WB Games Provide 'Support' for PC Arkham Knight

Further to their promise for more details about the problems PC gamers are facing for the newly released Batman: Arkham Knight, the official forums have now updated.

In a post from about 10pm GMT, on 23rd June, they assure everyone that the issues are being worked on "with our development teams, NVIDIA and AMD", and all official forum and Steam community forum threads are being monitored.

They also remind gamers that you can request a refund if purchased through Steam. Though if yours is one of the 4,380 negative Steam user reviews (or 2,031 positive), requesting a refund will also remove your review of the game.

Now, the settings which the forum post suggests you alter are as follows:

Minimum Hardware Specs (or equivalent)

• Resolution: 1280x720
• 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: 1920x1080
• 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.

                                         

Finally, in a somewhat humorous note, Steam have removed all mention of Batman: Arkham Knight from the store front page. For those who didn't see it yesterday, it looked exactly like this: