Spider-Man 2 Swings Onto Steam With Forgiving PC Specs

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 swings onto PC today, January 30th, offering a highly optimized port designed for diverse hardware. Nixxes Software, the port developer, detailed impressive PC features on the PlayStation Blog, promising "finetuned performance and fidelity across a broad range of hardware configurations."

A new trailer accompanies the announcement, highlighting the removal of the PSN requirement for PC players and the inclusion of advanced ray tracing features, including DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction. Nixxes graphics programmer Menno Bil explains the enhancements: "With ray reconstruction enabled, we see more detailed ray-traced reflections and better-defined ray-traced shadows...improvements in the ray-traced interiors and less ghosting and noise in the ray-traced ambient occlusion.”

Further enhancing visual fidelity are DLSS 3 and FSR 3.1 upscaling and frame generation technologies, along with Intel XeSS. While DLSS 4's Multi-Frame Generation isn't directly supported, Nvidia app users might leverage the newer transformer model for improved DLSS 3 Frame Generation quality.

Ultrawide monitor support extends to an impressive 48:9 aspect ratio, with cinematics viewable up to 32:9.

System requirements are categorized for ray-traced and non-ray-traced configurations. For players prioritizing performance over ray tracing, a modest system (Nvidia GTX 1650, Intel Core i3 8100, 16GB RAM) can achieve 720p at 30 FPS. High-end configurations targeting 4K 60 FPS with "Ray Tracing Ultimate" demand an RTX 4090, AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and 32GB RAM.

Steam Deck compatibility remains uncertain due to the relatively high RAM and graphics card requirements. Unlike the previous Spider-Man titles which had PS4 ports, Spider-Man 2's PS5 origins may present greater hardware demands.

Despite this, the broad range of supported configurations has garnered significant online praise, with Reddit users commending the comprehensive and impressive system requirements. The anticipation for strong performance is high.