Batman: Arkham Knight Performance Analysis Update

Introduction It's not very often that we return to a game, but in this case, we couldn't say no. Batman AK was one of the most anticipated of early 2015 and the final game in the Batman: Arkham series, so the hype surrounding it meant the game had to hit the top marks from launch. Sadly we all know that Batman AK had a very rough start to life with PC performance being the major issue. Users complained of the lack of graphical settings and the 30FPS cap. While we brought Batman AK performance figures in this state; it wasn't always going to be as reliable with the game undergoing major work. Developers decided to pull the game from Steam and other outlets to prevent more consumers purchasing a digital copy. This worked for a while and developers have managed to implement a good amount of updates to improve stability, graphics, and overall player enjoyment. With the overhaul to the graphics portion, we have decided to return to the game and re-test all of our current generation graphics cards on the newest drivers available. To maintain consistency with our previous Gaming performance articles, these graphics cards will be pitted against the game at the highest optimal settings across three of the most popular resolutions. Let's begin shall we? Test Systems and Procedures Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to overview our test system. All tests will be conducted with the latest stable drivers available, with results will be taken from an average of three tests. All tests will be conducted using the highest factory setting if multiple options are available. Test System Motherboard - Gigabyte X99-Gaming G1 WiFi LGA 2011-3 Motherboard Processor - Intel Core i7 5820K at Stock 3.3GHz RAM - 16GB (4 X 4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz CPU Cooler - Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 11 1200w Main Storage Drive - Crucial M550 512GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Displays - AOC U2868PQU 4K Operating System - Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit Driver Details Games Used Batman: Arkham Knight Settings used Test Procedure The test is to be run across 1080p, 1440p and 4k resolutions on each graphics card that can handle each setting. Cards such as the NVIDIA GTX 950, GTX 960 and AMD R9 380 may not feature on the 4K benchmarks due to extremely low FPS results. Batman: Arkham Knight - 1080p, 1440p and 4k Benchmarks Our first look at how all of the cards perform and it seems Batman AK is a relatively easy game for our graphics cards to render. Cranked up to 1440p all of the cards nail 60+FPS. 4K just demands too much of all of the cards, but with some settings lowered, 60FPs could be achieved by the Fury X, 980Ti and Titan X. Final Thoughts Now that the new updates have been implemented, we can get a much clearer impression of how graphics card performance is within the game itself. Before now, the benchmark suffered very few of the issues that the game experienced such as the 30FPS cap. However, while the results were accurate, a small portion of readers found them to be misleading. I can now put this to bed that these results are accurate to the game thanks to the implementation of the 90FPS cap (which doesn't actually work). Before I expand on the performance, I experienced a rather concerning issue with three of the lower performance graphics cards which I believe to be a driver compatibility issue with the benchmark software. With each GTX 960, GTX 950 and R9 380 all froze the benchmark at exactly the same point each time. I played a small portion of the campaign and there were zero issues, so the problem is the benchmark software itself. Apart from that issue, every other card performed extremely well and it shows through the results. Every card managed to hit at least 96 FPS at 1080p and all over 60FPS at 1440p. When the resolution was cranked to 4K, performance suffered, but with some minor graphical settings reduced, we could see 60FPs with some of the more powerful cards quite easily. So a word to WB, NVIDIA and other developers, good job BUT please don't let a game get released like this again! Thank you to all our partners who provided the hardware and software that made this driver analysis possible.