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Report: Batman: Arkham Knight Uses DirectX 10 When NVIDIA Gameworks Effects Are Activated [UPDATE]

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The PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is simply a big clusterF. And from the looks of it, the game reverts back to DX10 when the NVIDIA Gameworks effects are activated. And no, that’s not a joke. This actually happens, and it perfectly shows how big of a mess the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight actually is.

Alt-Tab‘s ‘Thanos Psarogenis’ shared with us an image, showing the keyboard OSD of MSI’s Afterburner program.

In case you’re not aware of, MSI Afterburner is not being displayed when NVIDIA’s Gameworks effects are activated (note: when all four NVIDIA Gameworks effects are enabled, especially the first two). This troubled us, because everything seemed to be working fine when NVIDIA’s effects were disabled.

However, it seems that the game reverts back to DX10 when those effects are activated. As we can see in the following image, the game runs with DX10 when these effects are enabled.

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The keyboard that Thanos used was a Logitech G13 (that has an applet for MSI Afterburner). Thanos also disabled the Gameworks effects in order to show that the game runs with DX11 when those effects are disabled.

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All in all, the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is a mess and I’m not sure whether Iron Galaxy or Rocksteady will be able to fix it.

UPDATE:

This could very well be an MSI Afterburner issue or a driver issue (for what is worth, MSI Afterburner 4.1.1 does not work with both the previous and the latest WHQL NVIDIA driver). We’ve contacted NVIDIA and Warner Bros for a comment regarding this issue and we’ll update this story if and when we get an answer.

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  • This just keeps getting better and better.

  • Maybe is that what’s causing the “downgrade”? Anyone tried it on Ultra settings without GameWorks to see if bokeh and AO show up?

    • Thanos Psarogenis

      I’m going to try right now. I will report back.

    • Thanos Psarogenis

      Can’t see any changes.

  • Dawid Freeman

    I know how to fix this mess. THEY MUST REBUILD EVERYTHING!!!!

    • TheChosen

      It will make them bleed money…

  • Akirascreaming

    :I

  • Akirascreaming

    Warner Bros and Rocksteady Studios 😀

    • CervixCreampier

      Warn A Brother from CockSteady studioes!

      • Silviu

        haha

    • djnforce9

      Not this time ;). Steam’s new refund policy makes it more like this:

      • KilliK

        they dont care. most of their sales come from the console platform.

        • pimep

          that’s fine though, as apparently there are no such problems on the console versions

        • TheChosen

          Sorry, but its not only money, my friend 😉 Ever heard of fraud? Can earn you EASILY 5 years of prison. Maybe 5 years prison fits the developers nice? => there will be a lawsuit coming and it will be sweeeeeet as butter. Better get your popcorn ready!

          • KilliK

            yeah, WBDC is already trembling from scare..

          • will ketchum

            Your the problem with American, think you deserve something for nothing you lazy pos.

        • Patrick

          They’re also taking a pretty big PR hit from this, it may not have a huge impact on their revenue from this game, but it’ll cast a shadow over future games. Look at what’s happening with Assassin’s Creed. I would assert that while some of the dampened enthusiasm for Syndicate is due to franchise fatigue, some of it is due to people being gun-shy after the cluster-f that was Unity’s launch. Ubisoft has to prove themselves again with that one, and they know it.

      • Yea and no? Is steam the only place where u can get the new Batman game? We got like 500 retail stores here, and im nearly sure they sell it? :O Or is it just steam codes?

        • TechHog

          The vast majority of PC sales are on Steam. Almost nobody buys PC games at retail.

          • Not here i guess? The stores are swarmed as soon as a new game is out, and on top of that they are openin new stores every day lol. Maybe it only works that way in UK/America but not here.

  • Ghost_Leader

    Hm,TotalBiscuit claims his Afterburner manages to read DX11 after Nvidia’s effects are turned on.

    “There are reports that Arkham Knight switches to DX10 when Gameworks are on. My Afterburner reads DX11 with them on, so that seems false.”

    https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/613728953044480000

    • Thanos Psarogenis

      Well, that is what is happening with my computer. Maybe it has something to do with the drivers or the GPU? I can’t really explain it.

    • HankTheSpank!

      I kinda thought TB would know better, just because an issue isn’t reproducible across all configs (bugs rarely are) doesn’t mean it’s a false report. We need more people to test this before we find out what’s happening.

    • CervixCreampier

      TB is not a tech geek. He himself says that during some of the WTF is videos. Infact I am wondering where is his take on Arkham Knight?
      Although he could be right, because Reshade framework reads the game as running in DX9. WTF.

      • Hamzta

        TB has no clue what he is talking about most of the time. He just thinks hes right because he has a braindead following. I also hate how he talks. HE SOUNDS SO SHOUTY AND ARROGANT AND CUNTY.

        • That’s because he’s cynical and not easy impressed. If you don’t like him don’t listen to him, that simple. He’s pretty much on point most of the time but like everyone, he’s not infallible

          • Silviu

            he is british thats why it supposed to be like that!
            (not all of them are like that but still)

          • So am I.

        • Ville N

          ”TB has no clue what he is talking about most of the time”

          And you probably do.

      • Kyrox

        Then he shouldn’t claim “so that seems false”

    • Bruce Campbell

      You mean the Total Biscuit with Nvidia cards probably paid for by Nvidia? That Total Biscuit?

      I do not know how this loudmouth clown became the “voice of PC Gamers”, but he isn’t my voice.

      • Silviu

        this /

  • ROdNEY

    nvidia gameworks FTW.

    • Devast8nDiscoDave

      How is the gameworks fault you moron? This is that crappy outsourced developers fault.

      • CervixCreampier

        IMO gameworks is a pretty good giveaway of sh*t ports. Say X dev has issue in game development and has a lot of problem. Nvidia collects crash logs and sees what a streaming pile of sh*t the game is, and then decide to help them optimize and probably throw in a cookie to add effects at some charges. Its upto the pc porting team to ask WB if its okay, ultimately WB must decide if they get to use gameworks. Or they could have a deal with nvidia for their games.

      • Gameworks always get’s the blame, it’s a common theme now, even though PC has options to disable it, people still moan. I’ll admit NVIDIA needs to do something to fix the bad rep with Gameworks.

        • mareknr

          There is nothing to do with Gameworks reputation. There will be always people who will blame Gameworks from everything. If they can blame GW from bugs and problems which are present when these features are turned off, what should we expect from them? And there is more. There are even people who blame Gameworks from problems which it can’t influence. And that’s ridiculous. It is base that these people know nothing about SW (and game) development. There is no chance to explain them anything.

          • GeForce can do proper performance benchmarks on certain cards from low to high for their Gameworks titles, showing performance of Gameoworks features, proper data.

          • danglingparticiple

            However, the game has clearly demonstrated that it runs better on ALL GPUs with Gameworks off. Gameworks slows time to market for the developer, and in this case they simply had inadequate manpower to optimize in time for launch date. EVERYONE would have been happier if they had simply omitted it.

          • mareknr

            Not everyone. I appreciate better graphics. Without Gameworks, there is no add-on to the game on PC comparing to console ports. Another thing is that we actually don’t know how much time they spare with Gameworks or how many developers were involved in this. What you said is just speculation. Second, it’s clear it runs better when you turn GW features off. It represents graphics features which cost performance. That’s not surprising at all. It’s like you set AA to 16x instead 2x. You got less FPS then before, but with enhanced visuals. That’s the price which is normally accepted. But AMD fans make hysteria about it and they expect, that these features should give them extra FPS. It makes no sense.

          • danglingparticiple

            Welp, this was the result of your desire for the game to utilize Gameworks. Turned out great, didn’t it?

          • zli82

            Witcher 3 Hairworks looks great on my rig. And I can’t wait to see the tight smoke and rain effects in Arkham Knight, once it got fixed. Better graphics just simply worth the money and time of waiting. Otherwise there is no point waiting for the PC version of GTA V for another year. Gameworks or Shitworks, just do the tricks that other things can’t do, then I’ll buy it. Otherwise a cellphone or PS4 will do.

          • DEVILTAZ35 .

            If it is just a case of it reverting to Dx10 instead of 11 with nvidia on board they will fix it easily anyway.

          • mareknr

            It wasn’t my desire what makes problems in this game. This is only bad PC port. All problems I read about wasn’t connected with Gameworks. If you want to blame GW from something, give us specific problem. Not just general statements.

          • Again, you have no basis to blame Gameworks here. If the game isn’t ready, DONT F*CKING RELEASE IT.

          • Sakiz105

            So an application runs better with some of the scripts off? Damn,that never happened before

          • DEVILTAZ35 .

            I didn’t play without gameworks so i might just switch all that off and play it anyway then.

          • kaos94

            Exactly. Can’t please idiots

        • Phoenix

          Even if Gameworks cured cancer it would not change the opinion of AMD’s fanboys , they would blame it for aids.

          Some people are just biased.

      • Primey_

        Don’t bother trying to reason with him. Most people on this site will find any problem just to complain about nvidia or gameworks. It’s full of amd fanboys.

      • mareknr

        Rodney is big AMD fighter. 🙂

      • chrisredfield31

        you enable Gameworks. It goes to DX10. You disable Gameworks, it goes to DX11. It’s gameworks fault

        • I don’t see how that’s possible because you can’t switch API’s on the fly like that while in-game.

        • Devast8nDiscoDave

          No it doesn’t. I play with gameworks enabled and it says DX11 in my overlay. Stop spreading nonsense.

          • chrisredfield31

            Who codes for Gameworks? Oh that’s right, Nvidia, because they won’t let anyone look at their code. It’s Gameworks fault.

          • Frosty Mug O’ Beer

            BS the devs have a license to view the code…..

          • Devast8nDiscoDave

            Jesus christ you talk some sh**e.

          • Devast8nDiscoDave

            What does it say in the corner of this video beside the frame rate? Notice the physx smoke at the start. IT’S D3D11.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glVH_a0qHx8

          • DEVILTAZ35 .

            Actually it’s the devs fault. Nvidia gives them tools to use unfortunately they are not responsible for the tool that uses the tool.

      • Reminds me of how all console Rtards are sayin “PC MASTER RACE EH? FAIL!” when its clearly not us. Its Rocksteady and their crappy port.

        When the consoles get a crappy port, do we LOL at them or the developer? I mean sure.. we laugh at them for being crappy and underpowered.. but you get the point xD!

    • Mark Smith

      This is all on Rocksteady, not the Gameworks API.
      Rocksteady outsourced the PC port to a console studio who had little to no prior experience with PC ports, they messed it up badly and as such everything runs like shit.
      The Gameworks API can be used very well in games such as the Witcher 3 with Hairworks, however the outsourced studio crippled the game even more by trying to poorly code it into the game.
      Don’t blame Nvidia or Gameworks for this fuck up when in actual fact it was Rocksteady who fucked up by not handing over the port to a company experience with PC ports.

    • John Mellinger

      Again. You can’t blame gameworks. Or any SDK for such a mess. This game is a freaking garbage port and Iron Galaxy was in over their head.

      Gameworks is just effects of a SDK just like Radeon SDK and they both offer the same performance hit in games dealing with FPS. Yeah you turn on TressFX on a AMD card and it’s the same FPS loss as gameworks is on a Nvidia GPU.

      Gameworks does not make Textures look worse then a console version, Gameworks does not limit a games fps to 30, Gameworks does not make a game not have AO, DOF, Rain textures/Shader’s. Let’s get real here.

      I had to re post this just for you since I figured I would find yet another anti Nvidia ignorant post from you.

    • The One

      I am one highly against gameworks… but this time.. ITS ALL ROCKSTEADY’s FAULT!!! GO TO YOUR FILES!! AND GO READ THE INIS AND SUCH… ITS A GARBLED MESS I SWEAR THAT WHAT THEY GAVE US WAS SOME TYPE OF WIP DEBUG …. I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WAS THE FINAL GAME!!!

  • António Silva

    LOL it just keeps getting better and better!

  • FasterThanFTL

    Batman defeated the evil villain Pre-Order. From now on whenever someone even thinks of committing the crime of pre-ordering they will remember the Batman.

    • Llama

      Fear the Pre-Order

    • Dario Ampuy

      meh… somebody did remember aliens colonial marines before preordering batman? nop

  • Primey_

    kek

  • Sholva

    Well my afterburner shows DX11 no matter what too, but it takes me a lot of tries to make it actually display the OSD in this game, it must be related to this issue, certainly. In any case, this is very fishy, wonder what Nvidia has to say about this, they usually publish tweaking guides for big games but haven’t done that for this one, yet.

  • Silviu

    i was saying something but this is to WOW in pcgaming for 2015!
    i think Sony paid them to do this because …..
    great article John kudos bro!.

  • Silviu

    GTX 980Ti max settings (looks like crap DX10 i guess)
    and below PS4 version
    and also this is just wow

    • Dazmillion

      If these guys not interested in making games for the PC why bother?

      • vkey.bellic

        Exactly. If they want to go to bed with sony just don’t even bother with PC release. I fear for the future first MKX now this next is MAD MAX.

        • TheChosen

          They will get sued. REKT! Just wait for it. Grab your popcorn….hahaha…

      • To be honest.. id rather play a dumb down version than no version at all. I would never buy a PSsh*t 4 for Batman or any other game.

        In other words = I rather play a cool fun game even if it looks worse (not horrible but even maybe then) rather than not at all.

        I just think of GTA5 and how i could of missed this gem of a game. Red Dead Redemption is another gem i would love to play but i prolly never will. 🙁 I would buy it even if it came with 480p max resolution. Maybe because i’m too used to crappy computers and old games. I played Half Life 1,Starcraft 1,Diablo 2, Warcraft 2,Age of Empires 2 and Delta Force 2 for nearly 12 years.

        I’m used to low resolutions and crappy gfx. 😛

        P.s. Yea, i do have a beast PC and yea, i still am a gfx whore. 😛

    • DEVILTAZ35 .

      That first shot is BS as it looks the same on PC without rain textures on the car. I just tested it last night in windows 10 all settings maxed with gameworks and all that is missing is the rain on the vehicle and batman. Not good but not as bad as that first image shows either.
      It is not even the same scene in the game you used for the two car shots.

  • Ivan Grozny

    I turned the nvidia effects down and I am playing Arkham Night at 2k and everything on normal, because 2k for me is the only playable resolution – AK at 1080p looks like an absolute turd on my 32-inch monitor even with all effects maxed. But my question is, I turned the Nvidia effects down – smoke, lights, rain, etc. – because I couldn’t bloody notice any visual difference. DO those effects work at all ? I squint my eyes and I can not see any difference with those effects on and off.

    And I also recommend to try to crank up resolution, AN looks pretty good at higher resolutions, I mean those normal textures are much more serviceable at 2k.
    GMG here, so I can’t refund… for now.

  • Joey van der Veer

    It is utterly impossible for either Iron or Rock to fix this, as it involves serious and rigorous rewriting of large parts of the engines code. It’s not something a couple of patches can fix. Sorry guys. We tried. We lost our hero to the consoles.

    • TheChosen

      This time won’t be that easy for them.American justice is going to catch their a**es.

  • archaven

    This gen of gaming suxs serious arse. The industry seriously love saving that consoles.

  • Foxiol

    I made this (with paint, lol) from the original (feel free to add whatever): http://i.imgur.com/5gfzraB.png

  • Kavin Law

    Btw its wrong. Its dx11
    https://youtu.be/4Wo3kuIX3r4

    The ab thing happens with sli. So the dx10 thing happens if u use sli.

  • Ville N

    At this point I’m sure they are thinking ”just f*ck it” because the problems are too deep to be fixed and they cant talk themselves out of this. They did a mistake and ran out of time, that’s all they are going to say.

  • Silviu

    this is funny

    • Timur Khassenov

      lol

    • vkey.bellic

      XD! Batman would not approve of this. Is this the mission where batman goes after WB & Unsteady studios ?

  • Total Biscuit confirmed that this is a load of bollocks.

    • Can you confirm it? Need more than one person dude, need multiple sources.

    • danglingparticiple

      However, the game has clearly demonstrated that it runs better on ALL
      GPUs with Gameworks off. Gameworks slows time to market for the
      developer, and in this case they simply had inadequate manpower to
      optimize in time for launch date. EVERYONE would have been happier if
      they had simply omitted it..

      • John Mellinger

        Again. You can’t blame gameworks. Or any SDK for such a mess. This game is a freaking garbage port and Iron Galaxy was in over their head.

        Gameworks is just effects of a SDK just like Radeon SDK and they both offer the same performance hit in games dealing with FPS. Yeah you turn on TressFX on a AMD card and it’s the same FPS loss as gameworks is on a Nvidia GPU.

        Gameworks does not make Textures look worse then a console version, Gameworks does not limit a games fps to 30, Gameworks does not make a game not have AO, DOF, Rain textures/Shader’s. Let’s get real here.

  • Kavin Law

    Its false.
    https://youtu.be/XkSQOgTvVy8

    Dx11. ab working. That dx10 happens when u sli only.

  • Silviu

    Ok a short fix until the next patch guys .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd_DNUNDSR0

  • Silviu

    R* Leeds was available they optimize very good pcgames!

  • goCorinthiansSportClub

    lmao!

  • vkey.bellic

    So much for the cinematic experience.

  • vkey.bellic

    Wow the force is strong in this one it is determined to dethrone ass creed unity & in the process make that looks like a technical feat compared to this.

  • Devast8nDiscoDave

    It’s D3D11. This is false information.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glVH_a0qHx8

  • Orion4tech

    Yet again a resounding Gameworks “succes”.

    The coincidence keeps getting bigger and bigger.

  • Renzoe

    It’s funny how folks are sticking up for Nvidia,they should share some of the blame as well.How could Nvidia not know this game was released in beta condition no ao,high res texture,and capped @30fps,lag,crashes,stutter,and freezing.I forgot to mention the Batman preview video that was sped up by Nvidia to make it look like it was running @ 60fps,as gamer we should stick together no matter if you play on console or pc whether your rocking a Amd or Nvidia gpu,call a spade a spade.Nvidia has been getting away with a lot of sh*t lately not saying Gameworks is the cause of the problems,but the last couple of years games like ac balck flag,watch dogs,ac unity,far cry 4,and a host of others all had problems that featured Gameworks.

  • kalm

    I’ve given up on publishers back when Dead Space 3 came out. That was the last pre-order I’ve made. Unfortunately people will keep pre-ordering, so despite the very good lesson about pre-ordering, people will keep doing it. Hype is very much like alcohol, and publishers have worked it down to an artform. PC will also never really be a prominent platform anytime soon. Let’s face it, it is so much easier on both consumers and developers to invest in a console simply because the developers know what hardware they are working with, its limitations, and any work-arounds they can use, and the consumers know that if they buy that game and it worked for others, it will more than likely work for them on that console. I am not endorsing console gaming in any way, but despite the fact that PC has more potential for the gaming industry, it is simply easier to work with consoles from both sides. And easier is better, or at least cheaper in the short-term. I also do not condone the state Arkham Knight came out in either. If you are going to sell something, it should work the way you advertised it. If not, do not attempt to sell it. Maybe with Steam having a refund system in place, we will see an increase in quality of games, or at the very least a decrease in games coming out in a deplorable state. But the fact that this happened right after Steam, the PC’s main digital gaming platform, started offering refunds strikes me as a bit suspicious. But this is not the place for conspiracy theories.

  • Wahid

    Nvidia gameworks !!! it kills pc gaming

  • rob martin

    wow, now I want my f’ing money back