If your card doesn’t support DirectX 11, it’s time for an upgrade
Epic Games has announced that Fortnite will no longer support DirectX 10 graphics cards once season 10 begins in early August. That means only graphics cards that are compatible with DirectX 11 and newer will be able to run the game.
This is a complicated announcement from the Fortnite developer because the company never stated that it supported these older cards. According to Fortnite’s minimum system requirements, a card that supported DirectX 11 was always necessary to play the game. However, to help as many people as possible play the game, Epic built in stealth support for certain DirectX 10 graphics cards. But keeping the option open for this older standard could be limiting, and that support is going away at the end of this season.
If you aren’t sure whether your graphics card can support DirectX 11, don’t worry: There’s a really good chance that it does. Any Nvidia graphics card released since the GeForce GTS 450 will be just fine to run DirectX 11. The GTS 450 was originally released in 2010, so if your card is newer than that it should be fine. As for AMD cards, the range is even bigger. Any card since the Radeon HD 5450 should be fine with DirectX 11, which covers almost any card released by the company since 2009.
Epic said it’s making this change to allow the Fortnite development team to better optimize the game for all players by no longer ensuring compatibility with much older technology. The change should take effect with the first patch of season 10. While we don’t have a specific date for the start of season 10, season 9 will end Aug. 1, so the next season will likely begin on Aug. 2.
