This page covers the hardware and software requirements for Unreal Engine. 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 with the latest drivers |
Although some features have a minimum requirement of DirectX 11, we recommend DirectX 12 for most games.
DirectX11 is better for older PCs, especially laptops with integrated graphics. However, DirectX12 provides a higher frame rate, multi-core processing support, and parallel and asynchronous computing.
| Recommended Operating System | Latest MacOS 13 Ventura |
| Minimum Operating System | macOS 12.5 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 | |
|---|---|
| Recommended Operating System | Latest MacOS 13 Ventura |
| Minimum Operating System | macOS 12.5 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 |
If either Unreal Editor or installations of UE games take a very long time on startup, check that your glibc is version 2.35 or newer, as earlier versions have a slow implementation of dlopen.
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 2022 |
| iOS App Development | |
| iTunes Version | iTunes 12 or higher |
Although Visual Studio is recommended for Windows development, Unreal Engine also supports VS Code and Rider.
| Developing with the Engine | |
|---|---|
| Recommended Xcode Version | 14.1 or newer |
| Minimum Xcode Version | Xcode 14.1 |
UE 5.2 has a known compile issue with Xcode 15 [Beta]. We recommend that you avoid using it and instead use the latest Xcode 14. We are providing a fix in UE 5.2.1 to address this, and it will be available in the launcher.
Although Xcode is preferred for macOS development, Unreal Engine also supports VS Code and Rider.
| Developing with the Engine | |
|---|---|
| Operating System | Ubuntu 22.04, CentOS 7 |
| Compiler | clang 15.0.1 |
| Optional | |
| IDE | Visual Studio Code, Rider |
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) | Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 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 Unreal Engine features that require DirectX 12 also require (at minimum) Windows 10 version 1703 (Window Creator Update). For the best experience that supports features like Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, and Lumen, 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
The spec below represents a typical system used at Epic (a Lenovo P620 Content Creation Workstation, standard version). This provides a reasonable guideline for developing games with Unreal Engine 5:
• Operating System: (2h22) • Power Supply: 1000W power supply unit • RAM: 128GB DDR4-3200 • Processor: AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3975WX Processor - 128MB Cache, 3.5 GHz base / 4.2 GHz turbo, 32 Cores / 64 Threads, 280w TDP • OS Drive 1 TB M.2 NVMe3 x4 PCI-e SSD • DATA Drive 4 TB Raid Array - 2 x 2TB NVMe3 x4 PCI-e SSD in Raid 0 • GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080 - 10GB • NIC 1GBPS on-board + Intel X550-T1 10G PCI-e Ethernet adapter • TPM Compliant
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 have different requirements than the minimum specifications.
| UE5 Feature | System Requirements |
|---|---|
| Lumen Global Illumination and Reflections | Software Ray Tracing:
Hardware Ray Tracing:
To learn more see, Lumen Technical Details. |
| Nanite Virtualized Geometry |
To learn more see, Nanite Virtualized Geometry. |
| Virtual Shadow Maps |
To learn more see, Virtual Shadow Maps. |
| 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. To learn more see, Temporal Super Resolution. |
| UE5 Feature | System Requirements |
|---|---|
| Lumen Global Illumination and Reflections | Software Ray Tracing:
Hardware Ray Tracing:
To learn more see, Lumen Technical Details. |
| Nanite Virtualized Geometry |
To learn more see, Nanite Virtualized Geometry. |
| Virtual Shadow Maps |
To learn more see, Virtual Shadow Maps. |
| Temporal Super Resolution |
To learn more see, Temporal Super Resolution. There are some runtime costs to be aware of. To learn more see the Anti-aliasing Performance section of our tech blog. |
| UE5 Feature | System Requirements |
|---|---|
| Lumen Global Illumination and Reflections | Software Ray Tracing:
Hardware Ray Tracing:
To learn more see, Lumen Technical Details. |
| Nanite Virtualized Geometry |
To learn more see, Nanite Virtualized Geometry. |
| Virtual Shadow Maps |
To learn more see, Virtual Shadow Maps. |
| 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. To learn more see, Temporal Super Resolution. |