Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart was the poster child for the PlayStation 5’s blazing fast solid-state drive — but on PC, it doesn’t technically need one at all...Sony, Insomniac, and lauded port developer Nixxes have revealed the game’s PC system requirements, which show you can get away with the standard spinning magnetic platters of a traditional hard drive if you’re satisfied with minimum spec (720p at 30fps).
Before you hold this up as the latest proof that the PS5’s SSD was unnecessary, you should also know there’s another technological innovation at work here: Microsoft’s DirectStorage, whose recent version 1.2 added the ability to buffer data from slow hard drives before passing it along to your GPU to rapidly decompress game assets.
In the blog post, Nixxes’ port of Rift Apart claimed to be the very first game to implement DirectStorage 1.2, and principal programmer Alex Bartholomeus specifically suggested it’s the reason you can use a traditional hard drive.