Dune: Awakening is a survival MMO from Funcom and on PC it wants at least 16 GB of RAM, a graphics card on the level of a GTX 1060 and, mandatorily, an SSD. It runs on Unreal Engine 5 and there is no native macOS version. Below you’ll find both official requirement tables, the answer to the Mac question and where to buy and download the game on PC.
Quick summary:
- Minimum: Intel Core i5-7400 or Ryzen 3 1200, 16 GB RAM, GTX 1060 6 GB, 60 GB on an SSD
- Recommended: Intel Core i7-10700K or Ryzen 5 2600X, 16 GB RAM, RTX 3070 8 GB, 75 GB on NVMe
- The game won’t take a classic mechanical drive; an SSD is a condition, not a recommendation
- There is no macOS version and Funcom hasn’t announced one; on a Mac you’re left with cloud gaming
- You buy it on Steam or in the game’s official store, and the console versions have their own pricing (we cover that separately)
If you’re still working out which language you’ll actually be playing in, we have a separate overview: which languages does Dune: Awakening support? You’ll find the rest of our Arrakis guides in the Dune: Awakening guide hub.
Dune: Awakening system requirements in a table
Funcom published two official tiers, minimum and a recommended setup. The figures are identical on Steam and on the game’s official blog.
| Component | Minimum requirements | Recommended requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 10 64-bit (or newer) | Windows 10 64-bit (or newer) |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-7400 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200 | Intel Core i7-10700K / AMD Ryzen 5 2600X |
| Memory | 16 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) / AMD Radeon 5600XT (6 GB) | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (8 GB) / AMD Radeon 6700XT (12 GB) |
| DirectX | version 12 (the graphics interface the game requires) | version 12 |
| Storage | 60 GB of free space, SSD mandatory | 75 GB of free space, NVMe mandatory |
| Connection | Broadband internet connection (the game is online and won’t start offline) | |
Notice that the RAM is the same in both columns. Sixteen gigabytes is the hard lower limit the game needs to load Arrakis, and officially nobody is asking you for more memory in the recommended setup. Almost the entire difference between minimum and recommended sits in the processor, the graphics card and drive speed.
Minimum system requirements: what to expect from them
Minimum means the game will start and be playable, not that it will look the way it does in the trailers. For the minimum configuration Funcom doesn’t state what resolution or frame rate it is targeting, so no official figure along the lines of “60 FPS on minimum” exists, and don’t believe anyone who presents one as fact from the developers.
The GTX 1060 with six gigabytes is a card from 2016 and the Core i5-7400 is from the same era. On a build around those parts, count on low detail and on having to play around with upscaling.
At launch the game supported NVIDIA DLSS 4 with frame generation, AMD FSR and Intel XeSS 2. On an older graphics card that’s a substantial help, because the game renders at a lower resolution and fills in the rest, so you squeeze extra frames out of it without swapping the card.
One item in the table isn’t a recommendation but a condition: the SSD. Dune: Awakening streams open world textures on the fly, and on a classic mechanical drive that doesn’t work. If you have the game on an HDD, expect stuttering when crossing the desert, or outright problems starting it.
Recommended system requirements: why the game wants NVMe
The recommended setup raises the bar to an RTX 3070 with 8 GB of memory and a Core i7-10700K. That’s hardware from around the turn of 2020, available second-hand today for reasonable money, and it’s the level at which the game runs the way Funcom designed it.
The last row of the table is more interesting, though. For the minimum an SSD is enough; for the recommended configuration it says NVMe.
SSD vs. NVMe: what’s the difference
A classic SATA SSD reads data at roughly 500 MB/s. An NVMe drive connects directly to the PCIe bus and handles several times that. Dune: Awakening loads the desert textures continuously based on where you move, so drive speed shows up not only in how long loading takes, but also in whether the surrounding landscape sharpens smoothly or in jumps. That’s why NVMe is in the recommended requirements and not just in a footnote.
There’s a practical conclusion in that for you. When you have to decide where to put the last of your money while putting together a build for this game, the drive matters as much as the graphics card. You’ll feel the difference between a SATA SSD and NVMe every time you move to a new part of the map.
How to test your build before you buy the game
The most reliable test is to play it. Funcom repeatedly runs a free trial of Dune: Awakening on Steam that gives you 10 hours of play, with the clock only running while you’re actually playing. Character progress, level, skill and tech points and the contents of your backpack carry over into the full game if you buy it afterwards.
The trial isn’t permanently available; Funcom opens it at specific times. Here’s how to go about it:
- Open the game’s Steam page
- Check whether a free trial or free weekend is currently listed
- Download it and play an hour in a larger settlement or in the open desert, in other words where your build takes the biggest hit
- Compare what the game offered you as its default settings against the table above
Before the game’s release there was a standalone Character Creator & Benchmark Mode on Steam that let you measure performance without playing. Funcom removed the download button for it from the game’s page, so don’t count on it today. If you don’t want to wait for the trial, the other route is the regular sale. Steam discounts the game often, and at the time of writing a 50% discount off the €49.99 price was running.
Tip: run the trial without touching the settings. You’ll see what the game assigns itself based on the hardware it detects, and that’s a decent estimate of where your build sits.
Does Dune: Awakening work on a Mac?
No. There is no native macOS version and Funcom hasn’t announced one. Steam lists Windows as the only supported platform for the game; there isn’t even a Mac requirements tab there. Linux is in the same position.
Two routes remain and neither one is an official port.
Cloud gaming is the sensible one of the two. The game runs on a remote machine and the picture is streamed to your Mac, so your own hardware doesn’t matter. Dune: Awakening is available on GeForce NOW and on Shadow PC, and both services have a macOS app. You pay a subscription and you need a stable connection, because you will notice input lag in combat. On GeForce NOW it’s what’s known as an Install-2-Play title: the game is installed onto the server before streaming, which takes a while the first time you launch it.
Compatibility layers such as CrossOver are the other option. These are software that can run Windows programs on a Mac, and CodeWeavers maintains its own compatibility page for Dune: Awakening. Funcom doesn’t support this route, player reports differ, and the game also uses the BattlEye anti-cheat, so nobody guarantees how it behaves on an unofficial layer. If your Mac is your work machine and gaming is a bonus, the cloud is the safer choice.
The third option is the most direct: play it on a console. Dune: Awakening releases on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on September 22, 2026 and we’ve devoted a separate article to the prices and edition contents.
Where to buy and download Dune: Awakening on PC
The most common route is Steam. That’s where you buy the game, that’s where you download it from and that’s where updates and access to the live servers come from. Steam isn’t the only official channel, though: a key for the PC version is also sold by the game’s official store, which Funcom runs through its payment partner. You activate the key from it on Steam, so the game then runs exactly the same and you get patches the same way as if you’d bought it directly on Steam.
The base price is €49.99. Steam discounts the game regularly, and at the time of writing a 50% discount was running, that is €24.99, valid until October 1. Alongside the base edition there are also higher editions with bonus content; you’ll find the breakdown on the game’s page itself.
Where it comes out cheapest
While the 50% discount runs, that is until October 1, the cheapest option is Steam at €24.99. The official store doesn’t mirror the discount, so you won’t buy it cheaper there right now and there’s no point complicating things.
Once the discount ends, it flips. At the official Dune: Awakening store you enter code MAGIC10 at checkout, take 10% off and pay roughly €45 instead of the €49.99 Steam will be charging once the sale is over. You get a key that you activate on Steam.This is an affiliate link. If you buy through it, GamersTogether earns a commission. It doesn’t change your price or what we write here.
The game is buy-to-play. You pay once and there’s no monthly subscription attached, which Funcom confirmed in its official blog before release. Content updates come free and paid DLC is optional.
If you’re weighing up the PC version against the console one, we cover the price on PS5 and Xbox and what the console launch adds in a separate article about the console versions.
FAQ
If you have at least an Intel Core i5-7400 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200, 16 GB of RAM, a GTX 1060 with 6 GB and 60 GB of free space on an SSD, you meet the official minimum and the game will start. On lower settings and with the help of DLSS or FSR. For a smooth experience, stay closer to the recommended setup with an RTX 3070.
An SSD is mandatory for Dune: Awakening, not recommended. Funcom lists it right in the minimum requirements, because the game loads open world textures on the fly. The recommended configuration goes one step further and calls for a faster NVMe drive.
No, there is no native macOS version and Funcom hasn’t announced one. Steam lists Windows as the only supported platform for the game. On a Mac you’re left with cloud gaming via GeForce NOW or Shadow PC, or unofficial compatibility layers such as CrossOver, which the developers don’t support and which guarantee neither performance nor stability.
The simplest option is Steam, where you buy the game, download it and get updates and server access. The second official route is the game’s store, which sells a key to activate on Steam. The base price is €49.99, and until October 1 a 50% discount runs on Steam, that is €24.99. While the sale lasts, Steam is cheaper; once it ends, buying in the official store with code MAGIC10 works out at roughly €45.
Funcom periodically opens a free trial on Steam with 10 hours of play, which don’t count the time you simply leave the game running. Your character progress carries over into the full game. Keep an eye on the game’s Steam page to see whether the trial is currently listed.
Yes. At launch the game supported NVIDIA DLSS 4 with frame generation, AMD FSR and Intel XeSS 2. On weaker cards that’s the fastest way to raise your frame rate without touching the hardware.
Yes. Dune: Awakening is a shared survival title with a server-side world and the official requirements list a broadband internet connection. You can play a large part of the campaign on your own, but the game won’t start without a connection.
Yes, the console versions release on September 22, 2026, but the system requirements in this article apply to PC only. You’ll find the price, editions and the contents of the console launch in our article on the PS5 and Xbox version.
The system requirements and prices are verified as of September 21, 2026 against official sources: the game’s Steam page and the official blog at duneawakening.com. Prices change with sales, so you’ll always find the current figure in the store itself. If the game will run for you according to the tables, dive into the other parts of our guide: read the Dune: Awakening review, go through the gameplay overview, the Chapter 2 quests and the breakdown of augments, or head back to the Dune: Awakening hub.