Batman: Arkham Knight Is A Technical Mess On The PC, High versus Low Comparison Screenshots

Batman: Arkham Knight has just been released and it appears that Rocksteady went full “Ubisoft.” Batman: Arkham Knight suffers from a lot of tech issues on the PC. From underwhelming performance to stuttering and asset streaming issues, this PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is easily as awful as Ubisoft’s Watch_Dogs or Assassin’s Creed: Unity. No, in fact this is worse than Unity, because – like it or not – Unity at least displayed gorgeous visuals (albeit its awful LOD settings).

Both SLI scaling and multi-CPU scaling are all over the place. There is an aggressive LOD being used, resulting in all sorts of pop-ins. Story mode is also locked at 30fps by default (though you can unlock the framerate via the game’s .ini files). And even without NVIDIA’s GameWorks effects, we were unable to maintain a constant 60fps experience (yes, even on Low settings).

We’ll have more to say about Batman: Arkham Knight in our upcoming PC Performance Analysis. There are rumours that a day1 patch may be released, therefore we’ll delay our article until Friday. Still, at this point, we strongly suggest waiting before getting this title on the PC.

Below you can find some comparison screenshots between the game’s Low and High settings. Strangely enough, the game only support “Normal” textures. Moreover, there were occasions in which over 6GB of our total RAM was being used (do note that we’re talking about RAM and not VRAM).

High images are on the left, whereas low images are on the right.

High1Low1High2Low2High3Low3High4Low4High5Low5High6Low6

 

UPDATE:

Rocksteady acknowledged the game’s performance issues.

“Hi all

We’re aware that some users are reporting performance issues with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight. This is something that Rocksteady takes very seriously. We are working closely with our external PC development partner to make sure these issues get resolved as quickly as possible.

We’ll update this thread when we’ve got more info to share.”

139 thoughts on “Batman: Arkham Knight Is A Technical Mess On The PC, High versus Low Comparison Screenshots”

      1. Yeah, that Steam refund policy hit just in time for this release, fortunately.

        They’ll patch it out eventually, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if people hang onto it.

        1. And thats the hipocresy I pointed out in another post, the tolerance for AAA games are much higher when it comes to refunds. If this batman thing would be a indie game people will be refunding to the last copy sold, while on an AAA game people say, “it will be patched”. Buyers denial.

        2. Everything about this game screams irrevocable damage; I was expecting a bad port akin to previous Arkham titles but those pale by comparison.

          In addition the undisclosed “external PC development partner” Iron Galaxy, undisclosed inclusion of Denuvo & WBGames’ tendency to pull funding very early have me very worried. This could forever remain a wipe off.

          Definite refund.

          1. Ooph. Don’t forget, they didn’t send out advanced review copies, 12 hours before the game launched they quietly changed the minimum PC requirements, and they removed the pre-order bonus just hours before the game launched.

            The only way this launch could have gone worse is if Batman showed up at your door and killed your dog with a Batarang.

          2. Yep, very shady.

            As someone with terrible Internet, I feel for people who verified cache to stop crashes only to have the game completely delete itself. D:

          3. They removed the preorder dlc bonus from all versions or just the pc version? if all versions then evryone must rise against WB!

          4. Just from keys that came with Nvidia graphics cards. Others still have the preorder DLC.

        1. lol and still looks worse than DICE FROSTBITE engine who btw runs amazing on Nvidia Kepler GPUs ,Maxwell and AMD cards

          1. seriously mate get over witcher 3 , and guys i know are reporting better performance after drivers and patches on old architectures (just kill HW , not suited for older card or any card actually)

          2. dont know mate , but guys with 780s and 770s are reporting 5-15 fps .Try every tweak mate.Hope it works out for you.Cheers!

          3. have you visited the tweaks thread mate? i know my 860m is a maxwell , but i can do high @ 30fps…..
            i assume you play it on ultra with hw?

    1. Better textures especially on batman himself, more and farther away light sources and shadows. Very little difference as the fps counter shows.

  1. Is it me or is the difference between high and low not as different as it should be? Witcher 3 being another example where the low and high, while very distinguishable should have being much wider in difference!

    1. You should see the console version, it’s lower than low on the PC in regard to NPCs and doesn’t draw any shadows over a 1/10 of the screen when you look in the distance.

  2. “Hi all! We’re aware that some users are reporting performance issues with the PC version of Batman” – LMAO, indeed only 32% of all the user reviews are positive, I am sure it’s just “some” users…

  3. “We’re aware that SOME users are reporting performance issues” Lol gotta love that wording, so your game got 32% rating on steam, that means 68% or more of your customer are getting performance issues and you choose to say that some users are having performance problem, OK then.

  4. Lol, zero difference between Low and Ultra, terrible performance even on top of the line GPUs. GG Crapsteady, you’ve just lost a HUGE chunk of your fanbase.

  5. NVIDIA picks another POS optimised game. Also the game doesn’t look half as good as their E3 demos, what a surprise. This is what you get if you pre-order, even with money off, DON’T PRE-ORDER

      1. SEAN actually uses an Nvidia card.He is stating the fact that Nvidia needs to pay close attention to who they work with as it is damaging their reputation i mean arkham city,Far cry mess,watch dogs,AC unity,witcher 3 at launch,and now this

        honestly every time i know a game is supported by Nvidia i say here we go again

  6. Keep pre ordering, people.

    Also, ‘external PC development partner’ LOL, this is a straight-up, hacked-in-a-few-months console port.

  7. DO NOT BUY LITERALLY THE STORY IS AS BAD AS CANCER its like they wanted to make the dumbest ending/twists they could

  8. This is so disappointing. Rocksteady has a good track record with PC optimization and now they decide to screw it up and with the final game no less. Damn, was really looking forward to this game.

    1. I seem to remember Arkham City’s performance really sucked in DX11 mode. There were also many problems with Arkham Asylum and Physx.

          1. I still had a dual core and a 9800GT at the time and both Asylam and City ran great.

          2. I had 2500k and 560 ti and i played it max settings 1024p dx11(Arkham city) from day one. It worked perfectly dx11 max settings from day one of release. Now about Origins i also had and played it on the same pc but 1080p instead of 1024 p because i had got 1080 p monitor by the time that it released, again max settings only without mssa. Arhkam aslym i had 8800gt and athlon x2. Again max settings 1024p i played it day one of release no issues. Now with 2500k 3,3ghz gtx 970 1080 p monitor and with the ability to run at 1440p and 4k due to dsr techology…. I am waiting until next week to buy it.

  9. they gave PC version to some other s**ty company to port. it’s not even in alpha stages. F your games Warner and all of your DLCs and DRMs

    1. what’s about the studio who port assassin’s creed revelations to the pc… they make a games free of any bugs or glitch why they don’t give the game to this studio or the guys who port dmc 2013. don’t understand, Warner bros alway found the s#ity studio all there pc games sucks ans specially mortal kombat.

  10. They didn’t give out any advanced review copies of game, I hear. That tells you something. They have done ZERO PC optimizations.

    I feel really bad for the people that pre-ordered this. You gave them your money hoping they’ll make you a good product and then they just throw it on the floor at your feet and spit on you. 🙁

  11. it looks the same in low or high graphics lol another piece of shi t console port lol glad I dont pre order games anymore :O

    1. No you cannot. No crack for it. It uses Denouvo.

      You can test it the other way. Burn 60$ on steam, play for 1 hour, give up, refund.

        1. they were cracked because of a Origin backdoor…Lords of the Fallen was never cracked, nor will Batman be..Lords also had performance issues and it was because of that stupid Denuvo sh*t, and here we go again..

        2. but it took months to get cracked. battlefield hard line is 3 months old and still no crack

          1. Getting a multiplayer game running is much harder since you have to replace the official game servers with your own. This isn’t just hard to do, it also costs money. Slapping intrusive DRM on multiplayer games is a waste imo, unless it doubles as cheat protection.

  12. i don’t understand how Nvidia would let developers release a game optimized for their GPU and also PC in general in this state it has become a trend most games with nvidia logo on them end up broken on pc at launch even witcher 3.what were they doing all this time
    the games don’t just perform poorly on AMD GPUs but also Nvidia’s GPUs….WHY?

  13. Played Batman earlier with 290x DCii OC’d and 5960x @2560×1440…
    Damn, first time I saw a 65 FPS game going down to 5 FPS every 30 sec (or less)… game is just unplayable.

    If there werent any big fps drops, game would be good (Graphics are great IMO).

  14. It’s not Rocksteady fault. Iron Galaxy Studios ported game to PC.

    Also

    i.imgur . com/ObF1VKl.png

    1. Doesn’t that at least partly make it Rocksteadys fault since they hired that incompetent studio instead of making it themselves or giving the project to somewhere else

    2. Their statement “This is something that Rocksteady takes very seriously.” is puzzling. If they really took this seriously then they should have fixed these issues before releasing it to PC. These PR crap sometimes, they just dig their graves deeper.

  15. Could it be that Rocksteady didn’t develop the PC version themselves? “our external PC development partner” suggests so.

    EDIT: Iron Galaxy Studios seems to be credited in the PC version.

    1. “Update: Rocksteady Studios has issued a statement regarding the problems with the PC version of the game, but has not named the external studio involved.”

      1. Some members on neogaf have found Iron Galaxy Studios to be credited but either way it seems Rocksteady didn’t handle the PC version themselves which explains the poor performance.

  16. Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment strikes again with another dud developer. Glad I decided not to pre-order this game after the tragedy of Mortal Kombat X.

      1. Arkham Origins has bugs that were never addressed, one is an unobtainable Riddler trophy. Don’t hold your breath for their… dedication (????).

          1. Yes, WB doesn’t develop games at all. They get studios to do it. Where is fails (almost always now) is not the point. The point is that it fails and the costumer pays for it. They don’t have a good track record at repairing their products, they just prepare for the next scam.

  17. I told you way before 70% of the new games is pure garbage, and nobody listening, but don’t worry it’s going to be better, just continue pre-ordering, buying dlc’s, and the most supporting people who gives a fock about you, and don’t forget just found a way to justifier how they make jokes of you.

    1. which is why I’m excited for the lesser-known games such as Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 and less on “AAA” games

  18. I had 2500k and 560 ti and i played it max settings 1024p dx11(Arkham
    city) from day one. It worked perfectly dx11 max settings from day one
    of release. Now about Origins i also had and played it on the same pc
    but 1080p instead of 1024 p because i had got 1080 p monitor by the
    time that it released, again max settings only without mssa. Arhkam
    aslym i had 8800gt and athlon x2. Again max settings 1024p i played it
    day one of release no issues. Now with 2500k 3,3ghz gtx 970 1080 p
    monitor and with the ability to run at 1440p and 4k due to dsr
    techology…. I am waiting until next week to buy it. GRR so disappointed!!

  19. There was once a time where Low and High were actually different, now everything is Low settings with different names.

  20. a silly question John, are you using a different Batman costume skin cause the suit looks different than the demos. There’s no armor plates.

  21. Who would have thought Batman Arkham Origins would turn out much better Batman Arkham Knight in the end.

  22. “We are working closely with our external PC development partner” wtf this means? The game was not developed in house?
    Who the fu#$ did this mess?

  23. “We are working closely with our EXTERNAL PC development partner” That explain all this mess!!

  24. I was really anticipating this game coz I thought it will be a good PC port with WB and Rocksteady’s history . What a fuc*ing downer —__—

  25. Low settings run bad because CPU bottleneck? Check. Framerate lock? Check. Nvidia Gameworks involved? Check. No crucial differences between low and high settings other than LOD? Check. We’ve gathered enough data.

    Conclusion: This game will never be fixed on PC, if you bought this get a refund NOW. It is economically not viable to fix this game, the publisher has no interest in fixing this game. Don’t be naive. Don’t wait for patches.

  26. Played an hour so far.

    This game has one of the worst antialiasing implementations I have ever seen.
    It’s some sort of post process aa that blurs the image even more than FXAA does, to the point that it almost looks like I’m running a low resolution upscaled.
    The FXAA/MSAA/TXAA options from the previous entries are gone.

    There’s some excessive (VERY) chromatic aberration, as well as motion blur, that cannot be disabled.

    Vsync does not work for me in this game. Even when forcing it though nvidia control panel.

  27. Getting the “GOTY” (if after this comes out) version in the next year for 10/15€ more or less.

    Still playing and enjoying The Witcher 3 (133 hours played) and have some games yet to finish and some that I never played.

    PS: Will DX12 even if not implemented in the games, help these kind of performance issues with GameWorks/PhysX (as an example) when Windows 12 comes out? I wonder and hope that apart from the terrible port, some of these issues can give us a not so heavy impact when it comes to porting games to PC.

    Just a thought tho.

  28. Wow. Its not our fault. Its the pc developer parrners fault. What an awful choose of words. I bedd no one knowened until now that they were using an external developer.

  29. i bought it and i had no problems! ur rig sucks, i5 is bad, gtx 970 is outdated, this game needs a i7 extreme, a gtx 980 ti OCed/watercooled.

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