Question Fortnite season 10 requires DX11 and up. Need help with hardware please.

balloonshark

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2008
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My nephew was looking forward to season 10 of Fortnite only to find the following message when trying to start the game.

"fortnite failed to find a graphics adapter with the minimum required dx11 feature level"

I gave him and old used computer with an Nvidia geforce GTX 275. Am I correct in thinking that it only supports DX10? Are there any known workarounds for the problem?

If not this GTX 960 should work since it supports DX12 correct? It should also be fine with the PSU if it can power the GTX 275 correct?
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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GTX 960 should work.

Although, honestly, I'm a little bit surprised by this change. It wouldn't seem prudent to suddenly alienate a whole segment of their player-base, just because they lack up-to-date hardware, especially, if the game played on their existing hardware already. Who's brilliant idea was this?

Edit: Sure that perhaps this isn't just a driver problem? Like, try the newest driver, and if that doesn't work, try an older one. Also try one of those driver uninstaller tools, and then do a clean install of the drivers.

It could well be a software-stack issue with the drivers or assorted bits, maybe a Windows Update gone partially astray.

What does DXDIAG show?
 

balloonshark

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2008
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GTX 960 should work.

Although, honestly, I'm a little bit surprised by this change. It wouldn't seem prudent to suddenly alienate a whole segment of their player-base, just because they lack up-to-date hardware, especially, if the game played on their existing hardware already. Who's brilliant idea was this?

Edit: Sure that perhaps this isn't just a driver problem? Like, try the newest driver, and if that doesn't work, try an older one. Also try one of those driver uninstaller tools, and then do a clean install of the drivers.

It could well be a software-stack issue with the drivers or assorted bits, maybe a Windows Update gone partially astray.

What does DXDIAG show?
No idea why they made this change. I'm betting there are plenty of unhappy gamers out there today.

I won't be able to look at the computer until tomorrow. I was trying to walk him through some things but I'm just not that familiar with Windows 10. I guess it has dx12 installed since it's Windows 10. It could be a driver and I have no idea if Windows 10 has been updating his drivers or not. I know for a fact that I haven't updated them and I bought the PC for him in 2016. I could try running DDU and reinstall the latest drivers but I'm not sure it's worth it if the game really only supports 11 now if that card doesn't. A quick search does show that the game doesn't support dx10 any longer.

I guess this is the official announcement. https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/graphics-card-support-changing-for-pc
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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They claim that "A DirectX 11-capable video card was always one of the system requirements". So I guess they're just removing the backwards-compatible rendering path, so that they can minimize dev resources, or optimize the more modern rendering paths.

I just checked my friend's video cards, his GTX 1050 and 260X are both DX12 cards. So no worries there.

Edit: As far as cards go, Bonaire is DX12 and supported. Consider a cheap R7 360/370 card? They were recently like $50-60 @ Newegg.

https://www.newegg.com/msi-radeon-r...7 360&cm_re=r7_360-_-9SIA2TY8PF5827-_-Product
 
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balloonshark

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2008
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The machine only has an Intel Pentium G3420 so I'm not sure if the GTX 960 I have or the cards you suggested would be overkill or not.

Edit: It has an Asus H81M-A motherboard so I also have no idea if it would be worth upgrading the cpu. I guess it would also need another Win 10 license with a cpu upgrade. If so that point it would be cheaper to grab a used PC.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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No, no need for a new Windows license, if all you are upgrading is the CPU and GPU.
 

DanNeely

Junior Member
Sep 19, 2009
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According to Steam DX10 or earlier cards are down to ~4% of their install base; unless Fortnite has a lot more players with ancient hardware it probably reached the point where maintaining the older code paths wasn't worth the effort needed.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
 

balloonshark

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2008
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No, no need for a new Windows license, if all you are upgrading is the CPU and GPU.
Thanks. That's good to hear.

According to Steam DX10 or earlier cards are down to ~4% of their install base; unless Fortnite has a lot more players with ancient hardware it probably reached the point where maintaining the older code paths wasn't worth the effort needed.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
Perhaps but they're making a boat load of money. I guess they calculated the decision though.
 

Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
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GTX 960 should work.

Although, honestly, I'm a little bit surprised by this change. It wouldn't seem prudent to suddenly alienate a whole segment of their player-base, just because they lack up-to-date hardware, especially, if the game played on their existing hardware already. Who's brilliant idea was this?

Back when WoW adopted DX11, there are a rather considerable FPS gain. I would think Fortnite made this decision based on how few of those older GPUs exist, and the pressing need to improve performance / features.