Can Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on PC match - and exceed - the PS5 experience?

Digital Foundry shares first impressions on an eagerly awaited port.

[PrinceOfAnger]

What will happen if the ps5 version run the game with RT for shadows, reflections and ambient occlusion all at once like the PC ver?

[Christopher]

What would happen if the PS5 were an up-to-date PC and not a 3-year-old console?

[AngainorG7X]

You are commenting a lot lately..

[purple101]

Nx gamer preview in

Ps5 smashes a pc with 2070 super. Literally smashes it to pieces.

[fr0sty]

Don't let the master race hear you say that, purple, they might get offended that a $400 box can do more than a mid-range that costs twice as much.

I wouldn't say it "smashes it to pieces" though,. 2070 is a 9TF GPU, PS5's is 10.28. Still a far better buy to get a PS5 and have a slightly more powerful GPU, a decent CPU and some pretty quick RAM that comes with wireless controllers that have haptic feedback, built in microphone/speaker, etc.

[Tapani]

With the PS5 settings and having the same amount of patches as the original release received in the first three months after release, RTX2070S will perform similarly to a PS5, albeit image quality will be better as DLSS Quality surpassed the IGTI solution Insomniac crafted for the game. Dynamic scaling similarly turned on, it will perform in three months with the same settings the same as a PS5, but with slightly better RT quality and slightly better general image quality.

This isn't a new thing, same thing happened with both Spider-Man PC ports when compared to PS5. The same thing will happen with the same engine to Ratchet as well.

Enjoying the game very much at a locked 120hz 4K using Frame Generation and DLSS Quality, everything maxed out. It is striking though, how small the differences are from the PS5 version, so whichever platform you play the game, you are set for a solid visual / performance ride.

[Computersaysno]

PS5 is about as fast as the 2070 Super on this, which at this point is a four year old graphics card. It came out 16 months before PS5 even hit the market. I would say that's pretty good news for anyone with anything better.

I love the fact that a modern PC can now play all top title Xbox games, most top Playstation titles within just a couple years of their launch, and emulate Switch titles very well at this point.

I can (and do) go from Flight Sim to Ratchet to Zelda on the same machine. Only people with much drool on their chin can deny that isn't fantastic if you're a gamer.

[RaidenBlack]

explode

[NovusTerminus]

Everything is a trade off on fixed / older hardware. The PC can do this because new hardware hits the market very quickly due to the modular nature.

The PS5 running this game with RT shadows, reflections and AO is possible... but what do you lower to free up that extra power to get that result? And is it worth the trade off's required? Lower resolution is an easy one, but then do people want to see their game dynamically drop to 540p? lower fidelity such as texture quality, draw distance (For me one of the worst things to lower because it breaks immersion SO badly) and a variety of other things that would ALL have to come down just to put in this lighting, because lighting and shadows are some of the most demanding things to render.

Really it's just not worth the trade off, but if you've got a PC and a 3080 or above then there is less trade off required and you just get added detail.

[blackblades]

Ps5 pro

[fr0sty]

Being that RT shadows look terrible on the PC version, according to this video (look at the blocky shadows on the plants on the ground), does it really matter?

[LordoftheCritics]

I'm in the 1% of PC owners who can play this game with all cranked at 4k.

But I preferred to play it at launch on PS5.

It will look very good and probably surpass the PS5 for the 1%.

For the rest, they will be fine tuning till they're done compromising.

[specialguest]

For the 1%? You're being way too generous towards the PS5. People forget that the game only runs at 30 fps on quality mode which has a fluctuating resolution between 1800 and 2160. It doesn't take a top 1% PC rig to run at 30fps. The performance mode and RT mode runs at 60fps, but has less people and objects in the scene. Performance resolution fluctuates from 1080 to 1800 and RT from 1080 to 1440. The RT is only for reflection, unlike the PC version which includes a variety of graphical elements. This is all info from a Digital Foundry video analysis

[VariantAEC]

@specialguest
Totally wrong, the PS5 runs this very same game in fidelity mode at a rock solid 40FPS so long as you have a 120hz display connected to the console.
4K40 with RT that still pushes above what PC can do right now with the first round of patches (that dropped earlier on July 28th 2023 for PC).

RT shadows still pale in comparison to shadow map shadows in most cases with the recent update on PC and again 40 vs 60 at 4K.
Putting it another way we're comparing a $500 console to a $2,500-$3,000 desktop PC and even with patches PS5 is coming out on top.

DF does not want to compare Fidelity mode at 40FPS against PC because it doesn't look good for PC.

[Angyobangyo]

Probably run at 5 fps before inevitability going supernova.

[itsmebryan]

@Prince
Is the answer... explode?

[darksky]

What kind of nonsense comment is that? Who says PS5 is not running those RT effects all at once?

[PrinceOfAnger]

the PS5 version only had ray-traced reflections and nothing more.

PC has more RT options.

[Computersaysno]

PS5's RT performance mode which is the best compromise for the console is roughly equivalent on PC to something like 1080p, high preset, RT reflections on, 40FPS.

In this mode on PS5 it runs in a resolution window between 1080p and maximum 1440p, but the reconstruction is not as good as DLSS.

DLSS is noticeably better than the custom solution used on PS5 so the image quality comes out better at comparable resolutions. Especially with ray tracing enabled, because you virtually eliminate the ghosting on PS5 from the temporal reconstruction.

As usual DLSS is the bee's knees. It doesn't seem like you need a monster machine to match PS5. About the kind of thing we have seen the past few years really to get a comparable experience, lower mid range RTX card with any NVMe SSD does the job.

[VariantAEC]

Actually it looks like you need a beast of a PC to compete with this game. Alex of Digital Version just dropped a 30 minute analysis which basically showed PS5 is punching well above it's weight class in most areas. The only areas PC is doing things better is where RT is concerned and even there the differences really look to come down to base resolution which is dynamic on PS5, but can be fixed on PC.

My old laptop runs the game well in my opinion... but it must be said that in my opinion a good running PC game is one that crashes less frequently than Crysis 1 on a low to mid spec AMD powered laptop from 2009. I'm regularly playing games on consoles that crush PCs when running the same software. I have a PC that blitzes through Crysis 3 maxed at 1080p60 now, but still can't maintain a 30FPS in NFS: Most Wanted (2011) with most settings at their lowest including resolution.
PS3 was the best place to play MFS:MW (2011) unequivocally. So you'd think my newer laptop (the one running FH5 at max settings with RT off in-game at 1440p30 or at 1080p60 with ultra shaders instead of extreme, whatever the first step down from the highest static environmental geometry quality is and again one step down from the highest car reflection quality setting)... my 2017 year model laptop with a GTX 1070 is running Xbox Series X games better than Xbox Series X is!

That very same laptop is being crushed by Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Going back to NFS:MW for a second, even more than a decade later on my far more powerful laptop rocking HW that is leagues more powerful than what is required to run the game, NFS:MW (2011) runs like trash. People forget games like that, but they exist Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is already shaping up to be a far better game than that but to believe it will run on HW like mine as well or with the same visual settings at even quarter res... well it's not happening yet. I'll check back with you in 6 months under a different article about yet another PS5 to PC port sometime in the not too distant future and we'll see if Nixxes was able to get HW as old as mine to run PS5 games as well as it runs Xbox Series X games.

[Christopher]

https://youtu.be/I71u7j1Izw...

For that test on different spec PCs vs PS5 w/SDD (they already did HDD and say the weak SDD is a lot better than the HDD), kind of feels like the game was possible but definitely lots of delay/lagging in those transition.

"The actual speed of the drive after a certain threshold feels exactly the same"

Yeah, that's because it's obvious they wanted the falling animations to complete as part of the transition. It's their version of walking down a hallway, but it's playing the animation at its normal speed. I question how they didn't get that in the video. I feel like they were playing dumb on why it wasn't faster on the faster SSDs when it's obvious there's a cap on the animation.

[I_am_Batman]

I don't think that's what they meant. They were mainly wondering why the transitions weren't as smooth as they are on PS5 considering the 4090 had plenty of resources to spare for decompression. It indicates a potential bottleneck either in the DirectStorage API or the Nvidia driver in regards to RTX IO.

As for the animation, I wish they put the effort in to change that fixed animation into one that ends with a short idle animation loop that repeats until the loading is finished. That would've made the section much less jarring on slower drives.

[Christopher]

***I don't think that's what they meant. They were mainly wondering why the transitions weren't as smooth as they are on PS5 considering the 4090 had plenty of resources to spare for decompression.***

That's literally what they meant. I even quoted them on it there. They were wondering why transitions weren't faster on SSDs and why there was a threshold on the transition.

Here is a direct copy of their comments on it:

"So there's a lot of things to talk about, the thing we just went through. We've tested this multiple times before and one things we're seeing kind of regardless of settings on PC. If you're using like a 7100 MB per second or 7.1GB per second NVM3 right next to a 3.5GB NVMe they do that exact same sequence with the exact same frame rate and the exact same loading time in between for each portal. The actual speed of the drive after a certain threshold doesn't even matter anymore for the performance of doing it. Yup. Kind of surprising. You would usually expect there to be differences there so it feels kind of arbitrary in the end after a certain point in time."

[I_am_Batman]

@Christopher:
I've watched the video, you don't have to repost the transscript for me to read. The segment right after the one you quoted talks about the fact that neither the drive, nor the CPU & GPU were maxed out and yet the loading wasn't as smooth as it is on PS5.

I can't read their mind I'm just willing to give them the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they were "playing dumb" for some reason. With that said, I'm more interested in talking about the technical aspects of the port instead of accusing or defending the DF guys.

[Christopher]

***The segment right after the one you quoted talks about the fact that neither the drive, nor the CPU & GPU were maxed out and yet the loading wasn't as smooth as it is on PS5. ***

But I'm talking about what I posted, not the conversation after that about something else.

[VariantAEC]

Rich's PC was CPU limited. During rift transitions my Intel-powered laptop did a better job loading without any ridiculous hitching next to Rich's PC mine was buttery smooth (which is just to say hitching was less extreme despite rocking a Pascal GPU and 7th gen Intel CPU made for laptops back in 2017). The game is well optimized... though I hear no sound, maybe that's more due to the driver update and how Windows messes everything up all the time? Seriously other game apps play sound just fine, just this one is messed up.

There were glitches found in the original PS5 release that forced the game to abandon loading the other stage which proved these animations were always able to loop on PS5. The interstitial scenes existed likely because the didn't have the time to optimize these transitions to a single flash for example the portal opens directly in the new level. We kind of see how far Insomniac came along since this game released in the frame-to-frame transition we were shown in the Spider-Man 2 gameplay reveal.

If PS5 can literally load a different location (basically a totally different stage) in under 1/30th of a second like they showed... that's quite a bit faster loading than we've ever seen anywhere in 3D gaming before (loading wasn't even that fast on N64). Even just sticking to Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, PS5 is loading in content 50-70 percent faster than far more expensive and otherwise technically way more capable PCs can manage!

In the end Mark Cerny, PlayStation and Insomniac Games were not lying after all.

[crazyCoconuts]

@varient, I think that's right. PS5 spent less time loading assets compared to the top specced PC years after PS5 released, and that's the headline - that the optimizations Cerny talked about are probably being demonstrated here. Instead the DF guys are talking about how disappointed they are with the PC version... Dunno, trying not to say they continue to sound like MS shills, but they seem to take every opportunity to avoid the headline here

[fr0sty]

Not just avoiding the headline, but making sure to take a jab at the dual sense battery life along the way.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

Someone that understands the actual video. Thank you.

[MWH]

Try writing them and ask about it.

[I_am_Batman]

(Sorry replied to the wrong comment)
@VariantAEC: Yeah, I've looked at more tests with the game and I've seen most of the transition animations loop. Rich's test system definitely isn't up for the task here. To be fair, most of the game will probably work ok, but I wouldn't consider hitching cutscenes, stream stuttering in set-pieces and game crashes to be a playable experience even for minimum requirements, so I'd change the recommendations if I were Sony. Especially because that upscaled "720p" presentation looks horrendous.

The Spider-Man 2 character switching we've seen in the gameplay trailer is much less demanding than the planet rifts in R&C. Don't get me wrong it is very clever and potentially even more impressive to some, because it's seamless, but it presumably flushed and loaded the new assets during the zoom in of the cutscene, where the camera can't be controlled by the player. There's probably more assets already in memory that can be reused too. I find the swing/glide speed demonstrated after the character switch to be a much more impressive example of Insomniac's asset streaming pipeline than the character switch itself.

The PS5 is certainly the closest we've been to cartridge based systems in terms of loading speed. less than 2 seconds to fill the entire memory pool is impressive and it's up to developers to figure out creative ways to make use of that. The next couple of years will be very exciting, especially now that current-gen games are the focus.

[darthv72]

So this is just a quick look at comparing max PC to min PC to PS5. I really hope Alex adds in steamdeck to his full PC analysis video when it comes out.

[purple101]

Nx gamer just released what your looking for. Its not good news for steam deck I'm afraid. Long waits.

[Number1TailzFan]

Wouldn't expect much, that said it looks like it actually runs (kind of) and is somewhat playable even on a pretty junk PC going by the PC Rich was using. Which is surprising.

[jznrpg]

It’s great on PS5 is all I know. With PC it always depends on your setup.

[Good-Smurf]

And I wished it was that simple on PC, sometimes certain games hated your high end setup and causes all kinds of issues and games that simply won't run after awhile.
I don't have to worry about all that on PS5 it just works and runs great.

[Walweeze]

End of the day its a great game to play. Hope PC gamers enjoy it and that it does well so we can get another ratchet game before the end of the ps5 era

[jonivtec]

Pc or not...i enjoyed it a lot on PS5...great game...great for pc gamer to,they have now a chance to try it.

[Sonic1881]

I can't wait to wait to try this out on PC. I didn't get a chance to play it the first time it came out

[VariantAEC]

Me neither, I was staring at the disc waiting for PS5 availability for nearly a YEAR! When I finally got my PS5 (over 1 year ago already) I played it and now I'm playing it again... and PS5 is basically the place where I will continue to enjoy R&C:RA, but the PC version is still great.

[FlameWater]

Oh no you don't need 321932103 cores and 3921038921 tflops to play current gen TrIplE AAAAAAa.
Try not to overdoes on the copium ponies.

[Good-Smurf]

Took PC 10 times the price of PS5 to have slightly better graphics,Nice...
I'll be sticking to PS5 version the one that always works and runs great.
Will give this a try when there are mods and on discount.

[Number1TailzFan]

In one game, and DF tend to always use the highest end hardware for comparison, doesn't mean you need it or that it's even necessary.

How long did it take console to get above 60hz/fps? PC had that even with CRT screens, and again in 2012 with LCD monitors.

How long did it take for console to have SSD drives that sped up everything from startup, shutdown, software loading, game loading, map loading? Over a decade.

Also "10x the price of PS5" completely exaggerated crap even if building a PC with a 4090. Nice try at trolling tho.

[Tapani]

Exactly.

And if PS6 launches in 2028 as the ActivisionBlizzard/MS lawsuit documents revealed, then RDNA4 or at the very best mid-range RDNA5 is what it can use based on AMD's GPU roadmap. RDNA3 flagship is so far behind in path traced scenarios compared to Ada Lovelace, that they certainly won't be able to catch up 4090 with one generation.

Even if PS6 would go for a RDNA5, it would not be the flagship level tech, but heavily cut down chip. Plus it is becoming increasingly more difficult to produce great leaps in GPUs with the same money, as costs are going higher, meaning that the PS6 in 2028 would need to be very expensive, or use a very modest level of hardware at a more modest price.

Most likely, today a 4090 will perform better in fully path traced scenarios than a PS6 in 2028. I cannot see any evidence suggesting otherwise.

[Good-Smurf]

Not trolling, my used PS5 is $300 and my high end gaming laptop is $3500 or 119,990 THB.
That's how things priced in my country, y'all have it cheaper in the west is all nice and dandy.
We didn't and I didn't say anything about last gen consoles just PS5.
It's a great port that still require a patch to clean up some graphical bug once I'm done with PS5 version I'll try out PC version.

[repsahj]

I am impressed, PS5 RT shadows and reflections are a bit better than PC.

[PrinceOfAnger]

PS5 has only RT reflections.

[Kekewei]

The result must have disappointed a lot of ps haters... They've been chanting Sony Liar since the day PC version was announced

[Father__Merrin]

Good job on pc but why always the highest end tier DF do this all the time

[Good-Smurf]

They're like to flex as most tech enthusiasts do.

[Father__Merrin]

That's great to show what the top tier can do but it's done to make the other system look worse.

Why not an i5 with 3060s or lower

[sadraiden]

How can this even be a question? No one knows. It's also subjective. Better make an HOUR LONG VIDEO gushing about how much I love R&C.

[Binarycode]

A 2070s is nowhere near to a PS5.

Stop spreading lies.

PS5 trounces it in throughput of textures, pixels per scene. Basically everything. That's without the larger ram pool.

The PS5 is in between a 3060ti and 3070.

https://www.techpowerup.com...

https://www.techpowerup.com...