Arkham City DX11 - Smooth For Anyone?

[...PACMAN...]

I've only had my system a few weeks, seems to be running most things fine. Mafia 2 is a little bit problematic with pausing and such but on the whole games are running fairly smooth.

Got Batman Arkham City GOTY on Steam yesterday and running it in DX11 max settings with 2xMSAA seems to be stuttering, pausing and slowing down all over the place. My hard drives seem to be going mad whilst playing it and I'm just wondering if anyone else can play it smooth in DX11 or if it's a common problem?

[NdMk2o1o]

What resolution are you playing at?
Have you monitored your ingame FPS?
What HDD do you have? is it near full/fragmented?

[...PACMAN...]

1080p
27-60fps
Fully defragmented HDDs, over 400gb space left on wd 640gb black

[NdMk2o1o]

just wondering if there may be something that's using the HDD while you are playing, you should be able to check in resource monitor also set your AV to silent/gaminjg mode if it has it, make sure Windows, GPU and system drivers, DX and anything else such as .net framework etc are all up to date.

Have you tried to lower the visual settings to see if the same thing happens when your not maxing the game?

[...PACMAN...]

@NdMk2o1o - All drivers and such things as Direct X/redistributables etc are up to date and HDD don't seem to be showing any weird things in task manager.
On lower settings I'm still getting long pauses and stutters?

[ViperXTR]

is there any chance that PhysX is enabled? (for both titles)

[...PACMAN...]

Originally Posted by ViperXTR

is there any chance that PhysX is enabled? (for both titles)

Yes enabled on both, high

[NdMk2o1o]

Originally Posted by ...PACMAN...

Yes enabled on both, high

I would of thought that a 660 would have enough grunt to run the game and Physx at 1080p but maybe try reducing the Physx settings see if this helps?

Your CPU isn't really high end either what kind of OC have you got on that when you game, I would imagine you would need to be running at 4ghz to eliminate any bottleneck.

[...PACMAN...]

It runs BF3 Ultra like a champ with AA....currently at 4.2Ghz. I'm gonna try stock and then a reinstall, . If I still have issues I may try my copy of Windows 7. I'll keep you informed and thanks for the ideas so far.

[MxPhenom 216]

Arkham City has always been a stutter fest with DX11 because its horrible implemented. It has something to do with inefficiency when loading textures when going into a new area and such. Its better now then it was at launch, but still pretty shitty.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by ...PACMAN...

I've only had my system a few weeks, seems to be running most things fine. Mafia 2 is a little bit problematic with pausing and such but on the whole games are running fairly smooth.

Got Batman Arkham City GOTY on Steam yesterday and running it in DX11 max settings with 2xMSAA seems to be stuttering, pausing and slowing down all over the place. My hard drives seem to be going mad whilst playing it and I'm just wondering if anyone else can play it smooth in DX11 or if it's a common problem?

Very old news actually, but Arkham City is one of the worst implementations of DX11 as far as both lack of optimization and content. Meaning it bogs the game down WAY too much for what little tesselation there is.

Here's a side by side video comparison of DX9 vs DX11 in Arkham City. The only textures that look noticeably different are Ivy's vines. Most, even with high end rigs, just run it in DX9 mode. I know you got a nice new rig and all, but there's plenty better games to experience DX11 in than this one.

The system used to make this video has a 2600k with 570 dual SLI, and the author talks about FPS drops and freezes, not to mention the fact that Rocksteady themselves recommend people run it in DX9, despite having delayed the PC launch just to add DX11 support.



I haven't tried running the game in DX11 since getting my 7970, but with as little DX11 visual treatments there are, I can't see any point to it.

[...PACMAN...]

Great to know thanks, just reinstalled so I shall try it again anyway but shall not feel inadequate having to play in DX9 for a smoother ride lol.

[Frag Maniac]

Yeah no one wants lag when Bman is trying to hop around from one thug to another and time his punches and counters just for a bit more detail on a few vines that are seen in only a few parts of the game.

Hopefully Rocksteady will improve at using DX11.

[...PACMAN...]

Following a reinstall of Windows 8 Pro and setting a 24/7 overclock of 4.6Ghz I can now play the game with max details/PhysX High and 8xMSAA and although framerates still dip to 25 at times it's very smooth and very playable. HAPPY

EDIT - Don't know what sorted it but hopefully it will stay like this, it's a great game and some of the visuals are a treat. Also got Alice: Madness Returns and some of the PhysX details on that are awesome.

[crazyeyesreaper]

I would say its not entirely Rocksteady at fault here they are using Unreal Engine and lets face it DX11 on Unreal Engine wasnt sorted untill Unreal Engine 4 which isnt in use on anything yet. So in reality they tried to force it and instead they choked on it then add the fact that PhysX effects choke most Nvidia GPUs and you end up with a Game that using an unoptimized engine with unoptimized code using proprietary physics effects

with a GTX 660 with the settings your trying to run

Min = 23 Avg = 51 Max = 89

To give you an idea how terrible that is its roughly the same performance a GTX 470 will spit on when it comes to this game Good game terribly optimized in nearly every way

DX11 cuts FPS in half Physx cuts it again even further. pick one or the other but really just turn of DX11 lol

essentially in Heavily PhysX enabled games it seems the GTX 660 doesnt do a whole lot better than the GTX 470 that said if your happy with it as is then lets cross are fingers and hope performance stays good

http://www.comptoir-hardware.com/art...2.html?start=2

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by ...PACMAN...

Don't know what sorted it but hopefully it will stay like this...

I didn't see you mention DX11 after the changes, so if you're running it on DX9 now, that is likely the bulk of the difference.

[...PACMAN...]

It's still in DX11 and honestly the 25fps in game seems as smooth as Crysis does when it's that low, I'm happy with the experience whereas before it was just stuttering all over the shop. I'm not going to touch it now as I'm happy, if it isn't broke don't try and fix it lol.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by ...PACMAN...

It's still in DX11 and honestly the 25fps in game seems as smooth as Crysis does when it's that low, I'm happy with the experience whereas before it was just stuttering all over the shop. I'm not going to touch it now as I'm happy, if it isn't broke don't try and fix it lol.

Personally I can't see enabling DX11 just to see more detail in Ivy's vines in the very few scenes they're actually showing, esp if it means FPS dipping as low as 25. You may not notice any problems yet, but when you get into bigger fights with lots of AI, it could cause problems.

[...PACMAN...]

I'll see how it goes although so far it's been a very nice experience

[GamerGuy]

Bah, I've given up playing Batman AC due to this craptastic stutter fest, Batman AA runs smooth as silk with everything maxed to the hilt. When I tried Batman AC, I could no help but notice the awful stutter, yes, I'd maxed everything, but this is on my 2nd rig which has an FX8120 @3.7ghz + 2x GTX670 SLi'ed.....still a mess. Whether the FW310.70 had sorted out this issue I can't say simply because the experience had left a bad taste in the mouth.

[Frag Maniac]

Yeah it certainly doesn't load textures as smoothly as AA, and it's not just due to a large outdoor map. One of the parts of the game that has the most stutter in fact is the dilapidated apts of the underground.

That said, that spec and certainly the one in your sys specs should be plenty to eliminate most if not all of the stutter. Were you running it in Dx11 by any chance? I can't stress enough that there's far too little DX11 detail to even be worth the performance hit.