Tuesday, September 29th 2009
Batman: Arkham Asylum Enables AA Only on NVIDIA Hardware on PCs
Anti-Aliasing has been one of the most basic image-quality enhancements available in today's games. PC graphics hardware manufacturers regard it as more of an industry standard, and game developers echo with them, by integrating anti-aliasing (AA) features in the game, as part of its engine. This allows the game to selectively implement AA in parts of the 3D scene, so even as the overall image quality of the scene is improved, so is performance, by making sure that not every object in the scene is given AA. It seems that in one of the most well marketed games of the year, Batman: Arkham Asylum, doesn't like to work with ATI Radeon graphics cards when it comes to its in-game AA implementation.
Developed under NVIDIA's The Way it's Meant to be Played program, and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX technology, the game's launcher disables in-game AA when it detects AMD's ATI Radeon graphics hardware. AMD's Ian McNaughton in his recent blog thread said that they had confirmed this by an experiment where they ran ATI Radeon hardware under changed device IDs. Says McNaughton: "Additionally, the in-game AA option was removed when ATI cards are detected. We were able to confirm this by changing the ids of ATI graphics cards in the Batman demo. By tricking the application, we were able to get in-game AA option where our performance was significantly enhanced." He further adds that the option is not available for the retail game as there is a secure-rom.
With no in-game AA available to ATI Radeon users, although the features do technically work on ATI Radeon hardware, the only way AA can be used is by forcing it in Catalyst Control Center. This causes the driver to use AA on every 3D object in the scene, reducing performance, compared to if the game's in-game AA engine is used. "To fairly benchmark this application, please turn off all AA to assess the performance of the respective graphics cards. Also, we should point out that even at 2560×1600 with 4x AA and 8x AF we are still in the highly playable territory," McNaughton adds. Choose with your wallets.
Developed under NVIDIA's The Way it's Meant to be Played program, and featuring NVIDIA's PhysX technology, the game's launcher disables in-game AA when it detects AMD's ATI Radeon graphics hardware. AMD's Ian McNaughton in his recent blog thread said that they had confirmed this by an experiment where they ran ATI Radeon hardware under changed device IDs. Says McNaughton: "Additionally, the in-game AA option was removed when ATI cards are detected. We were able to confirm this by changing the ids of ATI graphics cards in the Batman demo. By tricking the application, we were able to get in-game AA option where our performance was significantly enhanced." He further adds that the option is not available for the retail game as there is a secure-rom.
With no in-game AA available to ATI Radeon users, although the features do technically work on ATI Radeon hardware, the only way AA can be used is by forcing it in Catalyst Control Center. This causes the driver to use AA on every 3D object in the scene, reducing performance, compared to if the game's in-game AA engine is used. "To fairly benchmark this application, please turn off all AA to assess the performance of the respective graphics cards. Also, we should point out that even at 2560×1600 with 4x AA and 8x AF we are still in the highly playable territory," McNaughton adds. Choose with your wallets.
353 Comments on Batman: Arkham Asylum Enables AA Only on NVIDIA Hardware on PCs
Yes you have to trick the game if you are ATi, but hey, 5870, you are sure looking sexy now compared to The Nvidia...........oh, thats right, you're still behind.
They ve fallen so low.Like the 58xx series would have a real problem handling the driver level AA via CCC thats a bit more performance hungry.nvidia should work on its 300 chipsets instead of giving nasty hits on amd:shadedshu:shadedshu:shadedshu
Seems like they do that alot lately :P
"With no in-game AA available to ATI Radeon users, although the features do technically work on ATI Radeon hardware, the only way AA can be used is by forcing it in Catalyst Control Center."
Problem solved :toast:
There are games optimized to do well with Nvidia drivers and vice versa. Its nothing new, its why they throw their hat in the ring to help out in development and funding. Its what they get in return. Not like its the best game of the year. It probably sucks. But its sales are supposed to be good so idk.
No reason to act "butthurt" you guys.
But mostly cause of the business ethics, this and the need for speed : shift / assasins creed debacle show what kind of company nvidia is, instead of pooring all the profit they make into actually better card and drivers, they litteraly bribe gaming companies.
Im all for optimasations, but make it fair for all, disabling AA on purpose ? removing perfectly working DX10.1 ? ignoring ATIs request for bug fixing ?
Not only do i avoid buying any nvidia hardware, but i havent bought and never will buy any of those games, ATI and the computer news media have to take an example of TPU and be more vocal about these things before they get out of hand.
Its no big deal, just don't buy the game in protest if you own an ATi card.
PS. Wouldn't it be funny if the game was bundled with ATi cards and then they had to fix it. :laugh:
Funnily enough it came with a bundled free download of Batman AA but the card didn't even last long enough to get round to DLing it, LOL.
I will say though, SHIFT ran very smoothly, albeit with occasional lurches, FPS was stable but the frame seemed to jump. Weird.
I was seriously considering buying an Nvidia card soon (just for the GPU processing!), but fuck that. I had heard that the whole "TWIMTBP" program was ending (heard that on hear somewhere), and I thought that Nvidia were mending their ways.
However, forget that -- this is exactly the kind of shit that I've been talking about for years now.
i want a 50/50 share, with massive battles:D