Can I Run Cities: Skylines?
Colossal Order released Cities: Skylines in 2015. It is a simulation strategy game, published by Paradox Interactive. It offers a single player campaign. Its Metacritic score stands at 85. Progress follows the account through Steam Cloud rather than sitting on one disk. It carries 135 achievements. Builds exist for macOS and Linux as well as Windows. Steam Workshop support means community content is part of the picture, and a heavy mod load can push the real requirements past anything the publisher lists. Steam lists support for 10 languages. Being over ten years old, its ceiling was set by the hardware of a different era. With more than 218 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™ I7 930 | AMD® FX 6350 |
|---|---|
| GPU | Nvidia® GeForce™ GTS 450 (1 GB) | AMD® R7 250 (2 GB) | Intel Iris Xe G7 (Tiger Lake) |
| VRAM | 1 GB |
| RAM | 8 GB |
| Storage | 4 GB |
| OS | Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit |
| DirectX | 9 |
Recommended requirements
| CPU | Intel® Core™ I7 2700K | AMD® Ryzen 7 2700X |
|---|---|
| GPU | Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 580 (1.5 GB) | AMD® Radeon™ RX 560 (4 GB) |
| VRAM | 5 GB |
| RAM | 16 GB |
| Storage | 4 GB |
| OS | Windows® 10 Home 64 bit |
| 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
The game is set in an open sandbox. Play is structured around a city the player lays out. 10 storefront images show what the game actually looks like in motion. The load here grows with the save. An empty map tells you very little about how the machine will cope once the build is large.
Why Cities: Skylines is demanding
Cities: Skylines is undemanding on the graphics side. Its Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 (1 target sits well below our RTX 3060 reference, so most cards still in service clear Cities: Skylines. Cities: Skylines needs 64 bit Windows. Its 16 GB RAM requirement matches what a typical machine already has. Disk footprint is light, near 4 GB. Video memory is not the constraint here, at 5 GB. Minimum and recommended sit far apart here, which usually means Cities: Skylines scales hard with the hardware you give it.
This reading comes from the published requirements and our own benchmark tables, not from the store listing.
Can you run Cities: Skylines?
Cities: Skylines is light on hardware. Its minimum, Nvidia® GeForce™ GTS 450 (1 GB) | AMD® R7 250 (2 GB) | Intel Iris Xe G7 (Tiger Lake), 8 GB RAM, about 4 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: GPU
Projected by resolution
| Resolution | Projection | Headroom |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p | Comfortable | 3.7x |
| 1440p | Comfortable | 2.08x |
| 4K | Borderline | 0.92x |
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.
Common GPUs
| Graphics card | Verdict |
|---|---|
| GTX 1060 6 GB | Runs great |
| GTX 1060 Laptop | Runs great |
| GTX 1650 4 GB | Runs well |
| GTX 1650 Laptop | Runs well |
| RTX 2060 6 GB | Runs great |
| RTX 2060 Laptop | Runs great |
| RTX 3060 12 GB | Runs great |
| RTX 3060 Laptop | Runs great |
| RTX 4060 8 GB | Runs great |
| RTX 4060 Laptop | Runs great |
| RTX 3070 8 GB | Runs great |
| RTX 3070 Laptop | Runs great |
| RTX 4070 12 GB | Runs great |
| RTX 4070 Laptop | Runs great |
| RX 6600 8 GB | Runs great |
Each card is compared against Cities: Skylines's published GPU requirement, assuming an otherwise-capable PC. Laptop rows use the real mobile chip's benchmark, a mobile GPU is always slower than its desktop namesake.
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Frequently asked questions
Can my PC run Cities: Skylines?
Upload your DxDiag file to Idxdiag's free checker and get a component by component compatibility verdict for Cities: Skylines in seconds. No install required.
What are the minimum system requirements for Cities: Skylines?
The minimum requirements are CPU: Intel® Core™ I7 930 | AMD® FX 6350; GPU: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTS 450 (1 GB) | AMD® R7 250 (2 GB) | Intel Iris Xe G7 (Tiger Lake); 8 GB RAM; OS: Windows® 10 Home 64 Bit.
How much storage does Cities: Skylines need?
Cities: Skylines needs about 4 GB of available storage.
Can an RTX 3060 run Cities: Skylines?
The RTX 3060 runs Cities: Skylines comfortably, clearing the title's GPU requirement with room to spare.
What is the bottleneck for Cities: Skylines?
On a typical modern PC (Ryzen 5 5600, RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM), the tightest component for Cities: Skylines is the GPU.