Arkham Asylum vs Arkham City FPS performance

[futurefields]

Hey guys, I know these games are old but I buy a lot of cheap games on Steam, so I'm just getting around to playing these.

Anyways, I'm away from my gaming rig right now and I cant remember my Steam password so figured id just post this here to see if I can grab some thoughts -

My system runs Arkham Asylum at average 130fps on DX9 high settings.

I don't get the same performance of Arkham City though. I know the game world is bigger and stuff but it just seems like the engine is working as good. The game will stutter when I am on top of buildings, but when I am in the middle of a fight with 10-12 criminals (where it seems to me the polygon counts will actually be higher, and with more lighting effects and stuff from the character models) and the game suddenly runs butter smooth.

Is it just a case of the engine not being optimized for when the draw distance is longer? It seems weird to me that when I am upclose with 12 fully rendered character models at full level-of-detail the game runs very smooth, but when I am on top of buildings (where I assume character models and textures are running at a lower LOD level) but suddenly the framerate drops to 30 fps a lot of the time.

Is it just a case of the engine not having a LOD system well suited for the size map they tried to make? Or is the game really pushing that many more polygons and lighting fx than Arkham Asylum?

FWIW I though Arkham Asylum was very well optimized.

 

[gpse]

do you have PhysX enabled in the game? when I set it to High I would have stuttering, on Normal everything was fine.

 

[blackwhiskers]

turn off dx11, the visual difference is almost nil (occasional tesselated ivy branch and lion statues and some prettier/muddier shadows from characters), but the stuttering will be gone instantly, and the game will become buttersmooth.

 

[tygeezy]

I noticed that the game does stutter as you are flying about the city. It is perfectly fine in doors or when you are on foot in a small area. I thought that switching to a SSD drive would alleviate the problem as it did for my diablo 3 stuttering, but that wasn't the case. This happens for me in dx 9 by the way.

Arkham asylum didn't have this issue for me either. I'm assuming because the outdoor areas in that game were much smaller and you weren't flying about such large landscapes.

 

[JujuFish]

I didn't have any stuttering in DX9 except when I was going inside a building. Ran fine on my aging GTX 285.

 

[futurefields]

My system is

i5 2500k @ 4.0ghz
amd 6850 1gb gddr5

arkham asylum with dx9, high settings was sooooo smooth. i was really impressed with how they optimized that game. 6850 is not a high end card but it sure felt like it was on that game.

arkham city feels unoptimized by contrast. the game doesn't seem to push *that many more* polygons and effects than AA, but the framerate seems to be, in general, 1/2 of what it was in AA.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

It is probably the ops CPU.

 

[CuriousMike]

It is probably the ops CPU.

Are you serious?

A 2500K at 4.0ghz?

That's not a Celeron bro.

 

[blackwhiskers]

My system is

i5 2500k @ 4.0ghz
amd 6850 1gb gddr5

arkham asylum with dx9, high settings was sooooo smooth. i was really impressed with how they optimized that game. 6850 is not a high end card but it sure felt like it was on that game.

arkham city feels unoptimized by contrast. the game doesn't seem to push *that many more* polygons and effects than AA, but the framerate seems to be, in general, 1/2 of what it was in AA.

actually, the difference in complexity of scenes and the raw amount of stuff happening is incredibly increased over the first game, imo. I was quite impressed when I first launched AC, looked soo much better.

fyi, I'm on an i7 920 and hd 7850, ac sports smooth 60 on dx9, with everything @ max, no AA. fraps actually report 55-60 in ac with dx11, but it feels a lot worse than that, stutter everywhere, with practically no visual difference.

 

[Elixer]

My system is

i5 2500k @ 4.0ghz
amd 6850 1gb gddr5

arkham asylum with dx9, high settings was sooooo smooth. i was really impressed with how they optimized that game. 6850 is not a high end card but it sure felt like it was on that game.

arkham city feels unoptimized by contrast. the game doesn't seem to push *that many more* polygons and effects than AA, but the framerate seems to be, in general, 1/2 of what it was in AA.

6850 can play the game fine, just lower your resolution a bit and all is well.
What drivers you using anyway?