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.
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Shopping for parts you don't own yet? Pick any CPU and GPU to see if it clears Baldur’s Gate 3.
Pick a CPU and a GPU to see if it’ll run Baldur’s Gate 3.
System requirements
Minimum
CPUIntel Core i5-4690 / AMD FX-8350
GPUNVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 / AMD Radeon RX 480 (4GB+)
RAM8 GB
VRAM4 GB
Storage150 GB
NotesRequires a CPU with AVX2 support (2014 or newer). Low-medium settings.
Recommended
CPUIntel Core i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPUNVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8GB+)
RAM16 GB
VRAM8 GB
Storage150 GB
NotesDirectX 11 is the default API; Vulkan 1.1 is available as an alternative.
Source: View source
FPS expectations
DLSSFSR
Graphics cardEst. FPS
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090(CPU-limited at 1440p — a faster CPU would raise this)163
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080160
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090140
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT134
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX133
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti133
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super125
NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation123
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080122
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT120
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070120
AMD Radeon RX 9070118
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super115
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti108
AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE106
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super104
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080101
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT98
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 407094
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti91
AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT87
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB83
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 506083
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti81
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 307078
NVIDIA RTX A400077
Intel Arc B58074
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti71
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 406067
Intel Arc B57066
Intel Arc A77064
AMD Radeon RX 760063
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 505060
Intel Arc A75059
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 306056
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.
Squeeze more fps out of your build
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.
