Batman Arkham City on Nvidia GTX 560 Ti

Hi there my fellow gamers. I have a little story for you.

What do you do when you upgrade your whole system and feel like there is still something that is missing? Hmmm! Well… you upgrade the rest of it, don’t you?

That’s pretty much the gist of the story and now let us get to our real deal here and it is about playing the most awesome Batman game ever on a really great graphics card that is (hang on to your hats) under budget and performs right on the expectations.

Nvidia GTX 560 Ti card is a performance line graphics card from team Green and comes for a mainstream card budget (in comparison to cards released in 2010).

My little story was about upgrading from Nvidia GTX+ 9800 to Nvidia GTX 560 Ti. Personally, I was thinking about AMD Radeon HD 6770 because it is pretty cheap (only Rs.9500/- or $186) and delivers great performance.

But I changed my mind because now I am preparing myself for a future upgrade with Intel Core i7 and I don’t want my graphics card to bottleneck the performance of my gaming machine.

So, let us talk about how this magnificent video card performed on my mid-stream computer.

Performance of GTX 560 Ti in Batman: Arkham City (No Spoilers)

• Let me begin by saying that I got 60 FPS throughout the game and I set everything to maximum and because my monitor can only go as far as 1280X1024 resolution, I can’t guarantee 60 FPS or greater on 1920X1080 or 1920X1200 (widescreen Full-HD).
• The environment looked exquisite and I am sure that Microsoft Games put a lot of effort in creating the ultimate Batman experience.

• All the characters in Arkham City look lifelike and you wouldn’t believe me until you see Catwoman, Talia (daughter of Ras-Al-Gul : Head of the Demon and Batman’s Girlfriend), Poison Ivy, The Reporter, A Nurse and a few more.
• Why did I mention only ladies to look for? Well, because once you actually see the smoothness, you just wouldn’t stop admiring their work.
• With rough skin and rough edges (like that of men), you can take chances but when it comes to soft spots, you just have to do your best and after Mass Effect 2, Arkham City told a totally different tale of creating lifelike characters.
• In some places, Arkham City triumphs Mass Effect 2 and that is a pretty big deal.

• There were no edges, that is, anti-aliasing in this game is of highest level and I guess, I was lucky when I waited for the PC version because Microsoft Games did release a patch of at least 200 MB (because it took nearly 1 hr to download and install).
• While I was going through the reviews (when I was getting ready to make the purchase) of Arkham City, I found that people were complaining about the PC support and how the game was like GTA IV (and it has become Microsoft Games’s habit) and don’t buy it and things like that!
• But I can assure that not once, the game crashed or hanged. I don’t know if I was fortunate or not, but with my configurations (which are definitely not the configurations of a gaming machine) and 60 FPS throughout the game, I don’t think that this game could have any greater support for PC.
• I liked the story a lot, I mean it was so intriguing that I forgot the track of time and my inverter beeped when it finally gave up (because I was playing on it for like 1 and ½ hour).
• There are numerous villains this time and though, I am not going to review Batman Arkham City in this article, I just want to say that they look really, really great from graphical aspect of this game.
• They look terrible, powerful, horrifying, scared, mean, killer, etc, whatever their roles may be in the plot, they all look great.
• The card handled every point of this game very well and with Physics enabled, you actually get to see those little papers, rocks (debris), falling around you when you hit them.
• Regarding physics in this game: there was this video on YouTube regarding Physx Enabled and Disabled in Arkham City and with papers and pieces of glasses flying around. I saw the video and it looked good, however, when I read the comments, one of them made me think twice about buying this card.

• It said, “Do I need to buy Nvidia card just so that I can watch some papers flying around?”

• The underlying point was clear, Physics simulations in these games (whether PC or consoles) are nothing in comparison to real world.

• Physics calculations are done with an actual and separate Physx card and not with onboard Physx chip.

• Nvidia did a great job but calculating Physx is still at a novice state in comparison to Mother Nature.

• I guess we will have to wait for some time to get the real world feeling in our games. I mean, why do we play games in the first place? I guess because they give us a virtual world to live in. However, they still lack to provide the thrill of real world adventures and dangers, and that is what these developers need to focus on and create an ultimate game.

• So, I got a little off topic there, but coming back on track, the game looks great on GTX 560 Ti and I have included some photos with the help of FRAPS and I left FPS visible for you on the rightmost corner so that I can prove my point.

This graphics card is definitely worth a go and you cannot avoid the craving for it if you want to play it in 3D because Nvidia 3D vision 2.0 delivers ultimate 3D experience. I may not have seen it personally, but I read about it and gamers look greatly satisfied. So, give it a try and tell me if that’s worth anything. Till then, have fun with Arkham City. Ciao.