fps 1080p High – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 / 2080 or AMD Radeon VII
• 120 fps 1440p High – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

Jumping up resolutions can be demanding, but the game’s Source engine is well optimized. Alongside multiple customizable graphics options, Apex should run fine on most modern systems, with some adjustments. Players who want more will have to pay the premium to enjoy higher frame rates. CPU and GPU aside, we’d still recommend 16GB of RAM for multitasking and general efficiency. To learn more about gaming PCs and building your own, check out our guide here. Who’s your current favorite legend and what’s your go-to gun in Apex?