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Batman AC - physx guff

straxusii

straxusii

straxusii

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18 May 2003
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Just started to play Batman AC, I loved the original and it was one of the few games I thought made a passable use of Nvidia physx.

With Batman AC though I can't believe the performance hit.

Checking the benchmark at 1920x1200, 4xMSAA, DX11 on high and extreme settings I average 58 fps in the benchmark, turning physx onto the lowest setting of normal takes it down to 38!

The quicker physx dies the better!


Edit: As a test I tried to see what settings I would need to sacrifice to keep the 58fps and normal physx, in summary I couldnt find it. Even losing DX11, all AA, medium settings I got to 52 fps.
 
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They vary as per the original Batman AA.

The smoke effects really add the to atmos, especially underground. The extra particles are quite good also.

I can take or leave the extra papers blowing around and in AC they have physx rugs which are supposed to act like a normal rug but instead seem to act as if they are made of gloopy childs slime.

So in summary definitely worth having but not at a ~40% fps hit
 
Minstadave said:
How many titles are supporting physx nowadays? Last time I checked it had slowed to a trickle.
Click to expand...

The only one I've ever actually seen or heard people talking about the physx is batman. Can't think of seeing any recent game I've looked at that has it implemented.
 
Do u need dx11 switched on to see the physix in action? I found if I disabled dx11 and left physix on, it ran really well.

I'm on ati hardware btw
 
Sorry little off topic, but is DX11 still broken in AC?

Currently 4GB into a painful 17GB download @ 560kb/s
 
it's a shame really

in a way the worst thing for physx was that it got bought up by nvidia - if they'd licenced it to both ATI and Nvidia then every game would have it by now

physx was supposed to be a way of creating more realistic worlds, not just a touch of eyecandy, however because not every card supports it it's restricted to a few cheap tricks, instead of being able to be used fully interactively, you can't have a game where on one PC a world is fully desctructable and on another it isn't, so it's been relegated to a few particle effects

you can't make an object interactive if it doesn't even exist in some versions of the game

you also need to bear in mind that physx was designed to run on a dedicated card, so if your PC is on the brink of playable anyway you can't really expect to turn on physx "for free", the help text even says you need a dedicated GTX460 to think about running physx on high


sn0w8 said:
Do u need dx11 switched on to see the physix in action? I found if I disabled dx11 and left physix on, it ran really well.

I'm on ati hardware btw
Click to expand...

then you only have "low" / CPU physx - physx won't run on ATI hardware at all



I'm running physx medium at 1080p everything else max on a GTX580 and it runs fine, haven't got to the train bit yet though
 
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Yeah, speed is the most my crap line can give me until I get infinity in a whopping 12 months time :D

The worst of it is, I can't play BF3 while it downloads, otherwise I'd be sorted for the wait.

I never saw the appeal of PhysX, even when I was on Nvidia cards. Some extra effects you could argue that they could have been implemented without physx.
 
andybird123 said:
it's a shame really

in a way the worst thing for physx was that it got bought up by nvidia - if they'd licenced it to both ATI and Nvidia then every game would have it by now
Click to expand...

No, they wouldn't.

If consoles had it they would. Games are primarily coded for consoles. The PC bit comes after the fact. Adding in frivolous rubbish costs money, so is highly likely to be subsidised by Nvidia.

And the thing is it's nothing that can't be done with software using a CPU. Sure, if you switch Physx to CPU it kills your CPU and runs like a dog, but Havok works perfectly well without the need for a PPU.

It's another pointless "one up" tech that should be dead and buried IMO.


pgi947 said:
I never saw the appeal of PhysX, even when I was on Nvidia cards. Some extra effects you could argue that they could have been implemented without physx.
Click to expand...


The only game it really made a huge difference in was Mirror's Edge. Which was an incredible game. Sadly it was very "cultish" so not as popular as it should have been.

Thus, it never sold enough units to warrant a sequel (Thanks to EA for making our minds up for us !).

There have been rumours of a sequel, but at that time you needed a Physx PPU (it was still owned by Ageia). Sadly they learned what happens when you sell an expensive card that adds effects. No one buys them.
 
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It does the same in Metro 2033 when Physx turned on it absolutely destroys the fps but i've noticed both games have a lot of mist/fog effects caused by it and that can cause fps to drop a lot.
 
Thing is there are plenty of games with heavy mist and fog that don't use physx but run well with all the eye candy up, defeats the point of physx really.
 
Yes it would be possible, though unless you play physx based games constantly its pointless, not to mention the extra heat and power draw by having a dedicated physx card.
 
It does look good, albeit a little pointless. And not worth the kind of performance hit, especially if you have a card actually dedicated to physx and it is still decreasing performance dramatically.
 
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