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Ark: Survival Ascended system requirements

Studio Wildcard's controversial Unreal Engine 5 remaster of the dinosaur survival game will be tricky to run well if you've got a rig from the Jurassic Period.

Ark Survival Ascended system requirements: a red dinosaur with a wide mouth filled with sharp teeth appears in the middle of the screen.

What are Ark: Survival Ascended system requirements? Studio Wildcard announced the Ark: Survival Ascended remaster back in April 2023. The original game has been reworked to get the most out of the cutting-edge Unreal Engine 5, and the game will likely demand a lot from your gaming PC.

You won’t need the best graphics card to run Ark: Survival Ascended, but you might want an upgrade to maximize performance. The Ark: Survival Ascended Steam release has seen players complain of “single-digit frame rates” in some areas, so you’ll want to be fully equipped before you head out dino hunting.

Here are the Ark: Survival Ascended system requirements:

 

Minimum Recommended
OS Windows 10 64-bit or later Windows 10 64-bit or later
CPU Intel Core i7 6800K
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
Intel Core i5 10600K
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
AMD Radeon RX 5600XT
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
AMD Radeon RX 6800
RAM 16GB 32GB
Storage 70GB SSD 70GB SSD

The Ark: Survival Ascended minimum requirements are actually quite easy to reach, unless you’ve got a dinosaur of a rig. You’ll need an Intel Core i7 6800K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600X CPU alongside an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 or AMD Radeon RX 5600XT. As long as they’re not decades old, most gaming laptops and PCs should be able to run Ark: Survival Ascended, as long as they’re packing 16GB RAM.

Studio Wildcard doesn’t specify what level of performance the minimum specs guarantee, but we’d hope they’re good for 30fps at 1080p at the lowest settings. Of course, if the game’s poorly optimized, you could see dips below that.

The Ark: Survival Ascended recommended specs are a Velociraptor leap (we’re talking Jurassic Park size) ahead in terms of the graphics card expected. You’ll need an Intel Core i5 10600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X alongside an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800. An RTX 3080 especially is no joke, even with the arrival of the RTX 4000-series to push prices down.

The RAM requirement is doubled to 32GB, which will likely mean an upgrade for most of us. Again, we don’t know what level of performance to expect from these recommended specs, but we’d hope they can guarantee 60fps at high settings, with 1080p or 1440p resolution, considering how stringent they are.

The Ark: Survival Ascended download size is (supposedly) a fairly substantial 70GB. Be warned, though, when we downloaded the game onto our test rig, the download size was an even larger 76GB. Studio Wildcard also specifies that you’ll need to download it onto an SSD, so you should consider picking up one of the best SSDs for gaming to minimize load screens and maximize dino-blasting time.

Those recommended specs might have you running for the hills faster than if you’d seen a T. rex in the flesh, so check out our best dinosaur games list if you want your saurian gaming fix or best survival games list to hone your budding bushcraft skills.

Take our Ark: Survival Ascended system requirements PC benchmark test to answer the question… Can I run Ark: Survival Ascended?