Outriders

Outriders is People Can Fly's always-online looter shooter, a game that launched in April 2021 with server fires, an inventory-eating bug, and a genuinely good combat loop buried underneath. Five years on, the fires are out, the loot is safe, and what remains is one of the more honest GPU benchmarks in our library. Across 3,710 measured CPU and GPU combinations in our database, the average system records 102 FPS at 1080p Ultra, 66 FPS at 1440p Ultra, and 35 FPS at 4K Ultra. The fastest combinations reach 892 FPS at 1080p Low; the slowest stagger along at 28 FPS at 1080p Ultra. That spread, roughly 30x between floor and ceiling, tells you the essential truth about this game: it scales hard with graphics hardware, it rewards spending on the GPU, and it punishes weak cards far more than weak processors.

Unreal Engine 4 with a GPU-first personality

Outriders runs on Unreal Engine 4, and it behaves like a textbook mid-generation UE4 title. The graphics card does the heavy lifting. Enemy density is modest by modern standards, the maps are corridors and arenas rather than open worlds, and the simulation load is light enough that the CPU rarely becomes the primary bottleneck at any resolution. In our data the frame rate drops by about a third moving from 1080p to 1440p Ultra (102 to 66 FPS) and by nearly half again moving to 4K (66 to 35), which is the signature of a GPU-bound game. If resolution scaling were being capped by the processor, those steps would flatten.

That does not mean the CPU is irrelevant. The game still leans on a few strong threads for draw submission and game logic, and the busy moments, Anomaly ability spam from three players, a horde of Perforo rushing the party, explosions and particle effects stacking up, will expose a weak quad-core with frame time spikes even when average FPS looks fine. A modern six-core is the sensible floor. Memory requirements are unremarkable: 16 GB of dual-channel DDR5 (or DDR4 on older platforms) is plenty, and this is not one of those titles where 32 GB buys you anything in-game. Storage matters more. Outriders streams environments constantly and its load times on a hard drive are miserable; an NVMe SSD turns minute-long loads into seconds and smooths out texture streaming between arenas.

One engine quirk worth knowing: Outriders offers both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 modes, and they have never behaved identically. DX12 enables DLSS and generally higher peak frame rates on modern cards, but it has a long history of shader compilation stutter and hitching on some systems, especially on first runs after a driver update. DX11 tends to deliver lower peaks but steadier frame times on older hardware. If the game feels choppy despite a healthy average FPS, switch APIs before you touch anything else.

1080p: where most builds feel at home

At 1920x1080 Ultra, the 102 FPS average is genuinely representative, and the distribution behind it is encouraging. Of the 3,710 combinations we measured, 3,231 clear 60 FPS at 1080p Ultra, nearly nine in ten. Only 21 combinations fall below 30 FPS, and those are the true museum pieces: ancient dual-cores paired with cards that predated the game by half a decade. If your PC was built for gaming in the last six or seven years, 1080p60 at high settings is a given, not a goal.

The more interesting question is high refresh. 586 of our 3,710 combinations, about one in six, reach 144 FPS or better at 1080p Ultra, which means a 144Hz monitor is realistic at max settings for upper mid-range hardware and above. Dropping to Medium lifts the average to 166 FPS, and Low reaches 204 FPS, with the fastest flagship rigs in our data touching 892 FPS. That ceiling matters for a specific reader: if you are chasing a 240Hz monitor, Outriders will actually feed it, but only at reduced settings on a strong GPU with a CPU that can keep the draw calls flowing. This is not a competitive shooter, so there is no ranked ladder demanding 240 FPS, but endgame speed-farming runs feel noticeably better at high refresh, and the game has the headroom to deliver it.

1440p and 4K: the GPU bill comes due

At 1440p Ultra the average falls to 66 FPS, and 2,048 of the 3,710 measured combinations, about 55 percent, hold the 60 FPS line. That is the tipping point where the graphics card starts deciding your experience. A mid-range card from the last two or three generations still manages 1440p comfortably with a few settings trimmed (Medium averages 117 FPS), but anything below that tier starts requiring real compromises. The good news is that Outriders includes DLSS, and at 1440p the Quality mode is close enough to native that leaving it on is the obvious move for NVIDIA owners. There is no native FSR support, so AMD and Intel GPU owners are choosing between native resolution and driver-level upscaling tricks; budget for that when picking a card for this game specifically.

At 4K Ultra the average drops to 35 FPS, and only 205 of 3,710 combinations, about one in eighteen, clear 60 FPS. Native 4K Ultra is flagship territory, full stop. The practical path for everyone else is upscaling or settings: 4K Medium averages 64 FPS across our database, and 4K Low reaches 87 FPS, which pairs well with DLSS Quality or Balanced to make 4K60 achievable on high-end cards rather than only the halo tier. The honest summary from the numbers: Outriders is a game you buy a graphics card for. At 1080p almost anything works, at 1440p a mid-range card works with tuning, and at 4K you need to either spend properly or upscale aggressively.

Recommended settings: our tested configuration

Outriders' settings menu is long, but only a handful of options move the needle. Shadows are the first cut: the jump from Ultra to High is nearly invisible in play and buys a meaningful chunk of frame rate on mid-range cards. Effects quality and post-processing are next, since the game's busiest moments are exactly when effects multiply; trimming them improves worst-case frame times, which is what you actually feel during a three-player ability chain. Foliage and view distance are cheap wins at 4K where every percent counts. Texture quality is mostly a VRAM question: leave it at Ultra on any card with 8 GB or more, drop it one notch below that. Motion blur and depth of field cost little but obscure the readability of chaotic fights, and most regulars disable them on principle.

For frame pacing, two recommendations from the data. First, if you see stutter with a good average FPS, try the DX11 path before blaming your hardware; it fixes more Outriders complaints than any settings change. Second, cap your frame rate a few percent below your system's typical ceiling. Outriders has no PvP, so latency heroics buy you nothing, and a steady 141 FPS in a three-player expedition feels far better than a frame rate oscillating between 160 and 200. A stable frame rate also matters for co-op: this is an always-online game with host-based session quirks, and anything that keeps your local frame times flat makes the whole run feel cleaner.

What hardware do you need?

Entry level (older quad-core, 16 GB RAM, budget or aging card): 1080p Low to Medium at roughly 40 to 70 FPS, sitting in the lower bands of our measured data. The game remains fully playable and the art direction survives Low better than most UE4 titles, but busy expeditions will dip. An NVMe SSD is the one non-negotiable here.

Mid-range (modern six-core, 16 GB dual-channel, mid-tier GPU): 1080p Ultra at 80 to 120 FPS, 1440p tuned at 70 to 100 FPS. This is the sweet spot and the tier where our 102 FPS average lives. The best graphics card for Outriders, value-wise, sits right here: a current mid-range GPU maxes 1080p and handles 1440p with DLSS or a settings trim, no flagship required.

High-end (fast eight-core, strong GPU with DLSS): 1080p at 144 FPS and beyond for high-refresh play, 1440p Ultra comfortably above 100 FPS, and 4K at 60 FPS with Medium settings or DLSS Quality. This is the tier where the game stops asking questions.

Flagship: 4K Ultra native above 60 FPS, with the fastest rigs in our data pushing toward that 892 FPS ceiling at 1080p Low. Overkill for this game in 2026, but if you already own the hardware, Outriders is a satisfying way to watch it stretch.

Laptop playability

Outriders translates well to gaming laptops with one caveat: it is GPU-bound, so it exposes exactly the thing laptops compromise on. A laptop with a current mid-range mobile GPU and a sane power limit will reproduce the desktop mid-range experience at 1080p, and DLSS carries extra weight here because mobile parts benefit most from the reduced render load. Check the wattage variant of the GPU before buying, since the same chip name spans an enormous performance range across laptop models, and this game will find the difference. Thin-and-lights and integrated graphics are effectively out; the 21 sub-30-FPS combinations in our data are dominated by exactly that class of hardware. One more laptop-specific note: because the game is always online, playing on hotel or tethered connections means your frame rate is fine but your session stability is not. Expedition disconnects on co-op are a connection problem, not a hardware one.

Streaming and content creation

Outriders is a co-op spectacle game, and it streams better than its GPU appetite suggests, for a specific reason: because the graphics card is the bottleneck, the CPU has cycles to spare. That makes CPU x264 encoding more viable here than in CPU-crushing titles, and a fast eight-core can produce a decent medium-preset 1080p60 stream while playing. That said, the correct answer for a single-PC streaming setup in 2026 is still the hardware encoder. NVENC on NVIDIA cards and AMF on AMD cards cost you a few percent of frame rate instead of a few tenths of your CPU, and current-generation NVENC quality at 1080p60 is close enough to x264 that viewers cannot tell. Reserve the CPU for the game and voice chat. For creators cutting expedition highlights into videos, the useful note is that a build tuned for Outriders, GPU-heavy with a competent six to eight core CPU, doubles as a serviceable 1080p video editing machine, though serious 4K timeline work will want more cores and 32 GB of RAM than the game itself ever asks for.

Common problems and fixes

Stuttering despite a strong average FPS: almost always the DX12 path. Relaunch and select DirectX 11, or update your GPU driver and let shaders rebuild once. This single fix resolves the majority of smoothness complaints.

Disconnected from expedition or kicked to lobby: server side, not your PC. Outriders is always online even solo, and co-op sessions route through its matchmaking. Wired over Wi-Fi helps at the margin; nothing on your desk fully fixes a bad server day.

Crashes on launch or after updates: verify game files first, then update the GPU driver cleanly. Outriders has a long tail of post-patch instability, and corrupted shader caches are the usual suspect. Deleting the game's shader cache folder and letting it rebuild is a time-honored fix.

Long loads and texture pop-in: the game is on a hard drive. Move it to an NVMe SSD; the difference is dramatic and costs nothing else.

Frame drops during three-player ability spam: effects and post-processing quality. Lower those two first, since they scale directly with the on-screen chaos that causes the drops.

Upgrade priorities

Outriders has the classic GPU-bound upgrade order, which is refreshingly normal. First, the graphics card: nothing else you can buy moves the average FPS in this game as directly, and the 1080p-to-4K scaling in our data proves it. If you are planning a broader gaming PC build with Outriders on the list, weight the budget toward the GPU and do not feel guilty about it. Second, the CPU, but only if yours is genuinely old: any modern six-core feeds this game, and a CPU upgrade only makes sense coming from a quad-core of the mid-2010s or older, where expedition chaos exposes the thread count. Third, storage, because the NVMe SSD move is cheap and transforms loading. Fourth, memory: if you are still on 8 GB or a single stick, 16 GB of dual-channel memory is mandatory, but beyond that, RAM spending is dead money for this title. Most upgrade regret in Outriders comes from buying that order backwards, pairing a new high-core-count CPU with the same tired GPU and wondering why 4K still crawls.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Is Outriders CPU or GPU intensive?

A: Strongly GPU intensive. Our data shows classic GPU-bound scaling, with average FPS falling from 102 at 1080p Ultra to 66 at 1440p and 35 at 4K. Any modern six-core CPU is sufficient; the graphics card decides your frame rate.

Q: What is the best graphics card for Outriders?

A: For 1080p Ultra at 60+ FPS, almost any mid-range card of the last few generations qualifies, since nearly nine in ten measured combinations clear that bar. For 1440p, a current mid-range GPU with DLSS or tuned settings. For native 4K Ultra at 60 FPS, you need flagship-class hardware; only about 5 percent of measured systems manage it.

Q: Does Outriders support DLSS or FSR?

A: DLSS yes, on NVIDIA cards, and it is well worth enabling at 1440p and 4K. FSR was never officially added, so AMD and Intel owners rely on native rendering or driver-level scaling.

Q: Can a budget PC run Outriders?

A: Yes. Only 21 of 3,710 measured combinations fall below 30 FPS at 1080p Ultra, and Low settings average 204 FPS across the database. An older quad-core with a modest card and an SSD will give you a playable 1080p experience at reduced settings.

Q: Why does Outriders stutter even though my FPS is high?

A: The DX12 mode is the usual cause, with shader compilation and streaming hitches on some systems. Try the DX11 launch option, rebuild your shader cache after driver updates, and cap the frame rate slightly below your ceiling.

Q: Is Outriders still worth playing in 2026?

A: As a co-op looter shooter, yes, especially at its now-permanent discount price. The Worldslayer expansion was the last major content drop, so what exists is the complete game, and the endgame expedition loop still holds up with two friends.

To summarize: Outriders in 2026

Outriders in 2026 is a finished game, and it wears that well. The live-service ambitions are gone, the servers are quiet but functional, and what remains is a complete, content-rich co-op shooter that modern hardware runs beautifully. The measured data makes the verdict simple. At 1080p, this is a solved problem: a 102 FPS average at Ultra with nearly nine in ten systems above 60 FPS means almost any gaming PC from the last several years maxes it. At 1440p, a mid-range card and DLSS carry you. At 4K, the 35 FPS Ultra average is the one place the game still shows teeth, and even there, Medium settings or upscaling close the gap on high-end hardware.

For the reader checking this page before a purchase or an upgrade, the guidance is unusually clean. Spend on the GPU first, keep a modern six-core, put the game on an SSD, and enable DLSS if your card supports it. Follow that order and Outriders will run as well as it plays, which, five years past its turbulent launch, is better than its reputation remembers.