Can I Run The Elder Scrolls Online?
The Elder Scrolls Online is an action adventure game from ZeniMax Online Studios, released in 2017. Bethesda Softworks published it. The game supports cooperative play. It is localised into 7 languages according to the store listing. Critics scored it 80 on Metacritic. Being 9 years old, it was built for the hardware of its day, so a current machine usually has headroom over the published figures. Controller support is partial, so some input still falls back to the keyboard. Its Steam review count passes 133 thousand, a large enough sample that odd hardware behaviour would be known by now. Steam gates it behind an age check at 17. It is not Windows only, with macOS covered too.
Can your PC run it? →System requirements
Minimum requirements
| CPU | Intel® Core™ i5 2300 or AMD FX4350 |
|---|---|
| GPU | Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 1GB RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® 560 or AMD Radeon™ 6870) |
| VRAM | 1 GB |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| Storage | 150 GB |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit |
| DirectX | 11 |
Recommended requirements
| CPU | Intel® Core™ i5 2300 or AMD FX4350 |
|---|---|
| GPU | Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 4GB of RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 or AMD Radeon™ RX 570) or higher |
| VRAM | 4 GB |
| RAM | 8 GB |
| Storage | 150 GB |
| OS | Windows 10 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 Elder Scrolls Online places its action in a fantasy world, and the player works through one continuous open world. That openness is what costs performance. The Elder Scrolls Online has no loading walls to hide behind, so terrain and detail keep flowing in as the player moves. 6 storefront images show what the game actually looks like in motion.
Why The Elder Scrolls Online is demanding
Very little is asked of the GPU by The Elder Scrolls Online. Direct X 11.0 compliant video card scores low against the RTX 3060, putting The Elder Scrolls Online within reach of laptop and integrated graphics. Budget around 150 GB of storage for The Elder Scrolls Online. At 4 GB, VRAM is a non issue for The Elder Scrolls Online. A 64 bit version of Windows is required. At 8 GB, system memory is undemanding.
This reading comes from the published requirements and our own benchmark tables, not from the store listing.
Can you run The Elder Scrolls Online?
Free up space before installing The Elder Scrolls Online: it needs roughly 150 GB. Once it's on disk the rest is unremarkable, Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 1GB RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® 560 or AMD Radeon™ 6870) and 4 GB of RAM meet the minimum, so most current PCs handle the compute side.
Bottleneck: GPU
Large install. The Elder Scrolls Online needs about 150 GB of free storage.
Projected by resolution
| Resolution | Projection | Headroom |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p | Comfortable | 2.07x |
| 1440p | Runs well | 1.17x |
| 4K | Below the bar | 0.52x |
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 great |
| 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 The Elder Scrolls Online'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.
Similar games you can run
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Grand Theft Auto V
Red Dead Redemption 2
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DOOM EternalFrequently asked questions
Can my PC run The Elder Scrolls Online?
Upload your DxDiag file to Idxdiag's free checker and get a component by component compatibility verdict for The Elder Scrolls Online in seconds. No install required.
What are the minimum system requirements for The Elder Scrolls Online?
The minimum requirements are CPU: Intel® Core™ i5 2300 or AMD FX4350; GPU: Direct X 11.0 compliant video card with 1GB RAM (NVIDIA® GeForce® 560 or AMD Radeon™ 6870); 4 GB RAM; OS: Windows 10 64-bit.
How much storage does The Elder Scrolls Online need?
The Elder Scrolls Online needs about 150 GB of available storage.
Can an RTX 3060 run The Elder Scrolls Online?
The RTX 3060 runs The Elder Scrolls Online comfortably, clearing the title's GPU requirement with room to spare.
What is the bottleneck for The Elder Scrolls Online?
On a typical modern PC (Ryzen 5 5600, RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM), the tightest component for The Elder Scrolls Online is the GPU.