Real minimum requirements and some test data

[Kitsep]

The system requirements posted to the store page seem to be completely made up.

Here is what I DO know... on the following systems we (me and my friends) can achieve the following:

I will only be posting relevant specs, things with no performance impact like motherboard or power supply will be ignored. All drivers are up to date as of May 25th, 2018

system A:
CPU: Xeon X3470 @ 3.3 ghz
RAM: 32 gigs DDR3 ECC
GPU: GTX 1050 ti
Storage: SSD

can play on medium settings with no sky box at a solid 60 fps

system B:
CPU: FX 6300 @ stock
RAM: 16 gigs DDR3
GPU: RX 460
Storage: 7200 RPM HDD

can run on all low settings with no sky box at a nearly constant 60 fps, however it will sometimes dip below 50 during intense scenes. He has the same sky box crashing problem that I do.

system C:
CPU: i5 2400 @ stock
RAM: 12 gigs DDR3
GPU: HD 7770
Storage: 7200 RPM HDD

can run at somewhere around 25-40 fps depending on what is going on at all low settings with no sky box. The fps seems to vary wildly on this machine, but the owner says it is "more or less playable"

system D:
CPU: i7 2600 @ stock
RAM: 8 gigs DDR3
GPU: GTX 760
Storage: 7200 RPM HDD

runs rock solid at a mix of medium and low settings WITH the sky box at 55-60 fps, no crashing issues at all.


System A can run the game with some high settings, but to keep it at a solid 60 medium is required. However... if I enable the sky box, the game crashes after about 10 minutes regardless of what settings I use.

System B can run at 30+ on medium settings, but the game always crashes after exactly 25 minutes, no matter what he does while playing or what settings he uses.

System C can run on all medium settings at somewhere around 10 fps... oddly enough, this one doesn't have the crashing issues.

System D performs pretty much as it should, raising the settings simply lowers the fps, it has pretty much never crashed, not even on high settings. The only crash it experienced was when the owner of this system accidentally clipped through a rock and fell through the world.


I'm trying to compile a list of hardware that runs the game and what it is capable of... I would love for some of you to post your system specs, what settings you use and what FPS you can achieve, then I can slap everything into a spreadsheet and get a real world estimate of what the true minimum and recommended requirements to run the game are.

[=Sarsante=]

Originally posted by Ayyyyy Kitsep:

Originally posted by =T$ECore= Sarsante:

Although I like the effort most issues caused by what specs are in the store page are not an ark issue only.

Settings listed as minimum and recommended are different from every developers.

Minimum can be 30 fps with lowest settings at 480p, 20 fps at 720p or whatever devs/marketing team understand its playable. There is no standards whatsoever.

For recommended kinda the same applies, it does not mean its maxed out settings. Some games that have very high as max, recommended settings are for high preset at 1080p.

So when you dont have standards, people get lost and mad be ause they're missinformed and jump into wrong conclusions like Ive the minimum and cant run game X on low at 60 fps or Ive more than recommended and cant play game Y on ultra at 1440p.

I really think those minimum/recommended should have a what we consider those to be because we can only find that info from some devs.

That is why I'm including what should be more or less the approximate FPS values you can expect for certain hardware combinations. That is the exact issue I'm trying to solve

I know, but the real solution would be devs saying what they consider to be minimum and recommended instead of just throwing some specs out there.

[Vesuvius]

Originally posted by =T$ECore= Sarsante:

Originally posted by Ayyyyy Kitsep:

That is why I'm including what should be more or less the approximate FPS values you can expect for certain hardware combinations. That is the exact issue I'm trying to solve

I know, but the real solution would be devs saying what they consider to be minimum and recommended instead of just throwing some specs out there.

thats kinda the problem... WC has posted what they consider to be the absolute minimum instead of the recommended minimum to play the game without constant freezes and crashes due to hardware lol

[123]

My boyfriends rig has this hardware running at 1080p for 20-30 fps

Intel i7 6700hq 2.66ghz hyperthreaded

Nvidia GeForce gtx 965m 4gb

24gb ddr4 RAM

Mechanical Hdd, 1tb in size

Aberration forces him to switch from med/high to low/med settings.

[retsam1]

The problem with this "testing" is that:

1. It isnt under the exact same testing conditions. Map? Server? Single player(where 100% of the hardware resources are depending on the player's computer) Location on the map? Base structures? Dino parking lot? Mods being used? etc etc etc. Each person if going to have varations. This alone makes the value of the data weak at best.

2. Same, exact comps still can have variations: driver updates? 3rd party software being used in the background that may effect demand on one's system? And much more.

Take then 1+2 and you've a completely arbitrary "real minimum requirements".

That said, pc gamer did an article a while back on how demanding Ark is on rigs and did a pretty decent indepth testing there of:

https://www.pcgamer.com/ark-survival-evolved-is-the-new-crysis-of-pc-hardware/


With that then understood, my personal take has always been that Wildcard's min reqs to play the game are too low. If you can turn on the comp, see the screen and punch a tree, it constitutes playability to meet their defined min reqs. That doesnt necessarily mean any meaningful graphic fidelity or performance nor without being prone to crashes or other issues when put against not uncommon play conditions that stress a rig(high pop servers, urban sprawl of mall sized bases and dino lots, heavy use of modded content etc).

[Splićo]

ryzen 1300x
gtx1060 6gb
8gb ddr4
samsung 850 evo

30-60 fps, all epic but shadows and view distance on high (some areas on Ragnarok reduce fps by half with epic view distance), all sliders to max (sky and ground clutter), i would say i have around 40/45 fps on average.

Playing SP game with Dino count x2 (DinoCountMultiplier=2.000000), 1920x1080p

[King-Tek]

Intel i5-4430 at 3.0 GHz
GTX 960
24gb DDR3 ram
1T HDD

With my i5 rig I ran a test using vanilla "The Island" ARK, running no mods and all settings on low and no sky and resolution at 720p and all the other boxes unchecked. I get 144 fps with my avatar standing still looking over the beach.

But I play several large mods like S+, Extinction Core, Castle Keeps & Forts... overall there are 15 mods running. Modded ARK is barely playable and I am definitely NOT happy with the performance. I get an unstable and rangey 20-50 fps with settings on a mix of med to high and with sky slider at zero and resolution at 720p. Play is sometimes stuttered, especially near large bases or dense dino populations. On the Ragnarok map at the muddy marsh plain near the swamp, fps plunges down to 10 fps.

I think ARK needs a new $2500 monster gaming rig if I want to play "All Epic" mode at 1080p with several popular large mods running.

For my next build, I'm looking at:
i7-7820X @4.3GHz water cooled on X299-A motherboard
GTX 1080
32gb DDR4 ram
500gb Samsung 960 EVO SSD NVMe M.2

[Tango-Osmo]

Why do people always argue about how badly the game runs, i got 10-20 fps on max seettings with gtx 1080 (4k resolution) and 200 fps with amd HD 4850 lowest settings, 680x460 resolution no dynamic lights. Just tune the settings for your rig and it will be fine.

[Cataclisto]

The store page requirements were made back in 2015 when ark only had a small ammount of tames, was less to render and megabases were never considered.

Realistically its more like this for the minimum specs...
Windows version is correct.
Processor: gen 6-7 3.4 quad core as a non overclocked starting clock speed or better
Ram 16gb+
Graphics: Nvidia 950 gtx or amd aquivlent or better
Direct x version 11
storage: 260gb free (major patches overwrite game files with brand new files, thus needing your current games size worth of temporary free space) SSD recomended for mod users.

I'll write down my hardware specs in the next few hours to healp with your research.

[Cataclisto]

Windows 10 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz water cooled (overclocked)
Ram 16gb
1tb samsung SSD 850 pro
Nvidia gtx 950 ftw: (dont have it overclocked)

Tested around herbivore island - Fps is more stable there
Current FPS I get on epic settings, island map, Congested pve Multiplayer officials: 20-25fps Dips to 15fps when by congested areas
Current fps clean singleplayer, same map and location: 15-20fps No Dips.

When turning shadows down, ground clutter and a few other things fps goes up to 30 in both places. Researching fps will make your head hurt :P good luck.

[123]

can I just point out the sheer number of Samnsung 850 Evo's here in this thread, like, did I miss the memo? If I paid $1600 for this ASUS ROG and that Samsung Evo does the job just fine and I find out it's cheaper, I'm gonna be salty. And alot more cautious when this rig breaks down and it's time to replace it.

EDIT: ok the Evo is a harddrive. I feel better I thought it was a rig by itself.

[Kitsep]

Thank you everyone for the info! The datasheet is more or less up to date now, I still have a few left to put in from Facebook, but for now we are looking pretty good.

Keep it coming!

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by Impending Rentacle Tape:

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

My wife runs all epic in 1080p
~80fps (Except terrain shadows on medium)
i7 2700k @ 4.5Ghz
EVGA GTX 980ti Classified
24gigs DDR 3
Ark installed on Samsung 850 Pro

Edit: We run the server on her rig as well.

Just a bit of clarification for you. "All Epic" means "All possible settings turned to the maximum". You can not claim "All epic" when you have even 1 setting turned down even 1 notch from it's maximum possible. You might want to remember this if you keep posting in the forums.

1080p, all epic, except terrain shadows on medium. Not sure how else to spoon feed this info to you.

[SpeedFreak3]

i5-7400 CPU @ 3.00GHz
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
8GB DDR4 @2400MHZ
7200 RPM HDD

Using the medium preset yields 60+ FPS almost everywhere. No crashes, runs good, looks decent enough.

[Kitsep]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak3:

i5-7400 CPU @ 3.00GHz
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
8GB DDR4 @2400MHZ
7200 RPM HDD

Using the medium preset yields 60+ FPS almost everywhere. No crashes, runs good, looks decent enough.

Awesome, thank you!

[TheyCallMeGunny]

I would like to say that knowledge of spec compatibility goes a long way.

My current system:
i7-4790k, GTX 970 4GB, 16GB RAM.

I streamed Ark at 1080p/60fps for nearly 1 year. Maxed settings in every bar and slider.

My former system:

Phenom II X2 (unlocked to X3) 4.155GHz, 16GB RAM, GTX 760 2GB.
I played Ark at 1080p/60fps, streamed it at 720p/30fps, maxed with all settings up except Distance Field Ambient Occlusion off and Textures to High, not epic.

Those numbers are considering I played and streamed on the same PC with a lot else going on. That's several times what I see a lot of people reporting with similar rigs. But that's because I took care of my system and kept it running optimally.

Also, I will add that even with extensive mods, a local structure limit of 105,000 (and building to capacity) AND running the server on my own machine, AND Nvidia postFX in game via the beta drivers and overlays, i still managed to get 30fps or more recording the following videos, which allowed me to render them at 60fps by altering speed:

https://youtu.be/_Wd4wWbYGpE
https://youtu.be/VPNHaToS9mk
https://youtu.be/8cDXXrzMz_Y

So I'm not just claiming I got those framerates. I have plenty of old videos and viewers who can attest that with relatively basic or modern mid-line systems, you can run Ark very well.