'Batman: Arkham Knight' System Requirements

[Guest]

Nvidia listed the Batman Arkham Knight system requirements today; here is what you will need to play the game.


'Batman: Arkham Knight' System Requirements : Read more

 

[RedJaron]

What is with these sudden huge game installs? Things were hanging around 10-20GB for the most part, a few bigger outliers, then suddenly 50GB games all over. Why the sudden doubling or more? Are devs just lazy and everything has to sit uncompressed on my hard drive?

 

[salgado18]

What is with these sudden huge game installs? Things were hanging around 10-20GB for the most part, a few bigger outliers, then suddenly 50GB games all over. Why the sudden doubling or more? Are devs just lazy and everything has to sit uncompressed on my hard drive?

May be higher quality audio, but most probably it's very high resolution textures. Since 4K became the thing these days, textures must be a lot better. Just a guess, but that's probably it.

 

[TallestJon96]

More likely it is the next ten consoles that are making the install difference. DVDs have way less capacity than blue-Rays, and every game from last gen had to fit on the 360's dvd's. PC version only got new textures, and other things, usually not more than a few extra gigs.

 

[jimmysmitty]

What is with these sudden huge game installs? Things were hanging around 10-20GB for the most part, a few bigger outliers, then suddenly 50GB games all over. Why the sudden doubling or more? Are devs just lazy and everything has to sit uncompressed on my hard drive?

The majority of the reason is due to the textures. They now are starting to include higher resolution textures. And let me tell you, doubling the texture size does not double the size it is something like 4x or more the same size.

That said, HDD space is cheap these days and short of load times a SSD doesn't make any difference:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178379

Plus they have up to 12TB HDDs now and Intel is supposed to be releasing 3.5TB and 10TB SSDs thanks to their new 3D NAND tech they just announced:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/27/toshiba-intel-3d-nand-chips/

And that will push SSDs $/GB down very far to make them much more economically feasible.

 

[icepick314]

are we STILL complaining about HDD space requirement in 2015?

multi-TB HDDs are pennies per GB...SDD is getting toward less than $0.20 per GB...

make some upgrade to HDD/SDD once in awhile...

What is with these sudden huge game installs? Things were hanging around 10-20GB for the most part, a few bigger outliers, then suddenly 50GB games all over. Why the sudden doubling or more? Are devs just lazy and everything has to sit uncompressed on my hard drive?

 

[Caffeinecarl]

Guess I'm not playing this one...

 

[TallestJon96]

More likely it is the next ten consoles that are making the install difference. DVDs have way less capacity than blue-Rays, and every game from last gen had to fit on the 360's dvd's. PC version only got new textures, and other things, usually not more than a few extra gigs.

 

[leeb2013]

another game recommending an I7. Is it really necessary? I thought the I5 was a good match for the 8350. Surely not all these developer can keep getting CPU requirements wrong can they?

 

[kenjitamura]

Regardless of what hardware you have, you will also need a 64-bit version of Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1

This bit is wrong. The game is also being released for Mac and Linux.
Edit: Though there's a 3 month delay I guess for the Mac and Linux versions, just noticed that.

 

[Supernova1138]

are we STILL complaining about HDD space requirement in 2015?

multi-TB HDDs are pennies per GB...SDD is getting toward less than $0.20 per GB...

make some upgrade to HDD/SDD once in awhile...

What is with these sudden huge game installs? Things were hanging around 10-20GB for the most part, a few bigger outliers, then suddenly 50GB games all over. Why the sudden doubling or more? Are devs just lazy and everything has to sit uncompressed on my hard drive?

I don't think it's so much the hard drive space as it is the gigantic downloads that come with the games ballooning in size. For those of us with crappy Internet connections it's not a great time. It took me 1.5 days to download GTA V with its massive 60GB download. At this rate, I'm going to have to start buying physical copies again if I'm not willing to wait two days to play something after I've bought it.

 

[fuzzion]

My poor SSD

 

[bluestar2k11]

That said, HDD space is cheap these days and short of load times a SSD doesn't make any difference:

Still, a 1TB HDD costs the price of a game, 2-4GB's cost 2-4 mainstream games, some people get very little money with which to buy games, and even less time to play them making buying multiple games pointless and poor use of funds, so if it's a choice between a game and a HDD to store more then one, most probably won't pick the drive.

Can you tell me why it's practical games take up so much space? I find it highly illogical texture data jumped that much. I retextured 70% of skyrim with 4k textures, including character models, and it only took 4 or 5GB's. So if a game costs 20GB's normally, and added we'll say 8GB's of 4k textures, that's still 12-17GB's below these monster 50GB+ games, so where is the rest of the data? Seems to me they're just not bothering to do anything about it.

Secondly, SSD's don't make a difference?
Aside from the incredible load times (which we all know about) that make some games take less then a minute (well over 2-3 minutes on a spinup drive... *glares at Civilization V*) that's pretty amazing.

Now if you take a slow loading game, and add in GB's of mods, textures, and other data from a streaming world, an SSD could make a big difference in framerates and gameplay by not chugging every little bit. How fast your game can pull data from your HDD can affect how the game runs beyond just loading a level quicker between maps.

 

[Bloob]

another game recommending an I7. Is it really necessary? I thought the I5 was a good match for the 8350. Surely not all these developer can keep getting CPU requirements wrong can they?

i5 is only a good match for the 8350 in floating point calculations, in highly threaded(>4) integer calculations 8350 competes with (last gen) i7.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Hello Everyone,

Glad you liked the post. It is bad game size is getting so large. I know all to well what a pain it is. My Internet speed isn't a huge problem, though it is a little slow, but my ISP locks me in at 250GB of data a month. With basic web browsing and video steaming that is a ton, but for anything gaming related like game downloads, mods, the connection while playing games online, we eat through that fast. My brother loves MMORPGs, eats through 6+ GB of data each day not counting downloading new games. Any time he wants a new one, its hard to manage.

I think textures are a big part of the problem, but at the same time I feel like it wouldn't be difficult for programs like STEAM to give you the ability to choose which textures you want. Then if Internet isn't an issue and you want 4K textures, you can. At the same time, Internet a bit limited, you just want HD textures probably setup for 1080p gaming then you could have that with substantially less bandwidth used.

As for the CPU bit, I know some are bothered by game requirements that say something like "I7-3770 or FX 8350", but I don't think they are really trying to say these are equal. I think they are saying an i7-3770 is really recommended, but they shouldn't just leave AMD off so they just go with the AMD processor as close to the i7-3770 as possible. Obviously there are others that are fast from AMD like the FX-8370 and the FX 9XXX CPUs, but the FX 8370 is a newer with just some small gains, I don't think a lot of game companies have taken note of it.

 

[RedJaron]

May be higher quality audio, but most probably it's very high resolution textures. Since 4K became the thing these days, textures must be a lot better. Just a guess, but that's probably it.

Audio may be a big culprit. Remember the flak Titanfall took because of its install size? Turns out all the audio was stored uncompressed on the drive, and I believe that included audio for every language as well. Textures add a little size, but not this much.

More likely it is the next ten consoles that are making the install difference. DVDs have way less capacity than blue-Rays, and every game from last gen had to fit on the 360's dvd's. PC version only got new textures, and other things, usually not more than a few extra gigs.

I agree with you to a point, but even with DVD releases you still had 15GB - 20 GB installs on some games, and that was even on the ones that had console versions as well.

The majority of the reason is due to the textures. They now are starting to include higher resolution textures. And let me tell you, doubling the texture size does not double the size it is something like 4x or more the same size.

Yes, "doubling" resolution does quadruple the total number of pixels. But unless you're dealing with bitmaps or uncompressed formats, it does not quadruple file size. I've used hi-res packs before and they accounted for very little of a game's total install size. LotRO is an old game, and the texture pack was only a gig or two. As mentioned above, hi-res textures for Skyrim don't add a lot of space and even the texture pack for Shadow of Mordor is only a 4GB download. So how do you figure hi-res textures for Arkham Knight equate to ~20GB?

That said, HDD space is cheap these days and short of load times a SSD doesn't make any difference:

You saying that makes me think you've never actually used a SSD for gaming. No, it won't help your actual framerate in any game that doesn't stream load the world, but loading a game or save nearly instantly is very nice, especially in MMOs where you may be zoning around and loading maps often.

And yes, you may consider HDDs cheap, but that does not mean I want to continually upgrade my storage. Not only do I have much more on my drives than just games, the more you fill them up the slower they get.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178379

Hybrid drives are fine for laptops and situations where drive bays or money are a limitation. That thing only has 8GB of cache. Your boot sequence will never leave the cache and will take up a sizable chunk. All the other applications you constantly use will also want to take up some of it. How much will be left over for games to use, and will that amount even be useful when you're dealing with a 50GB game?

Plus they have up to 12TB HDDs now and Intel is supposed to be releasing 3.5TB and 10TB SSDs thanks to their new 3D NAND tech they just announced:

Right, and next time I want to spend more on storage than I do on CPUs and GPUs combined, I'll be sure to consider those products.

are we STILL complaining about HDD space requirement in 2015?

multi-TB HDDs are pennies per GB...SDD is getting toward less than $0.20 per GB...

make some upgrade to HDD/SDD once in awhile...

You have no idea what I currently have available on my system, but you're just adorable for making disparaging assumptions about me. Just because someone has the space doesn't mean they want to be wasteful with it.

 

[alidan]

OK THIS IS WHERE THE SIZE GOES

uncompressed audio is number 1, if there is any video, less compression there too... remember the consoles are what games are made for, and if you are giving 25gb to work with per layer, you are using all that 25gb and uncompressed audio is easier on hardware requirements than compressed.

textures are a far lesser filesize, and 4k textures if done right are almost overkill for gaming, lets also add that they add FAR less to a game than a well crafted texture of a lower file size.

there was a modding project that redid the base mods for skyrim, no higher resolution, just remaking the texture well, and even now, that project looks better than most 4k texture packs i have seen.

you need to optimize your crap and most devs refuse to do this and throw hardware at the problem because its easier.

here...
video>audio>texture>models>animation>game code
i believe in that order.

1 minute of low/uncomressed 720p is 1gb, if you have space left on a disc are you going to care about compressing the into?
audio could be flac compressed or even mp3, but they chose bloated formats because less cpu use, and on a console thats a premium.

also, i despise anyone who complains "oh, what, you dont have hundreds to (bleep) away on hardware that if a dev properly made their game wouldnt be an issue, whats wrong with you?"

what you are looking at isn't "higher quality games" what you are looking at is devs being given 20-50gb and deciding "eff it" and not compressing anymore. you can compress audio by a factor of 7-10 times without seeing differences, same with video but its closer to a factor of 20, and with textures, you can compress losslessly by a factor of 15-20, and if you go lossy, you can compress by about 40 times and you would never notice a thing if you didn't lick walls.

streaming textures are making devs so lazy,

 

[A_J_S_B]

Better textures ? sure...but only to some point...It's also about pre-installing DLCs that you will be asked for to pay for them sooner or later....

Welcome to the fine art to make a game, possibly ridle with bugs, slice it in DLCs, make a huge huge download that includes all those slixces of DLCs, and sell the slices till total cost of game is 150-200 USD.

 

[leeb2013]

another game recommending an I7. Is it really necessary? I thought the I5 was a good match for the 8350. Surely not all these developer can keep getting CPU requirements wrong can they?

i5 is only a good match for the 8350 in floating point calculations, in highly threaded(>4) integer calculations 8350 competes with (last gen) i7.

does than mean GTA V uses highly threaded(>4) integer calculations?

 

[leeb2013]

OK THIS IS WHERE THE SIZE GOES

uncompressed audio is number 1, if there is any video, less compression there too... remember the consoles are what games are made for, and if you are giving 25gb to work with per layer, you are using all that 25gb and uncompressed audio is easier on hardware requirements than compressed.

yes, and it was the same with Titanfall regarding the audio. Not everyone has a low end PC, it would be nice to have the option to download compressed or uncompressed audio. I'm sure they could have incorporated that option during the additional 1.5 years of development.

 

[StarBound]

Are they also releasing this one with 300mb data on the retail disc and expecting consumers to download the other 55gb of the game?

 

[jimmysmitty]

are we STILL complaining about HDD space requirement in 2015?

multi-TB HDDs are pennies per GB...SDD is getting toward less than $0.20 per GB...

make some upgrade to HDD/SDD once in awhile...

What is with these sudden huge game installs? Things were hanging around 10-20GB for the most part, a few bigger outliers, then suddenly 50GB games all over. Why the sudden doubling or more? Are devs just lazy and everything has to sit uncompressed on my hard drive?

I don't think it's so much the hard drive space as it is the gigantic downloads that come with the games ballooning in size. For those of us with crappy Internet connections it's not a great time. It took me 1.5 days to download GTA V with its massive 60GB download. At this rate, I'm going to have to start buying physical copies again if I'm not willing to wait two days to play something after I've bought it.

Preloads. GTA V had a preload out the weekend before release. Still I understand that and that is why people need to push ISPs to offer better options.

May be higher quality audio, but most probably it's very high resolution textures. Since 4K became the thing these days, textures must be a lot better. Just a guess, but that's probably it.

Audio may be a big culprit. Remember the flak Titanfall took because of its install size? Turns out all the audio was stored uncompressed on the drive, and I believe that included audio for every language as well. Textures add a little size, but not this much.

More likely it is the next ten consoles that are making the install difference. DVDs have way less capacity than blue-Rays, and every game from last gen had to fit on the 360's dvd's. PC version only got new textures, and other things, usually not more than a few extra gigs.

I agree with you to a point, but even with DVD releases you still had 15GB - 20 GB installs on some games, and that was even on the ones that had console versions as well.

The majority of the reason is due to the textures. They now are starting to include higher resolution textures. And let me tell you, doubling the texture size does not double the size it is something like 4x or more the same size.

Yes, "doubling" resolution does quadruple the total number of pixels. But unless you're dealing with bitmaps or uncompressed formats, it does not quadruple file size. I've used hi-res packs before and they accounted for very little of a game's total install size. LotRO is an old game, and the texture pack was only a gig or two. As mentioned above, hi-res textures for Skyrim don't add a lot of space and even the texture pack for Shadow of Mordor is only a 4GB download. So how do you figure hi-res textures for Arkham Knight equate to ~20GB?

That said, HDD space is cheap these days and short of load times a SSD doesn't make any difference:

You saying that makes me think you've never actually used a SSD for gaming. No, it won't help your actual framerate in any game that doesn't stream load the world, but loading a game or save nearly instantly is very nice, especially in MMOs where you may be zoning around and loading maps often.

And yes, you may consider HDDs cheap, but that does not mean I want to continually upgrade my storage. Not only do I have much more on my drives than just games, the more you fill them up the slower they get.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178379

Hybrid drives are fine for laptops and situations where drive bays or money are a limitation. That thing only has 8GB of cache. Your boot sequence will never leave the cache and will take up a sizable chunk. All the other applications you constantly use will also want to take up some of it. How much will be left over for games to use, and will that amount even be useful when you're dealing with a 50GB game?

Plus they have up to 12TB HDDs now and Intel is supposed to be releasing 3.5TB and 10TB SSDs thanks to their new 3D NAND tech they just announced:

Right, and next time I want to spend more on storage than I do on CPUs and GPUs combined, I'll be sure to consider those products.

are we STILL complaining about HDD space requirement in 2015?

multi-TB HDDs are pennies per GB...SDD is getting toward less than $0.20 per GB...

make some upgrade to HDD/SDD once in awhile...

You have no idea what I currently have available on my system, but you're just adorable for making disparaging assumptions about me. Just because someone has the space doesn't mean they want to be wasteful with it.

I actually have used a SSD for gaming and currently have one game on my 180GB Intel 520, Guild Wars 2, because it helps with load times. I actually also said specifically that apart from load times a SSD doesn't help.

And not every game does benefit. Diablo 3 for instance, I tested it on a SSD, HDD and my RAID0 HDD setup and it didn't benefit in any way, or at least that was noticeable. That is why it is with most other games on my HDD.

The games you are talking about texture size are older and a lot of them were also on the previous gen consoles. True, texture size will depend on the format used but these days since more people have higher bandwidth connection and because HDD space is so cheap, I mean most everyone has 1-2TB, developers are now using less compression.

I was only using that HDD as a point of price. I remember when a 120GB HDD was $200+. 4TB at $170 is cheap. I just happen to pick that one.

And you really don't get how the 3D NAND will change things, do you? It allows for higher storage density in a smaller package which in turn means much higher yields per wafer and those two combined means that the price per GB of SSDs will start to drop drastically. Add in the fact that the 3D NAND will have the reliability of about 50nm NAND and SSDs will easily be able to take over and we will no longer have that issue where the more filled up it gets, the slower it goes.

That is only true with HDDs because it fills the HDD from the inside (where it is the fastest) to the outside (where it is the slowest). Once we have SSDs that will last 10 years of write cycles and are in the TB range and near the same price as current HDDs you wont have to worry about filling it up.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

According to the April 2015 Graphics Hierarchy chart, the Nvidia 660 is comparable to the Radeon 7850, not the higher 7870, which is comparable to the 660 Ti.

 

[Dorian Kunch]

3 GB of video ram is also a BIG DEAL. Few of us have that. I have a GTX 770. Not low end, not old school...but not good enough either it seems.

 

[atwspoon]

Still, a 1TB HDD costs the price of a game, 2-4GB's cost 2-4 mainstream games, some people get very little money with which to buy games, and even less time to play them making buying multiple games pointless and poor use of funds, so if it's a choice between a game and a HDD to store more then one, most probably won't pick the drive.

I don't think that many people can budget for the most ideal PC gaming setup. There are many ways to save money. Buying games 6 months after release during a 1/2 off retail price sale is one such savings. 120GB SSD is about $70, 1TB HDD is about $50, internet is (God help us) going to be cheaper by 2016. Spread out and one at a time these purchases are manageable.