Best PC for Baldur's Gate 3
Larian Studios · 2023-08-03 · Last verified July 2026
Baldur's Gate 3 is not a demanding game for most of its 100+ hours — until Act 3's Lower City turns hundreds of scripted NPCs loose on your CPU.
Changelog
- 2026-07-25 — Page created; calibration anchored to GamersNexus and EveZone RTX 4090 benchmark data.
System requirements
Minimum
Recommended
Source: https://larian.com/support/faqs/system-requirements_47
FPS expectations
Estimated, not measured — modelled from Aggregated from GamersNexus's GPU benchmark suite and EveZone's RTX 4090 deep-dive, ultra settings, native res. Act 3's Lower City is the outlier: hundreds of simultaneously-simulated NPCs running full AI routines mean Ultra vs Low settings differ by only about 10-12% there — the bottleneck is the CPU, not these GPU-bound figures.. How we estimate FPS.
Recommended builds
1080p Budget
1080p high settings, comfortably above 60fps even through Act 3's crowded Lower City.
1440p Sweet Spot
1440p ultra — the CPU is doing the real work in Act 3, which is exactly where the extra cache earns its keep.
4K Ultra
4K ultra with no compromises — more GPU than BG3 strictly needs, paired with the CPU that actually matters for Act 3.
Act 3 is a different game, performance-wise
For most of the campaign, BG3 is lightweight — plenty of GPU headroom on almost anything. Then Act 3's Lower City arrives with hundreds of scripted NPCs running full AI routines simultaneously, and the frame rate answer stops being about the GPU at all. Reviewers consistently find only a 10-12% difference between Ultra and Low graphics settings there, which is the tell that the CPU, not the graphics card, is the ceiling.
GPU headroom is not the bottleneck here
Outside Act 3's city, even a mid-range card handles Ultra settings without much trouble — reviewers have flagged the RTX 4090 as genuinely overkill for this game in most scenes. If BG3 is the main reason you're buying a GPU, you can spend less than you'd think and put the savings toward CPU single-core performance instead.
Upscalers: DLSS and FSR, no frame generation
Larian shipped FSR 1 at launch, upgraded to FSR 2, and added DLSS — but never implemented DLSS 3 frame generation. A community mod scene exists to add it via a compatibility layer, but treat that as unofficial and outside what we'd recommend relying on.
Frequently asked questions
Is Baldur's Gate 3 CPU-bound or GPU-bound?
GPU-bound for most of the game, CPU-bound specifically in Act 3's crowded Lower City where hundreds of NPCs run AI simultaneously.
Why does my game lag in Act 3's city?
It's the NPC density, not your settings or GPU. Lowering graphics settings barely moves the frame rate there — a faster CPU (particularly single-core performance) helps more than a GPU upgrade would.
Do I need a powerful GPU for BG3?
No — this is one of the more GPU-forgiving games on this list. A mid-range card from our budget or sweet-spot tier handles Ultra settings comfortably outside Act 3's busiest scenes.
Does Baldur's Gate 3 support ray tracing?
No, BG3 doesn't use ray tracing. It relies on Larian's own baked lighting and Divinity 4.0's rendering pipeline instead.