System Requirements

This section lists the system requirements to get PCSX2 up and running.

	Minimum	Moderate	Heavy
OS	Latest1 Windows 10 Ubuntu 22.04 or other distro2 macOS 11 (Big Sur)	Windows 11 Ubuntu 25.04 or other distro2 macOS 15 (Sequoia)	Windows 11 Ubuntu 25.04 or other distro2 macOS 15 (Sequoia)
CPU	SSE4.1 PassMark single-thread rating ≥ 1500 Two physical cores3 with SMT4	AVX2 PassMark single-thread rating ≥ 2000 Four physical cores3 with or without SMT4	AVX2 PassMark single-thread rating ≥ 2600 Six physical cores3 with SMT4
GPU	Vulkan 1.1 Direct3D 115 OpenGL 3.36 PassMark G3D Mark rating ≥ 600	Vulkan 1.3 Direct3D 127 Metal8 OpenGL 4.6 PassMark G3D Mark rating ≥ 6000 4 GB VRAM	Vulkan 1.3 Direct3D 127 Metal8 OpenGL 4.6 PassMark G3D Mark rating ≥ 12000 8 GB VRAM
RAM	8 GB RAM9	16 GB RAM9	16 GB RAM9

info

• CPUs that only meet Moderate requirements will struggle with complex games that pushed the PS2 hardware to its limits.
  • CPU-intensive games: Wiki, Forum
• Some release titles and 2D games which underutilized the PS2 hardware may run on CPUs rated as low as 1200.
  • CPU-light games: Forum
• GPU performance is based largely on upscaling level and blending accuracy. For example, Moderate is based on 3x internal resolution.
  • GPU-intensive games: Wiki

Example Hardware

	Minimum	Moderate	Heavy
CPU	Intel Core i7-2760QM AMD FX-8350	Intel Core i7-4790 AMD Ryzen 5 1600	Intel Core i7-8700K AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU	Nvidia GeForce GT 720 AMD Radeon HD 7610M Intel UHD 630	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 AMD Radeon RX 570 Intel Arc A380	Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 8GB AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Intel Arc A580

Version Deprecations

• Windows XP and Direct3D 9 support was dropped after stable release v1.4.0.
• Windows 7, Windows 8.0, and Windows 8.1 support was dropped after stable release v1.6.0.
• Windows 10 21H1 and earlier support was dropped after stable release v2.4.0.
• 32-bit support was dropped after stable release v1.6.0.

Footnotes

Footnotes

1. Windows 10 Version 21H2 LTSC / 22H2 ↩

2. Distributed via AppImage or Flatpak. Both Wayland and X11 are supported. Major DEs are supported. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. If on a 12th Gen Intel CPU or newer, this is the number of P-cores rather than physical cores. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Simultaneous multithreading ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Direct3D 11 Feature Level 10.0 ↩

6. OpenGL 3.3 additionally requires the extensions GL_ARB_shading_language_420pack, GL_ARB_copy_image, and GL_ARB_clip_control. ↩

7. Direct3D 12 Feature Level 11.0 ↩ ↩²

8. Only on Mac devices ↩ ↩²

9. Games can optionally be precached such that the entire game disc is loaded into memory. This alone can occupy up to 8 GB of RAM. We recommend at least 32 GB of memory if using this feature. ↩ ↩² ↩³