If you fancy dropping into Olympia and becoming a battle royale champion, you'll first need to make sure your gaming PC meets the Apex Legends system requirements.
While Windows 7 64-bit is enough to overcome the Apex Legends minimum system requirements, we'd strongly recommend upgrading to a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or Windows 11. In terms of CPUs, an Intel Core i3-6300 or AMD FX-4350 or better, paired with 6GB of RAM, is enough to guarantee you a ticket to Olympia. An Nvidia GeForce GT 640 or AMD Radeon HD 7730 graphics card can get the job done, but you'd be better off going with something stronger for higher frame rates. Aside from that, the Apex Legends PC requirements also ask for 22GB free on your hard drive or SSD.
Moving up to the Apex Legends recommended system requirements, an Intel i5-3570K or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 processor with 8GB of RAM will help maintain high fps. That is, of course, providing you have an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 GPU in your system too.
Apex Legends size
The Apex Legends download size on PC requires 75GB of HD space, with an additional 3.8GB required per additional localized language. This size varies from console to console, with Apex Legends requiring 80GB of space on average on PlayStation consoles, and 60GB on Xbox - with new seasons causing this number to fluctuate.
We recommend installing the game on an SSD to ensure the best gameplay performance. So, if you need more space or want to make an upgrade, check the PCGamesN buyers guide for the best SSD for gaming or just check the latest, best prices for SSDs.
Apex Legends settings
As this is a competitive online game, you’ll want to tweak your settings to ensure maximum performance.
- Turning ambient occlusion down improves performance massively, and has the added benefit of improving long-range visibility. Turning down texture filtering, the texture streaming budget, sun shadow coverage, and volumetric lighting will also have a big impact on performance. Disabling V-sync is an essential tweak: while it reduces screen tearing, V-sync can cause an image delay, which is a disaster if the delayed image is an armed opponent.
- If you’re looking to maximise the Apex Legends frame rate, then you’ll need to remove the FPS cap. The battle royale is capped at 144fps by default, but you can change that by going into the Game Properties in the Origin Launcher and adding the line “+fps_max unlimited” into the Advanced Launch Options, under “Command line arguments”. You might also want to check the refresh rate of your monitor. If it’s only 60 Hz, you’re only going to see 60 frames, no matter how well optimised your settings are.
- Hardware-wise, Apex Legends PC has fairly manageable requirements. If you’re struggling to get good performance even with low settings, make sure that it’s not running on your integrated graphics processor. With an Nvidia card you can check this by going into your settings, clicking “Manage 3D Settings”, scrolling to Apex Legends in the Program Settings tab, and checking the dropdown option “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program”.
Apex Legends Steam
You can find Apex Legends on Steam, but it's also available via the EA Desktop app. Looking for a similar free game? Check the Valorant system requirements.
How to improve Apex Legends performance
Apex Legends is not exactly graphics heavy, but its wide open map with amazing detail does put a bit of strain on lower-end graphics cards. To reduce this strain, you can turn off some settings like adaptive supersampling, ambient occlusion quality, volumetric lighting, and dynamic spot shadows. If you're still getting bad performance then you can try lowering the sun shadow and coverage detail, effects details, ragdolls, and spot shadow detail.
Apex Legends updates and patches
The latest Apex Legends update, simply known as the Upheaval patch, introduced a brand new character: Alter, an agent of chaos with the ability to shift into the void from any surface.
Numerous maps were moved into rotation, including the Broken Moon, Kings Canyon, and World's Edge. A megaton of additional content was introduced with the Upheaval update, so make sure to read the full patch notes on the official website.
Apex Legends will run on PC system with Windows 7 64-bit and upwards.
Looking for an upgrade? Try our easy to use Apex Legends set up guides to find the best cards. Filter for Apex Legends graphics card comparison and CPU compare. We'll help you find the best deal for the right gear to run the game.
Apex Legends FPS - what frame rate can you expect?
How many FPS will I get on Apex Legends? We reference thousands of reports from PCGameBenchmark users running our FPS tracking app to tell you exactly how Apex Legends performs across a range of different settings and resolutions on the most popular PC gaming setups.
What frame rate does Apex Legends run at?
Here are the typical frame rate samples
Avg FPS | CPU | GPU | RAM |
122 | Intel Core i7-4770 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 | 32 GB |
92 | Intel Core i7-10750H | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti | 32 GB |
84 | Intel Core i5-2500K | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 | 24 GB |
70 | Intel Core i7-10750H | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER | 16 GB |
61 | Intel Core i7-7700K | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti | 16 GB |
What frame rate does Apex Legends run at? Check our FPS Calculator
Are you experiencing Apex Legends FPS drops and stutters? Want to know exactly how the game performs on your system? An FPS monitor is the first step in understanding how the parts in your gaming PC are actually performing in real-world conditions.
Download our free FPS Monitor via Overwolf to count your frame rates as you play, and test how tweaks to your settings can boost FPS and increase Apex Legends performance. Our app is compatible with hundreds of the best PC games and available now.