ATI Radeon 5770 & 5750 Review - Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum is the well received action title by Rocksteady. The game offers very detailed environments with a great visual style and high quality. There are known issues with AA using ATI cards. You cannot set the AA level from within the game, and have to force it with the Catalyst Control panel. All settings within the game were maxed out. I used 4xAA with Adaptive Multi-Sampling (the balance between Quality and Performance) from within the CCC.

The AA implementation produces a greater than expected impact on the performance. I know there are ways to tweak the game to use the AA from within the game itself. However, I believe finding the information and implementing it is beyond the average gamer. While an enthusiast (i.e., target market of both the WSGF and this card) might go through the trouble, many mainstream gamers will not. My testing actually ran all the way down through the Radeon HD 5450, and using the "native" options provided the most consistent platform for testing.

The games runs like a demon in normal widescreen on any of these cards, with 4xAA. The HD 5770 almost cracks 60fps at 1920x1200. However, performance takes the expected hits in Eyefinity, and this is what we are really here to test. At the native resolutions of 5760x1200 (3x1920x1200), the game literally crawls with 4xAA on any card. You will have to make some adjustments for playable frame rates, and dropping to 2xAA gives massive speed improvements.

Batman:AA (pun actually not intended) is a unique title. It is made well, and plays well, but technical issues can really hamper performance. The impacts are so great that 5760x1200 is simply unplayable with any card.

The 5770 and 5750 offer a fairly linear scaling from the 5830. There are significant performance reductions when moving to the HD 5670.

Hitting 60fps

Widescreen - 2xAA and Very High settings gives you 60fps at 1920x1080

Eyefinity - 0xAA/High gives you 49fps at 5760x1200. Dropping the resolution to 4800x900 yields bigger improvements. 0xAA/Very High gives you 54fps, while 0xAA/High gives you 69fps.