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It's unusual to see PC multi-platform titles failing to match up to their console equivalents - Xbox One and PS4 are based on PC technology, after all - but in Batman: Arkham Knight we have a rare example. Having tested the PC game on a Intel Core i7 3770K machine, with 16GB of memory and a GTX 780 Ti, a solid all-round experience should be within easy reach. In reality, performance levels are poor with this setup, and to throw salt into the wound, the PC's top tier settings miss out on visual effects found in the PlayStation 4 release. Let's start with performance - the big bone of contention with the game at launch. Out of the box, the game is capped to 30fps - a number that hides lurches in performance we see on this machine, but compared to the unlocked frame-rate in the last two games it's a definite shortcoming. However, by navigating to Arkham Knight's config folder, it's easy enough to change this to 60 or beyond with the 'BmSystemSettings.ini' file. In our case, we choose 120 to see the state of the game's full performance profile - and it isn't pretty.
Even at low settings, holding 60fps on the 780 Ti is out of the question. With Nvidia's 353.30 driver (apparently optimised for Arkham Knight) installed, our setup suffers from hiccups and lurches to as low as 38fps as we glide across Gotham or drive in the Batmobile. Frame-times are highly variable, reaching a nadir of 410ms for a single frame as the game crosses a checkpoint. Amazingly, dropping to the worst quality textures, shadows and level of detail (while turning off anti-aliasing, v-sync and all Nvidia Gameworks features) still has us dropping to 40fps and lower while at 1080p.
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