Arkham Knight PC Issues: UPDATE

Warner Bros. has released a statement regarding the performance issues that currently affect Arkham Knight on PC.  They assure us that they’re working diligently to rectify the problems, and have provided lists of minimum, recommended, and ultra hardware requirements for your personal referential purposes.  Furthermore, if you don’t have the patience for the PC issues to be resolved, you can contact Steam, via the link provided in WB’s statement, to request a refund for the game.  Additionally, WB does not currently recommend using NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience or AMD’s Gaming Evolved Optimization tools when attempting to play Arkham Knight during this problematic period.  Finally, WB recommends that you ensure that you have the latest drivers from your graphics card manufacturers.  Read their official statement for more information, and keep your fingers crossed…

Dear Batman: Arkham Knight PC owners,

We are aware that there are performance issues for some users playing Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. WB Games is working diligently with our development teams, NVIDIA and AMD, to identify and fix the issues as quickly as possible.

Please know that we value input from those who are playing the game and 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. If you are experiencing any issues with the game, please be sure to report it to support.wbgames.com.

In the meantime, we wanted to provide recommended, in-game graphical settings for those with minimum and recommend specs hardware. We will provide recommended settings for the Ultra specs as soon as we are able to conduct more tests. At the bottom of this post, you can find additional information that may help alleviate some of the most frequent issues that some players are experiencing. Also, for reference, we have included a list of the minimum, recommended, and ultra hardware requirements.

If you purchased your copy of the game through Steam and are not satisfied with your experience, you can request a refund at help.steampowered.com (Steam refund policies can be found here: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds).

Thank you for your patience as we work on resolving these issues and please be sure to check back for updates.

Minimum Hardware Specs
(or equivalent)
Resolution: 1280×720
V-Sync: Off
Anti-Aliasing: Off
Texture Resolution: Low
Shadow Quality: Low
Level of Detail: Low
Interactive Smoke/Fog: Off
Interactive Paper Debris: Off
Enhanced Rain: Off
Enhanced Light Shafts: Off

Expected: 30fps (capped)

It is incredibly important that users with a min spec video card with 2 GB of dedicated VRAM (or 3 GB on AMD) to keep the Texture Resolution set to Low. Increasing this to Normal will cause significant performance issues.

By default, the game may set the user’s monitor to the maximum output offered. Users should reset to 720p on min spec hardware.

With these settings on Min Spec AMD GPU’s, users can expect some minor texture pops, occasional loading symbols during fast-paced scenarios, and some hitches & stuttering when gliding or driving the Batmobile.

Recommended Hardware Specs
(or equivalent)
Resolution: 1920×1080
V-Sync: On
Anti-Aliasing: On
Texture Resolution: Normal
Shadow Quality: Normal
Level of Detail: Normal
Interactive Smoke/Fog: Off
Interactive Paper Debris: Off
Enhanced Rain: Off
Enhanced Light Shafts: Off

Expected: 30fps (capped)

The Recommended Spec is intended to deliver an experience on par with the current generation of gaming platforms.

For an optimal experience, users with recommended spec hardware should not set their resolution higher than 1080p.

By default, the game may set Shadow Quality and Level of Detail to High on Recommended Spec hardware. Users should revert these to Normal.

With these settings on Rec Spec AMD GPUs, users can expect some minor texture pops, occasional loading symbols during fast-paced scenarios, and some hitches & stuttering when gliding or driving the Batmobile. To help alleviate this, AMD users using Rec Spec GPU’s should turn Texture Resolution, Shadow Quality, and Level of Detail to Low. We continue to work closely with AMD to resolve these issues as soon as possible; make sure you have the most current drivers and check back here for updates on when the next driver version is available.

Additional Recommendations
We do not recommend that users change anything in the game’s .ini files as this will potentially negatively impact performance, including frame rate, and stability.

At this time we do not recommend using NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience or AMD’s Gaming Evolved Optimization tools.

We’re currently working on improving streaming performance from mechanical hard drives (HDD). Addressing this is one of our top short-term priorities.

For users that have an SSD available, we’ve noted increased streaming performance when the game is installed to that type of drive.

Once again, we’d like to stress the importance of having the latest drivers from your graphics card manufacturer. Staying up to date could potentially alleviate many performance issues, and will improve your game experience.

– NVIDIA GeForce users should use GeForce GameReady WHQL Driver version 353.30
– AMD users should use Catalyst 15.6 beta driver

Crossfire on AMD is currently not supported. This is to be addressed in a future driver update from AMD.

Eyefinity (multi-monitor) on AMD is currently not fully supported. This is to be addressed in a future driver update from AMD.

When running Nvidia SLI, using the NVIDIA Control Panel to set one card as a dedicated PhysX card may improve performance.

Players should not disable and/or edit the size of their page file. Windows manages this automatically, and leaving this at the default settings will provide an optimal experience when playing Arkham Knight. We strongly recommend that users avoid making edits to this.

Game System Requirements

Minimum Hardware Specs:

OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
Processor: Intel Core i5-750, 2.67 GHz | AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHz
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (2 GB Memory Minimum) | AMD Radeon HD 7950 (3 GB Memory Minimum)
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection required
Hard Drive: 45 GB available space

Recommended Hardware Specs:
OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 – 3 GB Memory Recommended
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Hard Drive: 55 GB available space

Ultra System Hardware Requirements:
OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
Graphics Memory: 4 GB

Regardless of this informative official statement, PC Batman-gamers are still figuratively sitting out in the cold, in want of a title they’ve dreamed of for months or years.  Indeed, there are greater tragedies in the world, but let’s not bother with such comparisons. Hopefully, WB and Rocksteady resolve the PC problems and issues soon, so that everyone who owns the game, regardless of the operating system or console, can enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed.  Cheers to all you guys and gals affected by the bugs.  Good luck to Warner Bros.  Do it!

Source: ArkhamVerse