Batman: Arkham City Graphics Breakdown & Performance Guide

Introduction & Graphics Option Comparisons

December 17th, 2011
By Andrew Burnes
Batman: Arkham City has been available on the consoles for some time, racking up awards left, right and center, and a 96% Metacritic rating too. Now, the PC version is available, and in this article we’ll examine the included enhancements, run benchmarks on the game using our 500-Series GPUs, recommend Optimal Playable Settings, and show how to enhance your frame rates by repurposing older NVIDIA video cards that may be gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.

Graphics Options

Like any good PC game, Batman: Arkham City allows you to enable and disable numerous graphical effects, so whether you’re looking to increase your frame rate, or simply to eliminate motion blur, you control how the game looks.

The Batman: Arkham City configuration panel where every in-game effect can be enabled and disabled.

General Graphics Options

In addition to the configurable PhysX, DirectX 11, 3D Vision and anti-aliasing options, a number of other settings can be enabled and disabled. Here’s a quick rundown of what you gain and lose when adjusting the ‘Detail Level’ preset:

Quality Preset	Very High	High	Medium	Low
Texture Quality	High	Medium	Medium	Low
Dynamic Lights	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled
Dynamic Shadows	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled
Motion Blur	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled	Disabled
Distortion	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled	Disabled
Lens Flares	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled	Disabled
Light Shafts	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled	Disabled
Reflections	Enabled	Enabled	Disabled	Disabled
Ambient Occlusion	Enabled	Disabled	Disabled	Disabled
Max Shadow Resolution	512	512	512	256

And here’s a brief description of each setting:

• Dynamic Shadows: Shadows that change based on the movement of characters and the lighting around them. Disabling this effect should be a last resort in search of performance.
• Motion Blur: Helps accentuate exciting and fast-paced elements of the game and adds to the overall spectacle. Some users may prefer to disable it simply because they favor a ‘clean’ experience.
• Distortion: Creates effects such as heat haze, as can be seen in real life.
• Lens Flares: Responsible for the stylistic use of halos when looking at bright lights and the sun.
• Light Shafts: Used to simulate bright light shining down into a dark room or area through a crack or gap.
• Reflections: An explanation isn’t required, even for The Joker’s brain-dead goons!
• Ambient Occlusion: A basic DirectX 9 and 10 version of the DirectX 11 HBAO ambient occlusion feature, this setting renders soft shadows created by reflected light sources.
• Dynamic Lights: A hidden setting, Rocksteady leaves this enabled even on Low. Disabling it manually had no perceivable impact on frame rates, but did make the visuals reminiscent of last-gen games.
• Max Shadow Resolution: Another hidden setting that determines the quality of all shadows in Arkham City. Can be manually raised to 2048 on high-end GPUs to sharpen shadows.
• Texture Quality: Linked to the ‘Detail Level’ option, this hidden setting adjusts the quality of textures in the game. By manually disabling the options visible in the configuration panel, one can leave ‘Detail Level’ on Very High to benefit from improved textures without the performance hit of the visual effects.

Click to view an animated comparison showing each detail level. Note the loss of Ambient Occlusion’s richer, more accurate shadows around the pallet in the lower right of the image.

DirectX 11 Tessellation

Just about everything in the game is drawn using triangles. Tessellation is a technique that divides large triangles into many smaller triangles, and when used with displacement mapping, significantly improves the geometric detail of objects. Tessellation has many uses depending on the game genre. In Battlefield 3, for example, it improves the detail of mountains and terrain. In Batman: Arkham City, tessellation is used to add extra definition to organic, curved and bendy objects, such as trees and power cables.
As you can see in the example above from Poison Ivy’s lair, there is a significant fidelity improvement between Tessellation Off and Normal on the deformed tree, and a further improvement going from Normal to High.
To achieve this effect an artist examined the tree, deciding where extra detail would help enhance the scene, and then created a texture containing the bumps and their physical heights, as seen when tessellation is enabled. This texture, known as a displacement map, is loaded into the game and the extra detail created on top of the basic tree using the graphics card’s DirectX 11 features.

Click for an animated comparison highlighting the three levels of tessellation.
As mentioned, GPU-powered tessellation is also utilized on cables, pipes and trees untouched by Ivy’s poison. The common trait between these three examples is curvature, something that is ordinarily too ‘expensive’ to produce using standard polygons.
In this enhanced PC release, Arkham City also makes use of a second tessellation technique called Mesh Smoothing to add tessellated triangles to break up harsh angular outlines, adding curvature where previously the object was comprised of many straight surfaces in an attempt to create the appearance of curvature. It’s a subtle addition, but once you know it’s there and you’ve seen the improvement you won’t want to go back.

Hardware Accelerated PhysX Effects

In a dilapidated environment like the eponymous Arkham City you expect to see debris, be that discarded rubbish, tattered materials, or loose masonry fallen from a crumbling building. And though other games have presented this level of detail in cityscapes in the past, most render these objects as static items baked into the scenery’s textures, and as immovable items fixed in place by the world’s strongest superglue.
Enabling ‘Hardware Accelerated PhysX’ in the game’s launcher adds these details, all of which are rendered as physical objects, able to be manipulated realistically in real-time. Newspapers tumble along the streets in concert with the wind, bunting flutters, and ropes dangle. Each can be further manipulated by the actions of Batman, his enemies, and his numerous gadgets. And being physics-led objects they don’t clip through the terrain or other objects, so given the correct circumstances said newspapers may end up wrapped around a street lamp by the driving wind or in a corner with leaves and other simulated objects. This realistic collision detection is the most intensive element of PhysX, requiring the power of the graphics card’s CUDA cores to determine the outcome of thousands of calculations per second to ensure that the a piece of paper doesn’t ‘clip’ through a character, wrecking the immersion of the scene and effect.

Check out our Batman: Arkham City PC trailer for a look at several of the impressive hardware-accelerated PhysX effects.
Beyond enhancing the believability and dynamism of a scene, the hardware-accelerated PhysX engine powers particle and destruction enhancements too. Generating a great deal of interest and discussion when revealed in our first PhysX video, the technology renders particles that react to forces realistically. For example, as part of a fog cloud they are pushed forward and sideways as a guard runs through, the momentum of the particles at the fore interacting with those even further forward to continue pushing particles outwards even after the guard stops moving.
Other uses of the particle system result in smoke and sparks being emitted from damaged machinery, small pieces of interactive debris, and larger piece of debris from destructible objects. With Hardware PhysX disabled in the game's Smelting Chamber, only a few particles can be seen high up toward the ceiling, each appearing in a prescribed, noticeable pattern, and with Hardware PhysX enabled particles shower the scene as one would expect. As Batman fights his foes beneath the smelter the anti-aliased, motion-blurred particles rain down, bouncing off characters accurately, dramatically adding to the scene’s immersion and the game’s overall sense of believability - gone are the days of fighting enemies in a static world oblivious to the actions occurring around it.

A badly-beaten Batman eats a face-full of ice. In the pictured scene, each ice crystal emits hundreds of ice particles, curtains and ropes flutter, and discarded pieces of paper whip into the air as Batman desperately tries to avoid death.
Further enhancing the sense of connectivity between scene elements are the aforementioned destruction enhancements. In the same smelting stage there is breakable glass that shatters realistically as you throw one of Joker’s many goons through it, its shards littering the scene afterwards, parting and being kicked up as the fight continues. Upstairs, away from the smelter, entrances to rooms are partially covered by strips of heavy, rubbery material; it too being manipulated by characters either walking through the doorways, or by being unceremoniously launched through by Batman.
In this one level alone gamers utilizing High Hardware Accelerated PhysX effects can interact with the aforementioned rubbery material, breakable glass, glass shards, office papers, bunting, and coal debris, and in the surrounding environment there are smelter sparks, electrical sparks, and welder sparks.

One of the most impressive uses of hardware PhysX is in a bank vault, each note being whipped into the air, dancing around the scene as a fight unfolds.
These are just a few of the many applications of PhysX in Batman: Arkham City, which together form the most impressive and extensive use of hardware accelerated physics ever seen (check out a detailed list of all the effects here). A true showcase of where the future lies.
Flip over to the next page to learn more about DirectX 11 effects, 3D Vision and fancy anti-aliasing modes.

nti-Aliasing & DirectX 11 Effects Examined

Multi-View Soft Shadows (DirectX 11)

We often associate good in-game shadows as being crisp and accurately rendered, but in reality shadows are softer, non-uniform and the result of multiple light sources and their surroundings. In the real world our brains decode the lighter and darker segments of a shadow (penumbra and umbra, respectively), and the smooth transitions between them, allowing us to automatically determine a light source’s position and the size and orientation of objects being shadowed. And while no game can hope to account for every possible factor in determining the appearance of a real-world shadow for the foreseeable future, the latest titles offer ‘soft shadow’ approximations.
In Batman: Arkham City, DirectX 11 is leveraged to make these approximations more realistic using a technique known as Multi-View Soft Shadows (MVSS). To achieve this, MVSS generates the main character’s ‘hard shadow’ many times per light source, with these shadows then combined and averaged. With a new, averaged ‘shadow map,’ soft shadows are generated and displayed directly via a pixel shader. Through this process each pixel of each scene that is in shadow will have a stronger shadow intensity than a pixel that is in-shadow in only 50% of the scene’s shadow maps. In other words, every piece of each shadow can be hard or soft or any degree between based on the lighting and conditions in the scene.
Generated in real-time, every frame, every second, the effect can be demanding in the more complex scenes, hence why it is an optional, DirectX 11-powered effect.

Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion (DirectX 11)

Also enabled by ‘DirectX 11 Features’ is Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion (HBAO), a rendering technique developed by NVIDIA that dramatically improves the appearance of soft shadowing in relation to the player’s viewpoint, most evidently where two objects meet, such as a crate placed near a wall, with the shadow falling on the three surfaces.
Without HBAO, the small gap between the crate and wall wouldn’t be accurately shadowed as the engine would fail to account for light in the scene leaking between the two, which in reality would create a shadow. With HBAO, all such possibilities are calculated and the shadow generated, something that is best achieved in concert with the aforementioned MVSS. Furthermore, the finished result is then ever-so-slightly blurred to remove the unrealistic sharpness mentioned above.

Click for an animated example highlighting the loss of Multi View Soft Shadows and Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion.

3D Vision

3D is hit and miss at the movies. Thankfully, this hit-miss ratio falls squarely in favor of the hits on the PC thanks to profiles that can be updated by NVIDIA, settings that can be tweaked by users, and bugs that can be fixed by developers, and you don’t have to pay extra for the implementation either. It should come as no surprise then, given the earlier info about PhysX, tessellation and general effects, that Batman: Arkham City is one of the most impressive 3D Vision titles to date.
For more 3D Vision screenshots head on over to 3DVisionLive.com.

Anti-Aliasing: FXAA, CSAA & MSAA

Anti-aliasing improves the visual fidelity of a scene by reducing the impact of unavoidable, unsightly jagged lines that go hand-in-hand with polygon-based game design. In Batman: Arkham City, developer Rocksteady allows gamers to choose between three techniques, each with their own quality settings, which we will now detail and compare.
First to appear in the configuration tool is Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA), a NVIDIA-developed anti-aliasing technique rapidly gaining traction in the games industry due to its high quality, low-cost results. Particularly powerful in engines using deferred shading, such as the Unreal Engine used by Batman: Arkham City, FXAA produces superior results compared to standard anti-aliasing methods for a far lower performance cost.

FXAA produces fantastic results on the transparent chain-link object, regardless of the quality chosen.

The differences between the various levels of FXAA anti-aliasing are more apparent in this second example, focusing on a solid piece of world geometry.
Next up is Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA), the de facto anti-aliasing method in recent years. Very expensive to use, MSAA hurts performance and increases VRAM usage by a significant degree, though those with top-end GPUs may find 8x MSAA superior to FXAA High, regardless of the performance impact, due to the lack of an additional blur filter that is applied by FXAA.

MSAA is unable to anti-alias transparent textures such as the chain-links, and therefore fails to enhance the object’s fidelity in any way whatsoever.

MSAA is effective on geometry, however, as can readily be seen.
The final option is Coverage Sample Antialiasing (CSAA), an NVIDIA-developed anti-aliasing method first introduced with our 8-Series GPUs. By storing pixel coverage information in a very compact way, CSAA produces anti-aliased images that should rival the quality of the above 8x MSAA method whilst introducing only a minimal performance hit compared to 4x MSAA. In other words, less aliasing with less of a performance hit, though users seeking ultimate image quality may wish to reinvest those savings in 16xQ CSAA or 32x CSAA.

As with MSAA, CSAA is unable to anti-alias the chain link object.

16x and 16xQ CSAA produce inferior results compared to 8x MSAA, although at 32x the difference is negligible.
Our final side-by-side comparison shows that FXAA High and 8x MSAA are on par with each other, and that 32x CSAA is a ever-so-slightly behind. During gameplay the differences between the three are only truly perceptible when you come across the aforementioned chain-linked objects, at which point FXAA really shines. Of course, you could forcibly enable Transparency Multisampling and Supersampling through the NVIDIA Control Panel, though this would further increase the performance impact of MSAA and CSAA in comparison to FXAA High, which as you will see later is extremely efficient.
Given the comparisons above and our in-game experiences, we personally recommend FXAA High - as shown, it is the only anti-aliasing method capable of tackling the many chain-linked objects featured in the game, and though it introduces a slight screen-wide blur, reducing the game’s sharpness ever so slightly, we feel this is an acceptable trade-off to eliminate those extra transparency-based jaggies that MSAA and CSAA cannot touch.
With everything examined and explained click on over to the next page to check out performance using Arkham City’s built-in benchmarker.

Performance Testing & Optimal Playable Settings

Featuring so much advanced tech we were eager to discover how well Batman: Arkham City performed, and thanks to the inclusion of a repeatable, configurable benchmarking application we were able to capture accurate information regarding the performance of each and every graphics card in NVIDIA’s line-up. Through this testing, we were able to ascertain how much of an impact the various anti-aliasing modes, graphics effects and advanced features have, allowing us to recommend the best settings for your particular graphics card and to help you configure your game for the best possible experience.

DirectX 9 Performance

The 8800 GT and 9800 GT: one and the same, and still the most popular graphics card amongst Steam’s many millions of users. Released several years ago, the two cards have hung onto the coat tails of newer GPUs, somehow producing playable results in the majority of recent releases.
Listed in Arkham City’s Minimum System Requirements sheet as the oldest graphics cards able to give you any kind of playable experience, let’s discover how they perform:
On our i7 2600K test system the venerable GPUs surprised us once more by breezing past 60 frames per second at 1920x1080 using the highest detail level. Not being DirectX 11 graphics cards, MVSS, HBAO and Tessellation are all off-limits, and lacking the number of CUDA cores of the latest GPUs, PhysX isn't a possibility either without sacrificing resolution, detail levels and the silky smooth frame rate.

DirectX 11 Performance

Batman: Arkham City on the PC is meant to be played with all the bells and whistles enabled. To do so requires a DirectX 11-compatible graphics card, such as the latest 500-Series NVIDIA GPUs.
In the following section we’ll test each of these cards with progressively better settings to determine what kind of GPU you’ll require for a given gameplay experience. Each test was conducted using a stock-clocked Intel i7-2600K, a P67 motherboard, and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. The Very High detail preset and DirectX 11 effects enabled were enabled, in addition to any configuration options listed on the charts.

Anti-Aliasing

At this baseline level the GeForce GTX 550 Ti comfortably handles 1920x1080 and the other cards are barely taxed. Let's up the ante by enabling Anti-Aliasing.

With 4xMSAA enabled the GTX 550 Ti is unable to replicate its impressive level of performance from the first test, though it does still produce a playable result at the lowest resolution. The GTX 560 is the first card to break 40 frames per second at 1920x1080, and the GTX 570 the first at 2560x1600.

8xMSAA has a massive impact on performance across the board - the GTX 550 Ti goes sub-30 FPS and is unable to complete the final test; the GTX 560 and GTX 560 Ti are only able to stay above 40 FPS at 1600x900; the GTX 570 stays just above 40 FPS at 1920x1080, where previously it was at 72 FPS; and the GTX 580 went as low as 29 FPS at 2560x1600. Only the GTX 590 remained playable at max res, producing a result of 43.6 FPS.

32xCSAA is even more demanding than 8xMSAA, lowering results by up to 9 frames per second across the board. This forces the GTX 560 below 40 FPS at any resolution, the GTX 570 below 40 FPS at 1920x1080, and the GTX 590 below 40 FPS at 2560x1600.

In stark contrast, FXAA High has a minimal impact on frame rates and produces in-game results similar to that of 8xMSAA, whilst also anti-aliasing transparencies. Using this AA technique the GTX 550 Ti and GTX 560 run well above 40 FPS at 1920x1080, and at 2560x1600 every other GPU is suitable for use. The slowest, the GTX 560 Ti, runs at a respectable 42.8 FPS.
Our first set of results reveal that a GeForce GTX 550 Ti can play Batman: Arkham City with a level of fidelity far superior to that of the console releases, and that FXAA High is a far more efficient anti-aliasing technique compared to MSAA and CSAA.

Normal Tessellation & PhysX

Due to MSAA and CSAA's severe impact on performance we removed the anti-aliasing techniques from our tests and continued only with FXAA High. The next batch of tests reveal the performance of the lowest level of tessellation, 'Normal,' and the impact of PhysX when enabled alongside it.

The enabling of 'Normal' tessellation has a nominal impact on frame rates across the board compared to our previous FXAA High, tessellation disabled results; the general impact being a few frames per second. This minute reduction has no impact on the overall result, meaning the GTX 550 Ti is still well and truly playable at 1920x1080.

With the lowest level of PhysX enabled the picture changes significantly, but not the overall result, meaning the GTX 560 and 560 Ti still run at 40 FPS and above at 1920x1080 and the GTX 570, 580 and 590 do the same at 2560x1600. The only exception is the GTX 550 Ti, which now falls below the 40 FPS sweet spot at 1600x900 and 1920x1080.

With PhysX High enabled frame rates dropped once more, and the overall result changed slightly - the GTX 560 fell below 40 FPS at 1920x1080 by 0.3 FPS, though that is well within accepted variance for benchmarks, and the GTX 570 fell below 40 FPS at 2560x1600, leaving only the GTX 580 and 590 above the sweet spot at the max resolution.
With our second set of tests we have discovered that Normal tessellation makes very little difference to performance, unlike PhysX, which dramatically reduces frame rates. However, the mid-range and high-end 500-Series GPUs had a significant enough performance margin to prevent these demanding effects from pushing frame rates below our 40 FPS sweet spot.

High Tessellation & PhysX

For our final set of tests we enabled 'High' tessellation and PhysX, pushing our graphics cards to the limit.

Going from Normal tessellation to High tessellation results in the loss of a few frames per second across the board.

Because the difference in performance between Normal and High tessellation is so slight, only the GTX 570 result changes, it now being incapable of 40 FPS at 2560x1600.

Our most demanding test changes the landscape slightly - the GTX 560 now clearly falls outside of the 40 FPS sweet spot at 1920x1080, and the GTX 560 Ti just inside; the GTX 570 becomes our clear 1920x1080 winner; and the GTX 580 falls just below 40 FPS at 2560x1080.
Our final set of tests show that the performance difference between Normal and High tessellation is only a few frames per second, and that the performance difference between PhysX Normal and High, when every other setting is enabled, is up to 13 frames per second extra.
To more clearly demonstrate the performance difference between the two PhysX options we've compiled one final chart:

All 500-Series graphics cards can max out every game setting in conjunction with FXAA High, but only a few can do so at over 40 frames per second.

Summary: Optimal Playable Settings

GPU	Resolution	Quality Preset	Anti-Aliasing	DX11 Effects	Tessellation	PhysX	Frame Rate
GTX 590	2560x1600	Very High	FXAA High	Enabled	High	High	44.9
GTX 580	1920x1080	Very High	FXAA High	Enabled	High	High	47.4
GTX 570	1920x1080	Very High	FXAA High	Enabled	High	High	46.0
GTX 560 Ti	1920x1080	Very High	FXAA High	Enabled	High	High	40.6
GTX 560	1920x1080	Very High	FXAA High	Enabled	High	Normal	44.2
GTX 550 Ti	1920x1080	Very High	FXAA High	Enabled	High	Off	44.3

GeForce GTX 580

The only card capable of running Batman: Arkham City at over 40 frames per second at our max resolution, using the max possible settings, High tessellation and High PhysX.

GeForce GTX 580

The GTX 580 is more than capable of playing Arkham City at 1920x1080 and was just 0.4 frames per second shy of 40 at 2560x1600, so with the tiniest of overclocks it would easily enter the sweet spot and give you a flawless gameplay experience at our maximum tested resolution.

GeForce GTX 570

The GTX 570 was the first card to comfortably handle Arkham City at 1920x1080 with PhysX and tessellation set to High. Recommended for users of ~23" monitors.

GeForce GTX 560 Ti

The GTX 560 Ti sits in the sweet spot at 1920x1080 by just 0.6 frames per second when using High tessellation and PhysX. Dropping down to Normal PhysX would give you an extra 5.8 frames per second.

GeForce GTX 560

At 1920x1080 we were only able to use Normal PhysX in conjunction with High tessellation to remain within the 40 frames per second sweet spot, though at 1600x900 we did record a result of 41.7 frames per second using both High PhysX and tessellation, so if desperately want the extra PhysX effects without sacrificing your frame rate, reducing the resolution is the way to go.

GeForce GTX 550 Ti

For a budget card the GTX 550 Ti performs amazingly well, hanging on in there with the costlier mid-range cards until we added PhysX, the most demanding feature in Batman: Arkham City. Paired with a similarly-priced processor you’ll receive a fantastic experience, superior to that offered by the consoles, albeit without realistic PhysX niceties.

Using A Second Graphics Card As A Dedicated PhysX Processor

Do you have an old CUDA-enabled graphics card lying around somewhere gathering dust? What if we told you that you can use that card to accelerate your frame rate in Batman: Arkham City when utilizing the PhysX effects?
All you have to do is plug a GeForce 8, 9, 200, 400 or 500 Series GPU into a spare PCI-Express slot on your motherboard, attach any required power cables, switch the PC back on, and then set up your NVIDIA Control Panel as shown below, ignoring the references to SLI that won’t appear unless you’re inserting a third card alongside an existing SLI configuration.
To ascertain the performance improvement from a second graphics card set as a dedicated PhysX processing unit, we tested a GeForce GTX 560 Ti at the more demanding 1920x1200 resolution, denoted as ‘None’ in the chart below, and then re-ran our benchmarks using a number of popular NVIDIA GeForce GPUs in the required configuration.
By repurposing a piece of five-year-old kit gathering dust on a shelf we’ve boosted our Batman: Arkham City frame rates by 11.56%, pushing the GTX 560 Ti into the forty frames per second sweet spot when using every single effect and enhancement (if you don’t already own a 8800 GT or 9800 GT, they’re cheap as chips on eBay). Another popular, ageing graphics card, the GeForce GTX 260, improved frame rates by 17.55%, and a second GTX 560 improved frame rates by 23.71%.
This performance improvement scales somewhat with your processor's power, so those with older CPUs will receive less of a benefit from the secondary card, though it should still make a noticeable impact on the overall frame rate. In the end, any improvement is an improvement worth having, so hold onto your old NVIDIA tech as it will come in handy in similar situations in the future.

Conclusion

Having sat in the company of Batman: Arkham City for many an hour we can confidently say that it is not only one of the year’s best games, but also an expertly optimized technical tour de force – even using older 200-Series GPUs, an experience superior to that seen on the consoles can be had using just the DirectX 9 effects.
Using affordable low-to-mid range components, DirectX 11 tessellation and effects can be enabled whilst maintaining a stable 40 frames per second. It is only PhysX’s accurately-simulated effects that truly tax video cards, and to enable them you will need a higher-end system, preferably utilizing a GeForce GTX 570 or higher.
We hope you’ve found this article informative, and if you have any questions please get in touch via Twitter or Facebook.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Tweak Guide geforce.com

November 5, 2011

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the third game in the highly-acclaimed Deus Ex series. The events in this latest expedition into the science fiction world of Deus Ex take place in the year 2027, a quarter of a century before the first Deus Ex game. The main character, security specialist Adam Jensen, is a cybernetically enhanced former SWAT member. He finds himself in the thick of the covert wars being waged between multinational biotech companies as they strive to gain an edge in the field of human augmentation. If you enjoyed the original Deus Ex, then Deus Ex: Human Revolution (HR) should be right up your alley, giving you the freedom to fight, sneak and hack your way through an engaging cyberpunk-themed environment.
The aim of this guide is to allow you to better understand and best utilize all of the configuration options available in Deus Ex: HR.
Before proceeding further, make sure you meet the game's minimum requirements as provided below:

• Processor: 2 GHz dual core CPU
• Memory: 1GB RAM (Windows XP), 2GB RAM (Windows Vista/7)
• Hard Drive: At least 8.5GB of free space
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8000 series or equivalent
• Sound Card: Direct X 9.0c compatible
• OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7

What follows are full descriptions for all of the settings available in Deus Ex: HR's various options menus. Screenshot comparisons are provided where relevant to highlight the impact on image quality of changing these settings. Performance information is also provided for every setting, although bear in mind that the precise impact on your particular system depends on your specific hardware combination and your other game and system-wide settings. The aim here is to give you enough information so that you can make an informed choice as to the settings you enable or disable to obtain a balance of visual quality and performance acceptable to you.

General System Optimization

Almost as important as any in-game setting is the way your Windows installation is configured. A great many problems and performance issues, especially stuttering, crashes and slowdowns, can be traced directly to sub-optimal settings in Windows and out-of-date or badly configured drivers. For this reason it is recommended that you download the relevant version of the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (TGTC) and take the time to optimize your Windows installation correctly. At the very least make sure to update your graphics drivers to the latest available version.

Performance Measurement

To successfully conduct any tweaking, you will need some way of objectively measuring your performance in Frames Per Second (FPS). The quickest and easiest way to measure your FPS in any game is to use the free FRAPS utility. Download, install and launch FRAPS before starting up Deus Ex: HR. You will now see a yellow FPS counter displayed in the corner of your screen. Pay attention to this FPS figure, particularly during graphically intense scenes, such as in heavy combat or in highly detailed areas. If your FPS dips into the low double or single digits for example, this is a good indication that you need to adjust various settings until your minimum FPS is consistently above 20-25 FPS during normal gameplay, such as when walking around or conversing with others, and higher still (e.g. 30-35 FPS +) during combat to maintain appropriate responsiveness.

Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Guide GeForce Review

Introduction 

September 29, 2011

By James Wang

Today, the Battlefield 3 Beta will be released to gamers worldwide. For many gamers, the first question on their mind is: can I run this game? And if so, at what setting? This will be primary focus on this article. Along the way, we'll look at the graphics options offered in Battlefield 3, how they affect image quality, and the some upgrade options if you're looking to purchase a new graphics card.

A Quick Primer on the Battlefield 3 Graphics Engine

The last time a graphics engine or game generated this much discussion and anticipation was with the launch of the original Crysis. So let's take a moment to review why Battlefield 3 is such a milestone for 3D graphics on the PC.

Prior to Frostbite 2, DICE used two different graphics engines in its games.

The graphics engine behind Battlefield 3 is called Frostbite 2. Prior to Frostbite 2, DICE, the developer behind Battlefield 3, worked with two graphics engines. The first engine, the original Frostbite, was created for Battlefield Bad Company. Frostbite was powerful in handling dynamic destruction but lacked a detailed lighting model. The second was Unreal Engine 3, which DICE licensed from Epic for use in Mirror's Edge. Mirror's Edge was noted for its beautiful lighting which was created using offline global illumination software, but since everything was pre-computed, none of the levels were destructible. DICE's goal with Frostbite 2 was simple: to create a graphics engine that combined the rich, global illumination lighting of Mirror's Edge with the dynamic destructible environments of Battlefield Bad Company.

GI, or Global Illumination, refers to lighting models that capture the complex interaction of light as it bounces around in an environment. The challenge with Battlefield 3 was to combine GI with destructible environments.

With Battlefield 3, DICE has fully achieved this goal. The engine makes use of such a dizzying amount of technologies that we will be devoting a whole article on the subject in the coming days. But for now, suffice is to say that Battlefield 3 is the first game that successfully combines full destruction with realtime radiosity lighting, deferred rendering with robust antialiasing, and richly lit indoor scenes with massively scaled outdoor levels. There are other games that make use of one or more of these technologies but none that use all of them. And no other game has that unique Battlefield 3 look.

Graphics Quality Options

That Battlefield 3 was built for the PC is clear the moment you open its video options menu. Eleven graphics quality settings can be individually adjusted and four presets are available: Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. We will be publishing a detailed tweak guide when the game launches to go through each of the individual options. For this article, we'll focus exclusively on the image quality and performance of the four presets.

Graphics Quality  (Preset)	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
Texture Quality	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
Shadow Quality	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
Effects Quality	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
Mesh Quality	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
Terrain Quality	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
Antialiasing Deferred	Off	Off	Off	4x MSAA
Antialiasing Post	Off	Low	Medium	Medium
Motion Blur	Off	Off	On	On
Motion Blur Amount	50	50	50	50
Anisotropic Filter	2x	4x	16x	16x
Ambient Occlusion	Off	SSAO	HBAO	HBAO

The four graphics quality presets in Battlefield 3 and how they translate into individual settings.

How Battlefield 3 Looks At Different Quality Settings

Low Quality

Even at Low Quality, Battlefield 3 looks very decent. The game uses the same realtime radiosity lighting engine is used across all graphics presets so even at low, there are tons of dynamic lights, colors reflect and bleed, and high dynamic range (HDR) lighting is in full effect. But the picture, though realistic, is fairly coarse. Shadows are jagged and can look like saw teeth. Textures are blurry unless viewed up close (a higher resolution loads when things get too blurry). And trees and grass look very flat without the rich self-shadowing that's provided by ambient occlusion. Fence aliasing is also very distracting at Low Quality.

Medium Quality

At Medium Quality, the fidelity and detail is significantly improved. The most noticeable difference is that all shadows are now soft; there are no more chunky pixels to be found. Ambient occlusion is also now enabled in the form of SSAO or Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. This means trees and grass cast shadows on themselves, giving them a richer, lusher look. "Antialiasing Post", which refers to antialiasing done as a post process using shaders is now set to Low. This removes most of the jaggies in the scene, making the image much smoother.

High Quality

Now this is what Battlefield 3 is suppose to look like. High Quality adds an extra layer of architectural detail on the beautiful Parisian buildings in the Metro level. Windows and columns are rendered with real geometry which in turn cast shadows on themselves thanks to ambient occlusion. Overall, objects and structures look a lot more 3D. Textures are also much sharper thanks to 16x anisotropic filtering. The game is simply beautiful at this point.

Ultra Quality

At Ultra Quality, everything looks better but in a more subtle than dramatic way. The most obvious improvement comes from the 4x MSAA setting which gets enabled at Ultra Quality. Up until Ultra Quality, all antialiasing is handled by a post processing shader , which though powerful, can miss certain objects. For example, at High Quality, fences and thin lines form crawling patterns when you move pass them. At Ultra Quality, the addition of 4x MSAA removes most of the offensive crawlies and moiré patterns.

Quality Setting Comparisons

At Low Quality, shadows are not filtered, resulting in hard edges and saw tooth patterns. At Medium, shadow edges are smoothed out. At High or Ultra quality, the resolution of the shadow map is higher, resulting in detailed but smooth shadows.

These set of images show the benefit of high quality ambient occlusion. At the Low and Medium, the buildings lack proper self shadowing. High and Ultra settings enable HBAO, or Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion, a self shadowing technique developed by NVIDIA that's now used in various games. Note the detailed shadows under the windows and arches.

One of the most obvious differences between the quality levels is in texture detail. At Low Quality, the sign is barely readable. At Medium, the text becomes clear. At High, even fine details such as the bolts become razor sharp.

At Ultra Quality, 4x MSAA (Multisampling Antialiasing) is enabled. This cleans up distracting crawling artifacts in fencing and thin wires.

How Battlefield 3 Performs

In this section, we look at how Battlefield 3 performs from three different perspectives. First, we look at how a wide range of GeForce graphics cards perform in the game. Second, we determine what the optimal playable settings are for the most popular graphics cards based on the four quality presets. Third, we look into how Battlefield 3 scales in SLI.

How Different Cards Perform

How we tested: We tested on the Metro level using an internal version of the beta that supports timedemos, allowing us to perform repeatable benchmarks.

To keep testing to a manageable level, we picked one resolution and setting that gets us the bulk of the Battlefield 3 look without going overboard. 1920 x 1080 High Quality captured this fairly well. This also enabled us to test a large number of graphics cards to get a better sense of relative performance.

The first take away from the chart is that Battlefield 3 is a very scalable game. Higher performing GPUs have plenty of room to stretch their legs. At forty frames per second, the game plays very well and rarely dips below thirty. The first card that satisfies this level is the GeForce GTX 560. The GeForce GTX 570 and 580 progressively perform better. The GeForce GTX 590, based on two Fermi GPUs, take the crown at just over 100 frames per second.

It's interesting to note that those who invested in the flagship GeForce GTX 295 almost three years ago can still play Battlefield 3 at near peak settings, though without the benefit of DirectX 11 features such as tessellation.

Optimal Playable Settings For Popular Cards

GeForce.com publishes optimal playing settings for all major games after launch and will certainly do the same for Battlefield 3 when it launches in October. For now, we've kept things simple and focused on finding the optimal playable settings for popular GPUs based on the game's quality presets.

To find the optimal playable setting, we toggled resolution and graphics quality until the framerate fell between the 40-60 fps range. We aimed for a minimum framerate of no less than 30 fps.

Graphics Card	Resolution	Graphics Quality	Framerate
GeForce 8800/9800 GT	1280 x 1024	Low	Average: 40-60 fps Minimum: >30 fps
GeForce GTX 260	1680 x 1050	Medium
GeForce GTX 460	1680 x 1050	High
GeForce GTX 560/570	1920 x 1080	High
GeForce GTX 580	1920 x 1080	Ultra
GeForce GTX 590/580 SLI	2560 x 1600	Ultra

GeForce 8800/9800 GT

We start the performance evaluation with the GeForce 8800/9800 GT—the most popular graphics card according to the Steam Hardware Survey and the GPU that is listed in the minimum system requirements of Battlefield 3. True to DICE's word, the GeForce 8800 GT does indeed play Battlefield 3, though at a humble resolution of 1280 x 1024 and at Low Quality settings. Needless to say, this is not how Battlefield 3 looks in the trailers, but the game does run, as promised.

GeForce GTX 260

The GeForce GTX 260 is the fourth most popular graphics card on Steam, used by 4.19% of gamers on the service as of August 2011. Though three years old, the card puts up a respectable performance. You can play the game at 1680 x 1050 at Medium Quality. As noted in the graphics quality section, at Medium, the game looks quite a bit better than Low but doesn't have the polish of higher quality settings.

GeForce GTX 460

The GeForce GTX 460 is the first card that gives you that unique Battlefield 3 "look" while maintaining solid framerates. At 1680 x 1050, the card lets you play at High Quality settings, which gives you most of the graphical bells and whistles, including antialiasing, ambient occlusion, detailed geometry, and detailed textures. The GeForce GTX 460 performs very well at this setting.

GeForce GTX 560/560Ti/570

With any of these three graphics cards, you are getting a full Battlefield 3 experience. Simply put, this is 1080p at High Quality at 40 fps or more. With the GTX 570, you can bump individual settings a little higher (for example, Ultra quality Textures or Effects) or you can opt to play at higher framerates on the same preset. If your budget is more limited, the GTX 560 is a perfectly sound option.

GeForce GTX 580

For those who are lucky enough to own a GeForce GTX 580, expect a near-perfect experience. We're talking about 1080p at fully maxed out settings (Ultra). You have to hand it over to DICE for their lighting engine; at Ultra quality, the radiosity lighting, soft shadows, and ambient occlusion come together and play off each other to produce scenes so rich and nuanced that they look like they had been art directed. At this quality, the game plays like a trailer.

GeForce GTX 580 SLI / GTX 590

With two Fermi GPUs, the game plays at maximum quality but at the expanded resolution of 2560 x 1600. Needless to say, the game is startlingly beautiful. Do not show this to your console friends. They will hate you.

SLI Performance

As you probably guessed from the performance of the GeForce GTX 590, Battlefield 3 scales exceptionally well in SLI. Scaling refers to the performance benefit that results from adding an additional GPU to the system. On the GeForce GTX 560, Battlefield 3 scaled just shy of 90% with the addition of a second graphics card. Two GeForce GTX 580 GPUs in SLI exceeds over 100 fps at 1920 x 1080 High Quality settings. Both setups can play Battlefield 3 at Ultra Quality without breaking a sweat.

Upgrade Recommendations

Performance and image quality are very personal preferences and only you know if an upgrade is needed for your PC. That said, if you are looking to upgrade, here are a few basic recommendations.

If your budget is under $200, the best upgrade is to a GeForce GTX 560. The GeForce GTX 560 lets you play Battlefield 3 at 1920 x 1080 at High Quality settings which delivers the bulk of the game's graphics fidelity without being too taxing on the hardware. The GTX 560 is essentially the modern incarnation of the GeForce 8800 GT—it's fast and affordable. Don't be surprised if three years for now, it replaces the GeForce 8800 GT as the most popular GPU on Steam.

If you want a bit more performance, for $249, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is a solid offering. For a bigger boost in performance, consider the GeForce GTX 570; it gives you an 18% performance boost over the GTX 560 and is available for under $349.

If you want to play Battlefield 3 with everything maxed out at 1080p, the GeForce GTX 580 is the one to get. You can find it for less than $499 on Newegg.

Finally, those who want simply the best performance and image quality will want to take advantage of SLI. DICE has gone to great lengths to make the game scale well with SLI and the performance results reflect this. If you own a GeForce GTX 460 or higher, adding a second GPU is probably the easiest and most economical way to improve your Battlefield 3 performance.

Conclusion

In the history of PC gaming, only a handful of games have had a truly profound impact on 3D graphics. Wolfenstein 3D ignited the genre of the first person shooter. Quake introduced fully polygonal game characters. Unreal pushed the limits of lighting and high resolution textures. FarCry liberated shooters from the constraints of dark corridors and introduced lush, open ended worlds. And finally, Crysis came along in 2007 and put everything together to create a near perfect first-person shooter. Each of these games left a lasting impression on the genre and the games that followed.

Since then, many of the same pioneers of 3D graphics have shifted their focus to consoles. But DICE decided to do the opposite. In an interview with GeForce.com in April, Patrick Bach, the Executive Producer of Battlefield 3 stated emphatically that the goal of Battlefield 3 was to create the most advanced shooter possible given the power available on modern PCs. Looking at the Beta today, it's clear that DICE has succeeded at just that.

Frostbite 2 is not about this effect or that effect. It's not a lighting engine nor a destruction engine. It's all of the above. Like Crysis, it synthesized all the knowledge that had been built up over the years into a single, pristine package. And years from now, when we look back, it will be Battlefield 3 that will be remembered as the game that defined the look for a whole generation.

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