A while back, I wrote a DF Direct Weekly blog explaining why Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s PC port is crucial for the future of the platform, and last week’s official specs reveal is validation of sorts for that initial article. The game remains a highly important release for the PC format because it’s the first game built from the ground up around PlayStation 5’s solid-state storage and hardware decompression capabilities – and we now have confirmation that the port will be using DirectStorage, the Microsoft API designed to bring current-gen console-level storage performance to the PC platform.
What’s interesting is how it’s going to be deployed. GPU-driven DirectStorage is supported on Ratchet and Clank, the idea being that the decompressing the data from storage is handled by the graphics hardware rather than the CPU. However, it seems that the port will carry out internal bandwidth and compute benches on the fly – and then decide which PC component works best for the decompression tasks. So, for example, let’s say you have a highly performant CPU like a Core i9 13900K, but you have a less capable graphics card. The game may decide that instead of using GPU resources, it’ll switch to the thread-heavy CPU instead.
Either way, we can’t wait to check this out for a bunch of reasons, but I personally believe it’s going to be the decompression situation that’s more important than the presence of the SSD itself. After all, I’ve already run Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on the absolute worst SSD money can buy for the PlayStation 5. The 250GB SN750 SE has under-spec read speeds, and no DRAM cache, yet plays the game just fine. I’ve even taped off pins on the drive to reduce its read speeds to 1.7GB/s and everything still worked OK. This suggests that it’s the hardware decompression tech within the PS5 that is doing the heavy lifting – and it’ll be interesting to see how both CPU and GPU solutions handle the game.
DF Direct Weekly #120: Ratchet & Clank/Starfield PC Specs Reveals, Cut Halo Content Coming To MCC Watch on YouTube00:00:00 Introduction00:00:48 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC requirements drop00:29:11 Halo cut content returning to Master Chief Collection00:35:40 X68000 Mini retro device has issues00:38:26 Limited Run Games shows off new and old titles00:47:02 Leaked document details Sega of America’s struggles01:05:40 What’s up with the new HDMI 2.1 capture cards? And can’t PCs record 4K120 internally?01:12:10 Does console software receive system-wide performance boosts over the course of a generation?01:15:42 Why has Nvidia, besides the Switch, checked out of consoles?01:23:24 Why was the Digital Foundry Twitter account in a Twitter Spaces event on UFOs?01:26:32 Do you have plans for more conference commentary videos?
At this point, it’s worth lauding developer Nixxes for actually delivering a recommended PC specification list that is actually . It’s highly annoying when lists come our way featuring a range of hardware for minimum and recommended specs, only to be provided with no crucial context whatsoever – such as what the target resolution and frame-rate is, and at what settings. Without this, the spec list is pointless. In stark contrast, Nixxes supplies a range of kit recommendations for a range of settings, along with a ballpark resolution and performance level you should be able to get. It’s the way it should be. There are even recommendations for upscaling on the higher end RT settings and remember, Nixxes has a policy of supporting all good upscaling solutions across all vendors – again, the way it should be.