How to Know If Your PC Can Run a Game: CPU, GPU, RAM and VRAM Explained

'Can my PC run it?' is answered badly by most of the internet: checker sites that guess, forum posts about someone else's machine, and articles that quote frame rates nobody measured. The reliable method is slower and simpler — find out exactly what you have, read exactly what the developer asks for, and compare line by line. This guide walks through that method, using real requirement tables from games we cover as examples.

Step 1: find out what you actually have

On Windows 10 or 11, open Settings → System → About. 'Processor' names your CPU; 'Installed RAM' is your memory. For the graphics chip, press Windows key and type dxdiag, open the DirectX Diagnostic Tool and read the Display tab: 'Name' is your GPU and 'Display Memory (VRAM)' is its dedicated memory. The System tab shows your DirectX version. Write these four things down — CPU, RAM, GPU, VRAM — and you have everything a requirements table will ask about.

Two traps. Laptops often have two graphics chips — an integrated one on the processor and a dedicated one — and dxdiag may list both; the dedicated one is what matters for games. And 'Display Memory' on an integrated chip is borrowed from system RAM, not real VRAM, which we come back to below.

Step 2: understand minimum versus recommended

Minimum means the developer expects the game to start and run at reduced settings and resolution. Recommended means the hardware they had in mind for the intended experience. Neither is a performance promise, and neither tells you a frame rate. Some developers publish only a minimum; some publish more than two tiers. When a game gives a resolution with the minimum — War Thunder's official notice specifies 720p — that is the resolution the minimum is written for.

Step 3: read the CPU line

Requirements name specific processors. NTE lists a Core i7-10700 as its minimum and a Core i7-12700 as recommended; Counter-Strike 2 asks for four hardware threads at the level of a Core i5 750 or higher; Path of Exile asks for a 2.6 GHz quad-core minimum and a 3.2 GHz quad-core recommended.

Three things to compare. Generation: for Intel, the first one or two digits after the dash are the generation (a 10700 is 10th generation, a 12700 is 12th); for AMD Ryzen, the first digit of the model number is the series (a Ryzen 5 3600 is 3000-series). Core and thread count: 'four hardware threads' means a quad-core, or a dual-core with hyper-threading. Clock speed in GHz, which only compares fairly within the same generation and vendor. A newer generation at the same tier is generally faster; a higher tier in an older generation may not be. When a requirement names an exact chip, look up its core count and generation and match on those.

Step 4: read the GPU line

GPU lines name cards from each vendor at a similar level. NTE's minimum pairs a GeForce GTX 1660 with a Radeon RX 5600; Marvel Rivals pairs a GTX 1060 with an RX 580 and an Intel Arc A380; Counter-Strike 2 instead specifies a DirectX 11 card with 1 GB of memory and Shader Model 5.0.

NVIDIA and AMD names encode generation and tier. For GeForce, the first digits are the generation (GTX 10-series, 16-series, RTX 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-series) and the last two are the tier within it (a 60 is mid-range, an 80 high-end). For Radeon, the RX 5000, 6000, 7000 and 9000 series follow the same pattern with the hundreds digit as tier. The pairs a developer lists are meant to be roughly equivalent, which gives you a free calibration: if your card is a generation newer at the same tier, or the same generation at a higher tier, you clear the line. Cross-vendor comparisons beyond that are where checker sites go wrong, and where we will not guess either.

Laptop GPUs carry the same names as desktop cards but are usually slower versions; treat a laptop card as a tier below its desktop namesake unless you know otherwise.

Step 5: RAM

Memory requirements range widely across current free games: Team Fortress 2 asks for 512 MB, Dota 2 and War Thunder for 4 GB, Path of Exile and Counter-Strike 2 for 8 GB, Marvel Rivals and NTE for 16 GB, with NTE recommending 32 GB.

RAM is the easiest line to check and the most binary: below the minimum, the game will stutter or refuse to load large areas; at it, close other programs; above it, more does not help. If you are at exactly the minimum, remember that Windows and your browser use memory too.

Step 6: VRAM, and why it is a separate line

NVIDIA describes VRAM as high-speed memory located on the graphics card, part of a memory subsystem that ensures the GPU has the data it needs to process and display images smoothly. It holds textures, geometry and other assets; capacity depends on GPU architecture and memory chip densities; high resolutions generally require more of it; and some games offer optional extra-large texture packs that demand additional capacity.

The practical consequence: a GPU that is fast enough can still fall short if its VRAM is too small for the resolution and texture setting you choose, because assets then have to be reloaded from slower system memory. When a requirement specifies a card, it is implicitly specifying that card's VRAM; when it specifies an amount — Counter-Strike 2's '1 GB' — that is the floor. Integrated graphics have no dedicated VRAM and borrow system RAM, which is why they are usually below the line for any game that names a discrete card.

Step 7: the lines people skip

• DirectX. A minimum of DirectX 12 excludes older cards that only support 11. Check the System tab in dxdiag and your GPU's specifications.
• Operating system. '64-bit' excludes 32-bit installs; 'Windows 10 (1909 or newer)' excludes older builds. Settings → System → About shows both.
• Storage. Sizes range from 800 MB to 90 GB among the free games we cover. Check free space, and prefer an SSD when a developer suggests one.
• Instruction sets. Some games require SSE 4.2 or AVX; very old CPUs lack them regardless of clock speed.

Putting it together: a worked example

Take NTE's official minimum: a Core i7-10700, 16 GB of RAM, a GTX 1660 or RX 5600, DirectX 11 and 70 GB.

A PC with a Core i5-12400, 16 GB of RAM and an RTX 3050 compares like this: CPU — a 12th-generation i5 is two generations newer than the 10th-generation i7 minimum, with a comparable core count, so it clears the line; RAM — exactly at minimum, so close other applications; GPU — an RTX 30-series card at the 50 tier versus a GTX 16-series at the 60 tier is a generation-versus-tier comparison, which is exactly the kind of judgement that needs a benchmark rather than a rule of thumb; check a reputable comparison before assuming. That honest 'it depends' on one line is the correct answer more often than checker sites admit.

→ Neverness to Everness PC requirements: can your PC run it?

What to distrust

• Checker sites that scan your PC and return a verdict. They compare names against a database and cannot account for drivers, settings or resolution; use them as a first pass at most.
• 'Bottleneck calculators'. They produce a percentage from a formula nobody publishes. Ignore them.
• Aggregator requirements pages. They copy from each other and lag behind developer changes; go to the store page or the developer's site.
• Any article that gives you a frame rate without saying what hardware, resolution and settings it was measured on — including, if we ever did it, this one.

If you are below the line

Three honest options. Lower your expectations: most games run at the minimum with reduced settings and resolution. Pick a different game: our low-end list is built from official minimums. Or stream: some games are available on cloud services, which moves the hardware problem to someone else's server and yours becomes a bandwidth question.

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