epic games fortnite windows 10 hardware prerequisites

Alright, so I wanted to get Fortnite running on my Windows 10 machine. It’s not exactly a top-of-the-line rig, but I figured it should be able to handle it. First, I checked the specs. Epic Games has a page that lists the minimum and recommended requirements, so I started there.

It turns out, you need at least a Core i3-3225 processor. Mine is a bit older, an i5, but it’s only a 2.8GHz. And the recommended one is Core i5-7300U 3.5 GHz, or AMD Ryzen 3 3300U, or even better, something like an Intel Core i7-8700. I’m kinda borderline, I guess.

Next, I checked my RAM. The bare minimum is 8GB, which I have, but I know that more is always better, right? So I’m good there, I thought. I didn’t upgrade immediately, but I made a mental note to maybe do that later.

Then there’s the graphics card. You need at least an Intel HD 4000, which is pretty basic. But to really enjoy the game, they say you should have an NVIDIA GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870. Well, I have some old AMD thing that I pulled out of another machine, so it’s probably around that level. Not great, but it could work.

And the operating system? Gotta be Windows 10/11 64-bit. I already upgraded to Windows 10 a while back, so that’s a check.

epic games fortnite windows 10 hardware prerequisites

For storage space, I found you need at least 30GB of free disk space. I checked, and I had plenty. Like, way more than that. So, no problem there, I thought.

After doing all this checking, I thought I should be good to go. I downloaded the Epic Games Launcher, installed Fortnite, and fired it up.

It ran, which was a good start. But boy, was it choppy. The frame rate was all over the place, and it just wasn’t a smooth experience at all. I tried lowering the graphics settings, but it didn’t help much. I guess my old rig was struggling.

My Realization and Solution

My CPU was probably bottlenecking me. It was just below the recommended specs, and I bet Fortnite really wants a faster processor.
Maybe 8GB of RAM isn’t enough these days. Even though it’s the minimum, more RAM could help with multitasking and keeping things smooth.
My graphics card was probably barely cutting it. It was old, and Fortnite is a pretty demanding game.

So, it looks like I have some upgrading to do. I’m thinking of getting a new processor first, maybe an i7. And I’ll probably bump up my RAM to 16GB while I’m at it. A new graphics card would be nice, but that can wait a bit. It’s a journey, right? And I am sure that I can enjoy this game at last!