The official system requirements for Apex Legends, according to its Origin store page, are as follows:

Minimum System Specifications:

• CPU: i3-6300 or FX-4350
• Graphics Card: GT 640 or HD 7730
• RAM: 6GB DDR3 1333 MHz
• Storage Space: 22GB
• DirectX: 11+
• OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Recommended System Specifications:

• CPU: i5-3570K or Ryzen 5
• Graphics Card: GTX 970 or R9 290
• RAM: 8GB DDR3 1333 MHz
• Storage Space: 22GB
• DirectX: 11+
• OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Now, the observant readers may have noticed that those specifications look quite similar to Titanfall 2's requirements, which is no surprise based on the game being built on the Source engine by the same developer as Titanfall 2 (as their very next game)! As with any competitive game, you will likely want to keep your frame rates up, at least as high as the refresh rate of your monitor, to help with your reactions. So keep in mind that these specifications are simply designed around getting in-game in the first place, even at lower frame rates and/or resolutions.

Generally speaking, Apex Legends isn't that CPU-intensive to simply play at 1080p with 60 FPS; it's more important to have a decent GPU in your system. There's plenty of examples out there of folks using older-generation CPUs like the ever-faithful i7-2600K and running the game at 60 FPS on low settings, for example. However, this changes in the higher frame rates where having multiple, highly-clocked CPU cores can help really churn out frames while guarding against performance dips.

These trends have guided our decisions for our example builds below, and this is well worth noting if you're hoping for high framerates at 1440p or 4K. Prepare yourself, and read on!

These builds are designed to provide sufficient computing power for playing Apex Legends at 60+ FPS (or 100+ FPS, where noted) at 1080p, 1440p, or 4K resolution.

There is a slight difference between performance with certain settings, based on the speed and number of players which are often in your field of view at any time (hard to quantify, but can be around 10% difference in average output).

If you're not sure what resolution you want to play at (or how the different resolutions compare to each other), then take a look at our monitor resolution explanation page. You can also see a comparison between different GPUs in our Graphics Card Comparison page. 

If you're not sure what frame rate you want to play at (or what frame rate is), then take a look at our FPS explanation page.

1080p 60 FPS [Low Settings] Apex Legends Build ($450)

1080p 60 FPS [High Settings] Apex Legends Build ($850)

1440p 60 FPS / 1080p 100 FPS [High Settings] Apex Legends Build ($1600)

4K 60 FPS / 1440p 100 FPS [High Settings] Apex Legends Build ($2900)

This section takes a close look at the graphical options in Apex Legends, and their effects on the game’s performance.

The ‘performance impact’ in each subsection below is the measured difference in average FPS between playing the game with all settings at their highest and turning only the setting in question down to the lowest (or off) while leaving all others untouched.

It is also worth pointing out that the performance impact is not necessarily perfectly additive. So if disabling one setting increases FPS by 10% and disabling another increases FPS by 10%, disabling both would not be expect to increase performance by 20%. Instead, the increase would likely be somewhere from 12-18% total.

Finally, at 1440p and 4K resolutions, turning some of these settings down or off entirely can have huge performance improvements but at the cost of significantly more noticeable drop in visual quality.

For the sake of good indicative screenshots, they were taken from the training area at 1440p (scaled down for display in this article). Performance impacts were then calculated through repeated gameplay at different areas on the map.

Anti-Aliasing

A common feature in most games these days, designed to smooth out jagged lines—yet it can be at the risk of creating a slightly blurred image.

Performance Impact: ~5-10% between None and TSAA

Drag the bar to compare Anti-Aliasing on None and TSAA.

Texture Filtering

This setting relates to how the textures are applied to 3D models. In Apex Legends, it applies to the overall sharpness of surface details (mainly because you're in first person and looking at different environment surfaces all the time). It does not impact the quality of the textures themselves.

Performance Impact: ~4-8% between Bilinear and Anisotropic 16X

Drag the bar to compare Texture Filtering on Bilinear and Anisotropic 16X.

Ambient Occlusion Quality

This setting affects the shading of the game’s environments. Turning it up can add a lot of detail and depth to the game’s visuals, but at a fairly significant performance cost. This specifically impacts the render resolution used for SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion).

Performance Impact: ~10-15% between Low and High

Drag the bar to compare Ambient Occlusion Quality on Low and High.

Sun Shadow Coverage and Detail

These control the amount of shadows and other details cast to the environment from the sun. These are a generally simplistic High/Low toggle, and you can only really see the difference when there's a lot of depth to a scene. For instance, on Low, various objects in the distance will not cast shadows for a performance boost.

Performance Impact: ~5-15% between Low and High (environment-dependent)

Drag the bar to compare Sun Shadow Coverage and Detail on Low and High.

Volumetric Lighting

Designed to add more realistic-looking lighting, this setting controls how the sun beams interact with materials in the world, essentially simulating light scattering in the air. Like with the shadow setting above, the impact of this setting varies hugely depending on environment.

Performance Impact: ~5-10% between Disabled and Enabled (environment-dependent)

Drag the bar to compare Volumetric Lighting Disabled and Enabled.

Model Detail

This is pretty self-explanatory; it impacts the detail of all the models in the game, both objects in the world and the legends themselves.

Performance Impact: ~4-8% between Low and High (environement-dependent, player-count-dependent)

Drag the bar to compare Model Detail on Low and High.

Effects Detail

This was the one setting that was a little too hard to get a comparison shot for; in essence, it's the detail level of every flashy effect in the game. Heals, shields, explosions... you name it! Going from High to Low results in lower quality effects being used.

Note: there is currently an issue with grenade explosions causing frame drops, but as this is a bug (not a feature) and that impact drop is not included in the performance assessment below.

Performance Impact: ~2-5% between Low and High

Impact Marks

This controls where (and how many) impact marks show up on the environment. In a 1-v-1 encounter, this isn't overly noticeable. If you get into a larger group fire fight, however, this can become very noticeable.

Performance Impact: ~4-8% between Disabled and High (player-count-dependent)

Drag the bar to compare Impact Marks Disabled and on High.

If your computer can achieve a steady 60 FPS with all the settings turned up at your desired resolution, then we recommend keeping things as they are.

However, if you’re not reaching 60 FPS, or if you have a specialized monitor with a higher refresh rate and want to get even better performance, there are certain settings you can lower in Apex Legends to improve your framerate without sacrificing too much in the way of visuals.

Unfortunately, as we said above the image sliders, lowering multiple settings will not have a straightforward cumulative effect on framerate: if dropping one setting gives 10% improvement, and dropping another gives 10%, lowering both will not give 20%, but possibly between 12-18%.

Improve FPS considerably with little to no impact on visuals

• Turn off Impact Marks.
• Turn Model Detail down.

Improve FPS by larger amounts with moderate impact to visuals

• Turn down Effects Detail.
• Turn down Sun Shadow Coverage and Detail.

Last Resorts

If doing all of the steps above still does not achieve your desired framerate, try some of the following:

• Turn down/off Anti-Aliasing.
• Turn down Ambient Occlusion Quality.
• Turn down Volumetric Lighting
• Very last resort: Turn any and all settings to Low or Off.

If you try all of the above and still can’t run the game as smoothly as you would like, you may need to upgrade your hardware.

If you cannot tell by this point, the game performance is a bit of a tale of two halves. On the one hand, playing the game at 1080p isn't so bad and, looking at the FPS numbers folks are getting, that resolution seems to be what Respawn focused their launch performance on. However, jump up into either 1440p (or 4K especially) and suddenly you're needing larger and larger builds in order to handle the game. It's possible that Respawn will improve this as time goes on, at which point we will ensure that this guide is updated accordingly.

Thankfully, there’s a whole host of options for players to customize their settings specifically to their needs. And the best part is there’s still new players joining all the time, so now’s the best time to jump on in and starting to learn how to play!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below, or email us at contact@logicalincrements.com.

Chris is a contributing writer for Logical Increments, and has worked in the gaming and technology industries as a community manager for many years, as well as a live streamer. He has been building PC's for over 11 years.

When Chris is not here creating builds and guides, he can be found at University, studying for a BSc in Video Production as he makes the transition over to the film industry from gaming. You can read more about his journey on his website.

Logical Increments helps more than 2 million PC builders each year with hardware recommendations for any budget.

If you want to see our build recommendations for general purpose gaming PCs, check them out!

1. Far too many hours playing on my own PC build for comparisons - i7-8700K (5GHz), GTX 1080 Ti, 32GB DDR4 3000MHz
2. RX 560, RX 570, RX 580 Benchmarks
3. RX 570 with i5-8400, i3-8100 Benchmarks
4. RX 560 vs. GTX 1050 with R5 2400G Benchmarks
5. GTX 1660 Benchmarks
6. RTX 2070 with R7 2700X Benchmarks
7. RTX 2070 with i7-8700K Benchmarks