Ratchet And Clank: Rift Apart PC Requirements Reveal How The Game Can Run Without SSD

Sony has revealed the official PC requirements for its upcoming port of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and also explained how the game is playable on regular hard drives. When it was first revealed for PS5, Sony's marketing would often mention how Rift Apart was only possible on that system thanks to its solid state drive, but since then, a few advancements in rendering technology have made it possible for the game's PC port to work on older technology.

Rift Apart uses DirectStorage 1.2 and GPU decompression to load assets quickly, Nixxes senior lead programmer Richard van der Laan explained in a PS Blog update. "DirectStorage ensures quick loading times, and GPU decompression is used at high graphics settings to stream assets in the background while playing. Traditionally, this decompression is handled by the CPU, but at a certain point, there is an advantage to letting the GPU handle this, as this enables a higher bandwidth for streaming assets from storage to the graphics card. We use this to quickly load high-quality textures and environments with a high level of detail."

DirectStorage fully utilizes the speed of fast PCIe NVMe SSDs, but is also compatible with SATA SSDs and even traditional hard disk drives, making the game capable of using the same technology for loading data regardless of the storage device that you have installed. According to the PC requirements listed below, you'll only be able to run the game on an HDD using very low settings, and for everything else, an SSD is recommended.

Nixxes added that Rift Apart will feature a third fancy lighting effect in addition to ray-traced reflections and ray-traced shadows, as the PC port will have ray-traced ambient occlusion as an optional extra, with various quality levels to choose from.

The PC port of Rift Apart comes just a few months after The Last of Us Part 1 arrived on that platform in an infamously rough state. Several of the many issues that plagued the game after launch included characters being too wet and strange character jitters.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart PC Requirements

Minimum (720p 30fps)

• Very low graphics settings
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon RX 470
• Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 3100
• 8GB RAM
• 75GB Hard drive space (SSD recommended)

Recommended (1080p 60fps)

• Medium graphics settings
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700
• Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• 16GB RAM
• 75GB SSD space

High (1440p 60fps or 4K 30fps)

• High graphics settings
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800
• Intel Core i5-11400 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600
• 16GB RAM
• 75GB SSD space

Amazing ray tracing (1440p 60fps or 4K 30fps)

• High graphics settings with high ray tracing options
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
• Intel Core i5-11600K or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
• 16GB RAM
• 75GB SSD space

Ultimate ray tracing (4K 60fps)

• High graphics settings with very high ray tracing options
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
• Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
• 32GB RAM
• 75GB SSD space