Batman™: Arkham Knight Performance

Boomstick777 · 24 Jun 2015 at 23:00

The Arkham Knight defeats PC Gaming

The battle began some time yesterday, and has been RAGING all through the night, with no signs of stopping. Many believed that The Arkham Knight, newly-released from Rocksteady Academy for Heroes would be a symbol of great HOPE, and a worthy compatriot to PC gaming. BUT, in a shocking turn of events..

We followed the battle from the ground as it raged through the skies of Steam City, and it was NOT a pretty one. PC gaming’s raw power was, as always, unquestionable, but Arkham Knight’s unoptimization beam rendered that power useless. Our view of the battle was obscured by low textures and HORRIFICALLY-DIRE frame rates, but it looked as though Arkham Knight had the power to force PC gaming to fight at 30 FPS! PC gaming managed to hold his own until the scene with the batmobile, but then it was – It was all over. Is….is PC gaming dead?

http://wasduk.com/2015/06/24/the-arkham-knight-defeats-pc-gaming/

Aretak · 24 Jun 2015 at 23:05

Digital Foundry have posted their intial dissection of it.

Even at low settings, holding 60fps on the 780 Ti is out of the question. With Nvidia's 353.30 driver (apparently optimised for Arkham Knight) installed, our setup suffers from hiccups and lurches to as low as 38fps as we glide across Gotham or drive in the Batmobile. Frame-times are highly variable, reaching a nadir of 410ms for a single frame as the game crosses a checkpoint. Amazingly, dropping to the worst quality textures, shadows and level of detail (while turning off anti-aliasing, v-sync and all Nvidia Gameworks features) still has us dropping to 40fps and lower while at 1080p.

Looking at the game's diagnostics using MSI Afterburner's OSD, all eight threads of our CPU are engaged at between 60-70 per cent here - somewhat high bearing in mind the potency of this processor, but clearly we have enough processor power to handle the game logic. However, despite this, the GPU isn't static at the 100 per cent utilisation we should see, dipping in the troublesome Batmobile sections. Meanwhile, VRAM usage is monstrous, with a reported 2.7GB used, even on low settings.

Just as baffling is the fact PC lacks key visual effects seen on PS4 even at its top settings. Ambient occlusion is cut from the game, bokeh depth of field is noticeably dialed back, and the transparency layer used for raindrops is cut from all surfaces as well. Gotham City is stripped of a great deal of atmosphere as a result, with areas appearing lighter without SSAO in place - despite this setting clearly being enabled in the .ini file. Likewise, rain doesn't appear on Batman or the Batmobile as it does on PS4.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-batman-arkham-knight-pc-lacks-console-visual-features

Boomstick777 · 24 Jun 2015 at 23:09

Aretak said:
Digital Foundry have posted their intial dissection of it.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-batman-arkham-knight-pc-lacks-console-visual-features

Amazing really lol. Good find. Glad I got this for PS4 and not for PC in the end. It honestly does look and run great on PS4. How did they manage to mess this game up so bad on PC?

thebennyboy · 25 Jun 2015 at 00:12

Even with 16GB of RAM it's maxing it somehow and i get a CTD after about 5 mins of playing. Unplayable right now for me.

opethdisciple · 25 Jun 2015 at 00:36

So do you really need an i7 to get the most out of this game?

How is my 3570k @ 4.5Ghz gonna hold out?

YB2ndBEST · 25 Jun 2015 at 01:26

opethdisciple said:
So do you really need an i7 to get the most out of this game?

How is my 3570k @ 4.5Ghz gonna hold out?

Don't see how, I have 12 threads and it uses two of them :/

jommy999 · 25 Jun 2015 at 02:26

updated from Rocksteady

"Dear Batman: Arkham Knight PC owners,

We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. We take these issues very seriously and have therefore decided to suspend future game sales of the PC version while we work to address these issues to satisfy our quality standards. We greatly value our customers and know that while there are a significant amount of players who are enjoying the game on PC, we want to do whatever we can to make the experience better for PC players overall.

Thank you to those players who have already given valuable feedback. We are continuously monitoring all threads posted in the Official Batman: Arkham Knight Community and Steam forums, as well as any issues logged with our Customer Support (support.wbgames.com). If you purchased your copy of the game and are not satisfied with your experience, then we ask for your patience while these issues are resolved. If desired, you can request a refund at help.steampowered.com (Steam refund policies can be found here: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds) or the retail location where you purchased the game.

The Batman: Arkham fans have continually supported the franchise to its current height of success, and we want to thank you for your patience as we work to deliver an updated version of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC so you can all enjoy the final chapter of the Batman: Arkham series as it was meant to be played."

http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/145587678167685991

the game is now pulled off Steam

oldestgregg · 25 Jun 2015 at 03:01

How embarrassing. I've still got the witcher 3 to finish off so hopefully this will be fixed in a week or so....I very much doubt it though. This makes Ass creeds release look trouble free and I cant see Nvidia being pleased about it,having their name attached to it as a flagship GW title

K1LaW8tt5 · 25 Jun 2015 at 03:12

So what happened to the fancy gameworks rain the pc was suppose to be getting? These games are what my ps4 is for.

Boomstick777 · 25 Jun 2015 at 03:12

jommy999 said:
updated from Rocksteady

"Dear Batman: Arkham Knight PC owners,

We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. We take these issues very seriously and have therefore decided to suspend future game sales of the PC version while we work to address these issues to satisfy our quality standards. We greatly value our customers and know that while there are a significant amount of players who are enjoying the game on PC, we want to do whatever we can to make the experience better for PC players overall.

Thank you to those players who have already given valuable feedback. We are continuously monitoring all threads posted in the Official Batman: Arkham Knight Community and Steam forums, as well as any issues logged with our Customer Support (support.wbgames.com). If you purchased your copy of the game and are not satisfied with your experience, then we ask for your patience while these issues are resolved. If desired, you can request a refund at help.steampowered.com (Steam refund policies can be found here: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds) or the retail location where you purchased the game.

The Batman: Arkham fans have continually supported the franchise to its current height of success, and we want to thank you for your patience as we work to deliver an updated version of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC so you can all enjoy the final chapter of the Batman: Arkham series as it was meant to be played."

http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/145587678167685991

the game is now pulled off Steam

Good stuff, at least this means the developers are serious about sorting this out. It's never to late to fix something. well unless you wanted to play at launch. Hopefully a few patches maybe remove Nvidia derpworks, and the game will run nicely.

weldon855 said:
So what happened to the fancy gameworks rain the pc was suppose to be getting? These games are what my ps4 is for.

If you want all the nice effects you need to get the superior PS4 version lol. Gameworks seems to have added nothing to this game, maybe actually took some things away.

oldestgregg · 25 Jun 2015 at 03:56

I'd say it's more to do with the team of idiots that poorly coded the final months of the game. There's far too many problems to give GW sole responsibility for breaking the game. I'm confident RS will get it running well given time but that begs the big question. ..why didn't they sort it in the first place instead of palming it off onto a couple of blokes in a shed

Boomstick777 · 25 Jun 2015 at 04:03

oldestgregg said:
I'd say it's more to do with the team of idiots that poorly coded the final months of the game. There's far too many problems to give GW sole responsibility for breaking the game. I'm confident RS will get it running well given time but that begs the big question. ..why didn't they sort it in the first place instead of palming it off onto a couple of blokes in a shed

Agreed, not just Gameworks, but if you look at all the titles Nvidia had a hand in lately they all had launch issues. Couple that with a small team doing the PC version and it spells derp.

At least Rocksteady are taking action now. They are obviously serious about sorting this out.

In the meantime PS4 has surprised me with how good this looks and plays..

Also wish people would stop popping up all over the place, Joker made me spill my cup of tea. Random Batman popping out of nowhere while I was snooping around his lockup as the commissioner made me almost fall out of my chair :eek:

Kaapstad · 25 Jun 2015 at 04:07

oldestgregg said:
I'd say it's more to do with the team of idiots that poorly coded the final months of the game. There's far too many problems to give GW sole responsibility for breaking the game. I'm confident RS will get it running well given time but that begs the big question. ..why didn't they sort it in the first place instead of palming it off onto a couple of blokes in a shed

I blame NVidia totally for the mess

TWIMTBP

If NV are happy to have the above advertised in the opening credits they need to take responsibility for the garbage that actually appears on screen.

Orangey · 25 Jun 2015 at 04:33

Well there goes my plans for the weekend

jommy999 · 25 Jun 2015 at 04:39

Orangey said:
Well there goes my plans for the weekend

you can still play it if you are already own the game . only new buyers that won't be able to buy from Steam anymore .

oldestgregg · 25 Jun 2015 at 04:53

Kaapstad said:
I blame NVidia totally for the mess

TWIMTBP

If NV are happy to have the above advertised in the opening credits they need to take responsibility for the garbage that actually appears on screen.

True but nvidia don't make the game just provide the tech for the effects. They do work with them but overall it's rocksteadys responsibility to make sure the game works. I dare say nvidia stopped working with them months ago. I'd imagine Nvidia are peaved they e allowed it to be released like this

Kaapstad · 25 Jun 2015 at 05:09

jommy999 said:
you can still play it if you are already own the game . only new buyers that won't be able to buy from Steam anymore .

What has happened with steam ?

oldestgregg · 25 Jun 2015 at 05:38

Rocksteadys pulled it from steam bud. Rightfully so as well. I have it installed but never fired it up so I don't know if It will patch when I try

spikerules · 25 Jun 2015 at 05:53

Will the people that didn't get a refund still get the fixed game? Or would we have to uninstall and reinstall?

jommy999 · 25 Jun 2015 at 06:03

yes they pulled the game so they can have re-release with a proper version but we don't know yet when that will be . people that bought it on Steam or Greenmangaming can ask for full refund.