System Requirements

This page lists the system requirements to run PCSX2.

	Minimum	Moderate	Heavy
OS	Latest1 Windows 10 macOS 11 (Big Sur) Ubuntu 22.04 or other Linux distro2	Windows 11 macOS 14–15 (Sonoma–Sequoia) Ubuntu 25.04 or other Linux distro2	Windows 11 macOS 14–15 (Sonoma–Sequoia) Ubuntu 25.04 or other Linux distro2
CPU	x86-64 with SSE4.1 PassMark single-thread rating ≥ 1500 Two physical cores3 with SMT4	x86-64 with AVX2 PassMark single-thread rating ≥ 2000 Four physical cores3 with or without SMT4	x86-64 with AVX2 PassMark single-thread rating ≥ 2600 Six physical cores3 with SMT4 Or M-series CPU5
GPU	Vulkan 1.1 Direct3D 116 OpenGL 3.37 PassMark G3D Mark rating ≥ 6008	Vulkan 1.3 Direct3D 129 OpenGL 4.6 Metal10 PassMark G3D Mark rating ≥ 60008 4 GB VRAM	Vulkan 1.3 Direct3D 129 OpenGL 4.6 Metal10 PassMark G3D Mark rating ≥ 120008 8 GB VRAM
RAM	8 GB RAM11	16 GB RAM11	16 GB RAM11

Info – Performance

Hardware requirements can vary drastically between games.

• 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
• GPUs which meet Moderate requirements should handle the vast majority of games just fine.⁸
  • GPU performance is based largely on upscaling level and blending accuracy.
  • GPU-intensive games: Wiki
• If you have performance issues, please check the corresponding troubleshooting guide.

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
GPU8	Nvidia GeForce GT 710 AMD Radeon R7 A10-7850K Intel HD 510	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

General

• Direct3D 9 support was dropped after stable release v1.4.0.
• 32-bit support was dropped after stable release v1.6.0.

Windows

• Windows XP 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.

macOS

• macOS 10.4 support was added and dropped during the nightly v1.7.X release cycle.

Linux

• Ubuntu 20.04 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. Although ChromeOS supports Linux applications, PCSX2 offers no official support for ChromeOS. ↩ ↩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. On Macs with M-series CPUs, PCSX2 runs via the translation layer Rosetta 2. M-series CPUs are exempt from x86 SIMD extension requirements such as AVX2 and all fall under the Heavy CPU requirements. ↩

6. Direct3D 11 Feature Level 10.0 ↩

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

8. GPU performance is functionally irrelevant if playing games using the Software Renderer. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

9. Direct3D 12 Feature Level 11.0 ↩ ↩²

10. Only on Mac devices ↩ ↩²

11. 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