Date:
Monday , October 19, 2009
Category:
GPU / Video Cards
Manufacturers:
AMD-ATI & NVIDIA
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice

Batman: Arkham Asylum & PhysX Gameplay Review

In Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Dark Knight pummels an endless stream of thugs, but will the game deliver the same two-fisted brutality to your video card? Find out as we examine gameplay performance and image quality on nine of today's video cards. Extensive testing of NVIDIA's PhysX and what it means to your gameplay experience!

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Highest Playable - 1680x1050

1680x1050 is the native resolution of the teeming hordes of 20" and 22" widescreen LCD monitors that have flooded the marketplace, as well as gamers' desks, in the past two years. Mathematically, it is very similar to 1600x1200 with respect to the sheer number of pixels on the display, and the amount of work required by the gaming system to drive it.

Since we experienced a very high level of gameplay at 1920x1200, we had high expectations that both video cards in this test would be able to play at 1680x1050 with the highest available level of gameplay available.

Mainstream

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Again, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 250 dominates the low end in Batman: Arkham Asylum. It was able to use 8X MSAA at 1680x1050, while the Radeon HD 4770 could only manage 2X MSAA.

We tried turning down the AA setting to get PhysX playable on the GTS 250, but it just was not going to happen for that little video card. Of course, it didn’t work on the Radeon HD 4770 either, but we knew it wouldn’t do it going into this.

Life At 1680x1050

If you are reading this on a 20 to 22 inch display, you should be a seriously happy gamer. You don’t need to spend very much cash at all to get a great experience in Batman: Arkham Asylum . A GeForce GTX 250 will do just fine.