Can I Run Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition?
World's Edge released Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition in 2019. It is a strategy game, published by Xbox Game Studios. It offers a single player campaign and cooperative play. Saves sync through Steam Cloud, so moving between machines does not cost progress. 17 languages are covered by the store listing. Critics scored it 84 on Metacritic. It carries 357 achievements. Alongside Windows it also ships for macOS. Its 7 years mean the stated figures describe machines that were current then, not now. With more than 157 thousand player reviews on Steam, its behaviour on real hardware is well documented.
Can your PC run it? →System requirements
Minimum requirements
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64x2 5600+ |
|---|---|
| GPU | NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420 or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 6850 or Intel® HD Graphics 4000 or better with 2 GB VRAM |
| VRAM | 2 GB |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| Storage | 15 GB |
| OS | Windows 10 64bit |
| DirectX | 11 |
Recommended requirements
| CPU | 2.4 Ghz i5 or greater or AMD equivalent |
|---|---|
| GPU | Nvidia® GTX 650 or AMD HD 5850 or better |
| RAM | 8 GB |
| Storage | 15 GB |
| OS | Windows 10 64bit |
| DirectX | 11 |
Verified from Steam · 9 Jul 2026 source
Scores are deterministic, computed by fixed rules and benchmark tables, not written by an AI. How we score. Maintained by Farhad Ali. Spotted a wrong specification? Tell us.
Setting and environment
Players spend their time in a historical setting, moving through a city the player lays out. The view is in two dimensions. There are 12 official screenshots to judge the look from. Simulation heavy building games lean harder on the processor as the map fills, so late game performance rarely matches the opening hours.
Why Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is demanding
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition barely touches the GPU. Its stated Nvidia GTX 650 or AMD HD 5850 target is below anything currently sold. System memory expectations are modest at 8 GB. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition needs 64 bit Windows. Disk footprint is light, near 15 GB. Video memory is not the constraint here, at 2 GB.
This reading comes from the published requirements and our own benchmark tables, not from the store listing.
Can you run Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition?
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is light on hardware. Its minimum, NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420 or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 6850 or Intel® HD Graphics 4000 or better with 2 GB VRAM, 4 GB RAM, about 15 GB free, sits below what an entry-level PC ships with today, so nearly any modern machine, and many older ones, will run it.
Bottleneck: CPU
Projected by resolution
| Resolution | Projection | Headroom |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p | Comfortable | 48.57x |
| 1440p | Comfortable | 27.32x |
| 4K | Comfortable | 12.14x |
A projection, not a measurement. We scale the published GPU requirement by pixel count, since 1440p draws 1.78 times the pixels of 1080p and 4K draws 4 times as many, then compare against RTX 3060 / Ryzen 5 build. The publisher did not state a target resolution, so 1080p is assumed as the baseline. We hold no frame rate data, so no FPS figure is claimed. Headroom above 1 means the reference machine has room to spare at that resolution.
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Frequently asked questions
Can my PC run Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition?
Upload your DxDiag file to Idxdiag's free checker and get a component by component compatibility verdict for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition in seconds. No install required.
What are the minimum system requirements for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition?
The minimum requirements are CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64x2 5600+; GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420 or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 6850 or Intel® HD Graphics 4000 or better with 2 GB VRAM; 4 GB RAM; OS: Windows 10 64bit.
How much storage does Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition need?
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition needs about 15 GB of available storage.
What is the bottleneck for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition?
On a typical modern PC (Ryzen 5 5600, RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM), the tightest component for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is the CPU.