Apex Legends is an extraordinary battle royale game with amazing features and a very intricate set of mechanics. It’s a game that always evolves and since it’s free to play, anyone can download and play it. The challenge comes when you have a low end PC. Usually when that happens you will have a hard time running games, let alone something a bit newer.
The Apex Legends game has a lot of special effects and some really nice, unique features to explore and enjoy. As you can imagine all the effects and impressive visual quality will take its toll if you have an older device. Which brings us to our question…
Can Apex Legends run on a low end PC? Yes, as long as you’re running the game on a PC that has the minimum requirements or close to it. Even so, if you are close to the minimum system requirements you should be able to play without that much of a hassle. It will require a bit of tweaking, but we will let you know what results you can achieve and what experience can actively work in a situation like this.
Minimum requirements
- OS: 64-bit Windows 7
- CPU: Intel Core i3-6300 3.8GHz / AMD FX-4350 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Processor
- RAM: 6GB
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 / Radeon HD 7730
- GPU RAM: 1 GB
- HARD DRIVE: Minimum 22 GB of free space
Recommended requirements
- OS: 64-bit Windows 7
- CPU: Intel i5 3570K or equivalent
- RAM: 8GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 290
- GPU RAM: 8GB
- HARD DRIVE: Minimum 22 GB of free space
Set the laptop battery on High Performance
If you are playing Apex Legends on a laptop, the first thing you want to do is to set the game on low and ensure all video quality stuff is at the lowest setting. While there, you also want to set the battery mode to high performance. This will help you squeeze every inch of performance that the game has, and it will totally pay off quite a bit in a very interesting and different manner all the time.
Aside from that, we also recommend you to try and keep the graphics card driver up to date. This way you will find a lot easier to optimize the game experience with the right drivers. Granted, Apex Legends is not a very demanding game, but NVIDIA and AMD do tend to give you some really good optimizations and that’s why installing the latest driver makes sense and it’s actually a very nice idea to focus on.
Play in fullscreen mode
We noticed that playing in fullscreen is the best option performance-wise. It might be a bit better if you go with the borderless window if you have multiple monitors. But since we are talking about a lower tier PC, playing fullscreen at a lower resolution is the way to go. The resolution you want to play at will differ based on your monitor and configuration. But it’s a very good idea to start with 720p if possible and then test out every resolution for a game. This way you can find the sweet spot in your particular situation. It does make a lot of sense and it will totally give you the results and experience you want without any hassle. That will be great if you’re new to the game but still want to have quick and reliable performance without the lag and other issues that usually arise.
Some recommend using the native resolution and that will be the ideal case. But as we all know these things don’t always work the way you expect so there are times when you need to scale it even lower. Apex Legends does benefit from the lower resolution, so if you want to boost the FPS and make it playable even on a lower tier PC, this might be one of the better ways to do it.
Lower the FOV
THE FOV is also known as the field of vision and the idea with it here is that you will see less in front of you, but the FPS will help you a lot. The peripheral vision is not as important in Apex Legends as it is in other games. Granted, you will benefit from it quite a bit, but if you take your time and do this wisely the payoff alone will be among some of the best every time, and that’s what you want to focus on. While here, you also want top disable the V Sync. It doesn’t offer any benefit on the lower tier computers, so disabling it is pretty much a must.
Adaptive resolution target FPS will be 0
This is not a good tactic to get FPS as it will lower the resolution just to force Anti Aliasing, and that will end up bringing really low and bad performance as a whole. The major thing that you can do at this point is to try and lower the resolution manually as we said above instead of using other tricks that might not help at all or be as good as this. Yet as long as you use it wisely, the results will be more than ok.
Turn Anti Aliasing off
It’s one of those things that will make the game look better, but at the cost of not having as much performance as you want. It’s a very good idea to take your time with this as you tinker with the features. But turning AA off will offer you a significant FPS boost. And since you’re on a computer without a lot of processing power, you will find this to work seamlessly in the end if you do it right and wisely. Just make sure that you avoid any rush.
As for texture filtering, you can do anisotropic 2x. Some say this is still too much, but since you want to play the game and have fun you do need a bit of visual appeal. And this is the sweet spot where you can still see a lot of stuff but at the same time you get to customize and optimize things to make the process better for you as a whole. It will always be nice and different, as long as you commit to it you will be more than fine all the time.
Low or no shadows
I noticed that Apex Legends doesn’t really benefit that much from shadows. Granted, they give more immersion, but you don’t really need them to have a great gaming experience. That’s why having less or even no shadows is a whole lot better. It makes a lot of sense to tackle this wisely and if you do it right the results themselves can be among some of the best all the time.
Our Recommended Cheaper Low-End PC for Playing Apex Legends
If you’ve got an old junker of a computer that just can’t handle Apex Legends – than maybe it’s time to upgrade. If you don’t have the cash to get the best PC in the world – check out SkyTech’s Shadow Gaming Computer Desktop on Amazon.
It’s a reasonable price for a desktop, and it will run Apex Legends with a solid 60 frame per second. It won’t break the bank, but it will definitely get the job done. Check out the review on Amazon (here) to read about its specs, but it definitely is way beyond the minimum requirements for Apex Legends and other new games.
Experiment with Your Settings
We actively recommend you to try and run Apex Legends on the lowest settings and then add stuff to the game visuals to see where it’s not comfortable for you FPS wise. Experimentation is key, as no two computers are the same and you still find it very hard to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. There are lots of different challenges for you to deal with here, but if you commit to it and make it work the outcome can really be extraordinary. Just remember, Apex Legends can be played on lower tier computers too, you just have to tinker with the options!
