Fortnite's new recommended PC specs

(Image credit: Epic Games)

Epic Games has announced that Fortnite is receiving a significant graphics overhaul as part of the game's 17.00 update, which kicks off season 7 on June 8.

Fortnite already looks good on PC: Its adaptable art style conforms to whatever the ever-growing multiverse of marketing crossovers throws at it, and coming from the creators of the Unreal Engine, it runs fast with industry-standard rendering features.

There was room for an upgrade, though: Epic says that if you play on the "Epic" graphics quality preset, both battle royale and creative mode will feature better storm and cloud effects. Smoke and liquid simulations are also being modified, which is supposed to result in better car explosions, better looking lakes and Slurp juice, and my personal most-anticipated update, better fire effects for when you inevitably hit a house with a flaming arrow or firefly jar.

Epic says it's also adding improved postprocessing features for lens flare, bloom, and shadow quality.

So what will it all cost you in terms of hardware? Here are the new PC specs for the "Epic" graphics setting:

Nvidia GTX 1080, AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, or equivalent GPU
4 GB VRAM or higher
Intel Core i7-8700, AMD Ryzen 7 3700x, or equivalent
16 GB RAM or higher
NVMe Solid State Drive
Windows 10 64-bit

Fortnite's recommended settings stay the same, though:

Nvidia GTX 960, AMD R9 280, or equivalent DX11 GPU
2 GB VRAM
Core i5-7300U 3.5 GHz
8 GB RAM
Windows 10 64-bit

And if you're working on the lower end of hardware, Fortnite's medium, low, and performance rendering mode alpha settings are remaining the same.

Here's minimum specs as a refresher:

Intel HD 4000 on PC; Intel Iris Pro 5200
Core i3-3225 3.3 GHz
4 GB RAM
Windows 7/8/10 64-bit

Epic says that "High" settings will become the equivalent of pre-17.00 "Epic" settings once it all goes live.

Other updates include: The recommended GPU will become Nvidia GTX 960, AMD R9 280, or equivalent DX11 GPU. Epic is also changing the recommended OS to Windows 10 64-bit, but players still using Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 8 64-bit can still run Fortnite fine.

Fortnite season 7 is coming up soon on June 8. We'll need all the lighting effects we can get when alien UFOs start abducting more players.

Joseph Knoop is a freelance writer specializing in all things Fortnite at PC Gamer. Master of Creative Codes and Fortnite's weekly missions, Joe's always ready with a scoop on Boba Fett or John Wick or whoever the hell is coming to Fortnite this week. It's with a mix of relief and disappointment that he hasn't yet become a Fortnite skin himself. There's always next season...