Fortnite isn’t the most demanding game out there, at least not when compared to Triple-A behemoths. But it still demands a decent GPU, especially if you want to run the game at triple-digit framerates without too much compromise. And that’s why you want the best graphics card for Fortnite: ultra-smooth gameplay without needing to make the game look like something from 2010.

Given that Fortnite is an accessible free-to-play game, our list focuses more on affordable cards that will still provide an excellent Fortnite gaming experience. But don’t worry if you’re after something a bit more; we’ve also included a couple of picks for those who want to crank the settings and enjoy eye candy while chasing wins.

Our Favorite Graphics Cards for Fortnite

A quick note before we start: all FPS figures we mention are estimates. Fortnite’s unpredictable gameplay makes it impossible to get repeatable and consistent results. It all depends on what’s going on in-game, but the numbers should give you a good idea of what to expect.

1. Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC Edition

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 is a solid card for Fortnite, excelling at 1080p and 1440p even with Fortnite’s fancy new Lumen lighting enabled. It’s also great for streamers, especially with Nvidia’s high-quality hardware H.264 encoding and AI-assisted audio and video processing for streaming.

The RTX 4060 can hit a steady 150 FPS at 1080p and high settings in the heavy Mega City area, all without any upscaling. Mega City is something of a worst-case scenario for the game, so expect less busy wilderness areas to run close to 200 FPS here. Drop Fortnite down to its Performance Mode, and expect close to 300 FPS even here.

WQHD 1440p performance is also solid, and the RTX 4060 has DLSS to fall back on to boost framerates with less visual impact than AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) or Fortnite’s native Temporal Super Resolution (TSR). Epic settings (without Nanite) with DLSS Quality sees the RTX 4060 hitting around 100 to 120 FPS in Mega City—not bad for a $300 GPU. Turn it down to high or medium settings and you’ll likely get a locked 144-Hz experience here.

You can even get 4K 60 FPS out of the RTX 4060, provided you set DLSS to Balanced or Performance preset. And if you want to go a different route and run the game with Nanite and Lumen features enabled, the RTX 4060 should be able to do a solid 60 FPS at 1080p with DLSS Quality.

Of course, turning the game down to more “competitive” settings and enabling Performance Mode should net you anywhere between 250 to 350 FPS, good enough for an ultra-high-refresh rate 1080p 360-Hz monitor like the Alienware AW2523HF. So the RTX 3060 has you covered, no matter how you want to play the game.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 is also the best GPU for Fortnite if you plan to stream. Nvidia Broadcast’s AI-assisted voice denoiser and digital green screen can greatly improve your webcam feed. At the same time, the hardware NVENC and AV1 encoders provide good-quality video with minimal performance loss.

Overall, the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC Edition is a solid card for Fortnite, especially if you want to do more than just play Fortnite. If you’re streaming or plan to play AAA games where DLSS will come in handy, then this is the card to go for.

2. Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

If you want all the bells and whistles in Fortnite while maintaining good framerates, you’ll have to spend quite a bit more than $300. Lumen, Nanite, and ray-tracing all demand a powerful GPU like the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is a strong Fortnite GPU, especially at 1440p. Native-resolution 1440p epic with Lumen should give you a locked 60 FPS, while enabling DLSS Quality will push the game to around 90 FPS without sacrificing too much visual quality. Sure, that’s not the 300+ FPS that some gamers claim you need for a competitive game, but it’s still more than playable and will make the game look excellent.

Full HD 1080p performance is predictably excellent, although maxed-out settings are still incredibly punishing even here. You can expect 80 to 100 FPS at 1080p epic without DLSS, which is the way to go when playing at that lower resolution.

Of course, disabling Lumen will let you run Fortnite at some impressive framerates, no matter what resolution you play at. 4K Epic without Lumen and DLSS Quality should run easily at 120 to 150 FPS. Non-Lumen 1440p Epic DLSS performance will hover around the 240 FPS mark, enough to max out 1440p 240-Hz gaming monitors like the Samsung Odyssey G7.

Unfortunately, this level of power doesn’t come cheap. The Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti will set you back around $800, which is a lot for a Fortnite GPU. It makes more sense to buy this as a general-purpose high-end graphics card that’ll excel in all manner of demanding games, not just Fortnite.

But hey, if you can afford it and want great framerates in Epic’s battle royale at all settings and resolutions, this is the Nvidia card to go for. Sure, you could go for its even more powerful siblings, like the RTX 4080, for even better FPS. Still, the RTX 4070 Ti perfectly balances performance and price for high-end, high-framerate Fortnite gaming.

3. XFX Speedster SWFT210 Radeon RX 7600

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 is Team Red’s latest budget GPU, and as such is a perfect option for Fortnite gamers looking for great performance at a reasonable price.

A card like the XFX Speedster SWFT210 Radeon RX 7600 will chew through Fortnite at 1080p and 1440p, performing excellently across the board at most graphics settings. It’s a champ at 1080p in particular, capable of running anywhere between 150 to 200 FPS, even at high settings. Dropping to lower settings will push the framerates even higher, allowing you to hit 300 FPS with no problems.

WQHD 1440p performance is also excellent, although you won’t be maxing the game out at that resolution. 1440p with Epic settings is a broadly 60 to 70 FPS experience; fine, but not what you want from a competitive game. But any presets below that will perform great, with 1440p at medium settings running at close to 200 FPS once you’re on the ground.

Fortnite supports AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling, so you can enable it to get even more FPS if you need it. It’s not as good as DLSS, but it should perform similarly to the game’s built-in Temporal Super Resolution. However, dropping visual settings is likely a better way to gain frames in a competitive shooter. Treat FSR as a last resort and not your first port of call.

AMD’s RX 7600 goes toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s RTX 4060 but loses out on niceties such as hardware video encoding quality and AI-enhanced features. Neither are deal-breakers, but the RX 6650 XT isn’t quite as much of an all-rounder as Nvidia’s options are. An Nvidia video card may be the better choice if you want to stream, as you get the company’s superior NVENC video encoder.

It’s worth pointing out that the RX 7600 gets access to AMD’s new Radeon Anti-Lag+, which reduces latency even further than basic Anti-Lag. If you want the most responsive Fortnite experience possible, you’ll want to skip any last-gen AMD GPUs and get this one instead.

Of course, the RX 7600 is around $60 cheaper than Nvidia’s GPU, so it makes sense that you have to lose out somewhere. That said, the sacrifices are minor, and anyone primarily interested in playing Fortnite will love this GPU.

4. Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT Pulse

If you’re more of an AMD fan, then a GPU like the Radeon RX 7900 XT is the perfect high-end solution for Fortnite. Whether you want to crank the settings and enjoy the high-quality graphics of Fortnite Chapter 4 or max out your 240-Hz 1440p monitor, this GPU will do the job.

The RX 7900 XT goes toe-to-toe with the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti in Fortnite, capable of 80 to 90 FPS at 1440p epic without any upscaling tech. This is with all the Lumen, Nanite, and ray tracing bells and whistles, which is impressive considering Nvidia’s usual advantage in ray-traced workloads.

Given this performance parity, you’ll likely get similar (if not improved) performance at reduced settings, too. The RX 7900 XT doesn’t seem as popular as its competitors (whether Nvidia or AMD), so benchmark numbers in Fortnite are hard to come by.

But you’ll likely get around 100 FPS at 1080p epic settings, with non-Lumen 1440p and 4K sitting around the 240 and 120 FPS marks, respectively. The RX 7900 XT generally runs faster than the RTX 4070 Ti in most games, so we expect it to do the same in Fortnite at lower resolutions and settings.

One major ace up the RX 7900 XT’s sleeve is its generous VRAM allocation. With modern AAA games—rightly or wrongly—gobbling up VRAM like there’s no tomorrow, you could make a case for the RX 7900 XT being a more future-proof GPU than Nvidia’s similarly-priced RTX 4070 Ti. If you plan to play many demanding games, the 20 gigs of video memory will serve you well for a long time to come.

If you’re building a high-end rig primarily for Fortnite, AMD RX 7900 XT-based cards like the Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT Pulse are a strong option. Sure, you lose out on Nvidia’s fancy AI-assisted features, but that may be a fair price considering the more future-proof VRAM setup and better performance in other games.

5. Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition 8 GB

If you’re on a tight budget, Intel’s Arc A750 is the Fortnite GPU for you. Rapidly maturing drivers have turned Intel’s sub-$250 offering from a hard-to-recommend option to a great budget GPU for playing Fortnite.

Intel’s Arc A750 runs Fortnite impressively well at 1080p and 1440p, although you’ll have to turn down the settings quite a bit. Expect triple-digit framerates at 1080p, with 1080p low creeping into the 300+ FPS range. The performance falls off slightly once you turn the settings up, but you should still be in the 100 FPS ballpark at 1080p high.

WQHD performance at 1440p isn’t quite as strong, but you’ll still be coming close to 200 FPS at 1440p low, with even 1440p high hovering around the 100 FPS mark on average. This is all at native resolution, too, so you could go even further by enabling Fortnite’s built-in Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) upscaling.

As you might expect, enabling Lumen for the eye candy will drag your framerates under the 60 FPS mark on average, even at 1080p. TSR can help here, but Lumen isn’t a feature we recommend enabling on this class of GPU anyway. It’d be fine for a slow-paced first-person game, but not in a competitive shooter like Fortnite.

One potential issue to watch out for is the fact that Intel’s Arc A750 requires Resizable BAR (ReBAR) or Smart Access Memory (SAM) support to perform its best. The more powerful A770 loses about 25% performance without ReBAR, and the A750 is likely to behave similarly. So this isn’t a card for those upgrading an older system.

Another potential issue is the Arc A750’s power supply requirements. The A750 uses about 225 watts during gaming, which is quite high compared to its performance. So you may end up having to spend a bit more on a power supply than you would with other sub-$250 graphics cards.

However, unlike most other cheap options (often very old GPUs), the A750 is a thoroughly modern card that will likely keep improving with each new driver release. So it’s a great choice for anyone trying to build a modest gaming rig at a reasonable price.

Before You Buy

There isn’t anything particularly different about choosing a GPU for Fortnite, so we won’t cover that here. Head over to our guide to choosing a graphics card for all that info. Instead, let’s look at ways to get the most out of a limited budget, whether by dropping your settings or going without a dedicated GPU.

Managing Your Graphics Settings

Fortnite has become more graphically demanding over the years, and Chapter 4 is particularly so. Technologies such as Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen and Nanite (and ray tracing) make for a much more demanding game than the one launched in 2017.

But while these features make for a much prettier game, they will significantly reduce your framerates. So unless you’re running a mega-bucks GPU, you’re best turning these features off for optimal framerates. In a competitive game like Fortnite, graphical fidelity is worth giving up in exchange for higher FPS and a smoother gameplay experience.

For instance, dropping from epic to high settings on a budget card like the Intel Arc A750 can give you a 40% FPS boost without making the game look all that much worse. High or medium settings will be a good middle ground for most users, with the low option only recommended for underpowered GPUs or users who demand north of 200 FPS.

APUs and Fortnite

If spending roughly $250 or so for a budget graphics card for your new rig is still too much (and you don’t want to buy used), consider building a computer around an AMD APU instead. AMD APUs have decent integrated GPUs and do an impressive job in Fortnite, provided you use Performance Mode.

No, Performance Mode doesn’t look good. But it’s really the only way to play Fortnite on an ultra-tight budget. AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600G can run Fortnite reasonably well at 1080p Performance Mode, running the game at anywhere from 70 to 140 FPS depending on what’s happening. Enable variable refresh rate support on your monitor, and you should be good to go.

Stepping up to the slightly pricier Ryzen 7 5700G can get you slightly better framerates. However, the 5700G’s biggest appeal is its eight-core design; it’s a bit more future-proof and may be a better option if you want to use it for a long time and upgrade to a dedicated GPU down the line.

Go for the 5700G if you can afford it and plan to use the system for a while. If you just need something cheap that’ll run Fortnite well, the 5600G is still a great choice.

Closing Thoughts

Fortnite’s Chapter 4 update brought the game into the modern era with fancy graphical options that make the game world look better than ever. But while this has made the game harder to run, it’s still a very accessible game that’ll run on all manner of hardware, provided you manage your settings carefully.

If you’re trying to run Fortnite at reasonable framerates at 1080p or 1440p, look no further than the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC Edition and XFX Speedster SWFT210 Radeon RX 7600. These aren’t the most powerful graphics cards out there, but they offer excellent triple-digit FPS numbers in Fortnite without too many compromises.

Need some peripherals? Check out our list of the best keyboards for Fortnite.