Electronic Arts has released the latest part in the NFS series, Need for Speed: Heat. Need for Speed: Heat is using the Frostbite Engine so it’s time to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.
For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, GTX980Ti and GTX690. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce driver 441.12 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.11.1 drivers. NVIDIA has not included any SLI profile for this title, meaning that our GTX690 performed similarly to a single GTX680.
Ghost Games has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Shadows, Texture Filtering and Ambient Occlusion. There are also options for Anti-aliasing, Effects, Geometry, Terrain, Vegetation, Post-Process, Reflections, Depth of Field and Lighting.
Need for Speed: Heat does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. As such, we’ve benchmarked the game during night and rain in the first big city. Do note that this is a stress test, meaning that other areas (especially during the day) will run better.
In order to find out how the game scales on multiple CPU threads, we simulated a dual-core, a quad-core and a hexa-core CPU. For some strange reason, the game would not launch when Hyper Threading was disabled. We were able to replicate this multiple times, so we are not sure what is going on here. Not only that, but the game would not load at all on our Intel i7 4930K system. That CPU is well above the game’s minimum CPU requirements. However, the game was immediately closing and “disappearing” from the task manager. Need for Speed: Heat uses Denuvo so I don’t know whether these launch issues are due to this anti-tamper tech. Bottom line is that we could not test the game on a variety of CPUs, and we are not the only ones facing this issue.
Performance is also underwhelming, especially after what Playground Games has achieved with its Forza Horizon series. At 1080p, we were CPU/memory limited on our Intel i9 9900K. While both our simulated hexa-core and eight-core systems were able to run the game with more than 60fps, our simulated quad-core system had major performance issues. On that system, NFS: Heat ran with a minimum of 22fps and an average of 28fps. This is atrocious performance for a modern-day quad-core system. As for our simulated dual-core system, the game ran with… wait for it… 10fps.
There is something wrong going on here and Ghost Games will have to release a performance patch for this game as soon as possible. It’s inexcusable for a game like NFS: Heat to perform that horribly on a quad-core system, plain and simple. Now I’ve seen some YouTubers running the game on i5 CPUs without experiencing these issues. As such, I don’t know why the game behaves this way on our system. Seriously, just take a look at the following screenshot. Witness that awful frame pacing/framerate issues (as well as the game maxing out all eight CPU threads).
UPDATE:
It appears that the default online profile was the cause of our underwhelming CPU performance. By creating a user.cfg and limiting our CPU Processor Count, we were able to properly run the game (even without Hyper Threading). Kudos to our reader “connos” for providing the following solution.
You can limit your CPU processor count by creating a user.cfg file in the game’s main folder and using these commands. The config below is for quad-cores with Hyper Threading (4 cores, 8 threads). You can change these values to your liking:
Thread.ProcessorCount 4
Thread.MaxProcessorCount 4
Thread.MinFreeProcessorCount 0
Thread.JobThreadPriority 0
GstRender.Thread.MaxProcessorCount 8
Need for Speed: Heat also requires high-end GPUs in order to be enjoyed. The only GPUs that were able to offer a smooth experience at 1080p/Ultra were the Vega 64 and the RTX2080Ti. The GTX980Ti was unable to offer a 60fps experience even at 1080p.
The only GPU that was able to run the game smoothly at 2560×1440 was the RTX2080Ti. Our Vega 64 was able to push a minimum of 48fps and an average of 55fps at that resolution. As for 4K, even our RTX2080Ti was unable to offer a 60fps experience. Now as we said, this is the worst case scenario so you should keep that in mind.
Graphics wise, Need for Speed: Heat looks great during the night. There are multiple volumetric lights and everything looks amazing. In daytime, the game looks slightly worse than Forza Horizon 4 (mainly because Playground’s open-world racer features a dynamic day/night cycle). Need for Speed: Heat also features a lot of destructible objects, something that put a smile on our faces. It’s really refreshing watching a game in which we can destroy most objects.
All in all, Need for Speed: Heat is a mixed bag. The game currently suffers from major launch issues on a huge range of PC systems. This is something that Ghost Games really needs to address as soon as possible. The game also appears to be requiring a lot of CPU raw power, and is unplayable on modern-day quad-core systems (at least on Ultra settings).
After troubleshooting the CPU issues we’ve been experiencing, we can say that NFS: Heat runs pretty great on the PC. Now while the game does not require a high-end CPU, it does require a powerful GPU for gaming at 1080p/Ultra. Players can also destroy a lot of environmental objects, and its visuals are – for the most part – great.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
“: Heat also requires high-end GPUs in order to be enjoyed”
Requirements “oh yeah you need a gtx 1060 on recommended”
Me “payback didnt run well with that, obviously this is a lie
Another pointless Ultra settings benchmark.
Are there ANY practically visible differences between High, VHigh and Ultra?
Miniscule at best, with a big hit in performance, and yet it seems that all these people run these performance benchmarks? without any sense.
DF are the worst of the lot, with pausing and zooming around 300%, to show how a particular tree or object has an additional layer of shader or slightly more natural darker/lighter shadow.
It’s clear where there money is coming from.
I wouldn’t put DF in the same category to be honest. They have quite a few questionable videos, like the one where they praise the new Gears or the one where they “optimize” Modern Warfare settings by leaving the particle effects on a setting that they proved causes regular drops in the framerate. They definitely err to the side of image quality over performance, but they ARE concerned with performance and I’ve never seen a test by them where they only tested the highest settings or ignored performance problems.
The new gears deserved the praise, it’s absolutely gorgeous and runs amazing at 4k max settings. It’s one of the best looking games out there by a pretty large margin.
What are you going on about? DF shows the impact of basically every visual setting in the game and tells you what hardware you need to hit at least a locked 60 at various resolutions.
Also they do the extreme zooms because YouTube encoding kills detail so it becomes really hard to tell the difference even if it’s obvious in person.
A YouTube video is like running low quality FXAA over an image 4 times.
DSO and their analysis is rarely helpful. They don’t talk about performance cost per setting and that’s what people want and need, especially in an unoptimized mess of a game like this
Game looks great, need to give this a go with since I have Origin subscription.
It’s not great.. it’s corny as hell. I’ll try it again sometime, but it’s an image of what corporate suits think is cool, and just hard to get into.
Yeah, the corny nature of it all made me turn it off after the first story-based race, went back to it later and thankfully it gets a bit better, but still hard to keep playing it at a stretch since the driving itself isn’t that great as to make me keep playing the story mode.
Origin subscription. ………
pathetic ……
Wow. That’s super racist. You can clearly see that he’s mexican and still say things like that. smh…
The cpu problem is normal. The game detects the cpu and the cores you have so when you disable the cores with affinity trick it messes everything. You have to use a cfg file with frostbites commands to setup the cores.
Thread.ProcessorCount
Thread.JobThreadPriority
Thanks, that did the trick. This is the first Frostbite game that behaved like this. By using a user.cfg and limiting the processor count, we were also able to launch the game without HT enabled. My guess is that the game was not launching due to the incorrect processor count. I’ve updated the article with a new CPU chart too.
i don’t get how limiting cpu performance increases game performance?
Some games just freak out when too many cores are present (it doesn’t know what to properly do with them).
It’s a programming issue really.
16 threads became the norm 2 years ago now, I guess they forgot to test the game on the “best” gaming cpu i.e. 9900k not to mention amd one’s. Poor console port, made for 7 threads the consoles have and not modified in any way. NFS payback had the same issue, it pegs 9900k at 80-90% at times, 8700k stutters like hell.
The norm according to steam is still 4 cores 4 threads, way more i5’s than anything else out there. Of course once the new consoles come out that’s going to be an issue for a significant number of people.
Of course this game is just unoptimized as hell. I can run Forza Horizon 4 at Max settings 4k60+ fps with 8xMSAA. Forza also has a significantly more complex physics simulation and ai system so there is zero reason for Heat to perform so poorly.
The fact that I can’t max this game on a 2080ti ftw3 ultra and a 6 core 12 thread i7 with an all core OC of 4.6ghz is a joke.
Even when you have a “locked” 60 according to any fps counter the game still has frame pacing issues so it doesn’t feel smooth.
BIG THX! u made may day! <3 @dsogaming ! just 1 question is this fix working on any games or is limited by like frostbyte engine?
If I have an i7-7700k, what numbers should I put up?
NFS 2015 still looks looks better than this garbage.
The difference between Heat & 2015, is that you have both day & night racing in Heat, whereas 2015, only concentrates on night racing about, which is also with Carbon & I believe was also in Underground & Underground 2.
It has been some time since I played other NFS from the long line up listing & may have forgotten others in it that also meet that same criteria of 2015 & the 1’s I named as well here.
These are the 1’s that come into mind that follow the same race conditions of 2015, that I can readily recall off the top of My head, at this time.
That aside… yeah, I agree.. even Payback, was better off the rip, than Heat is, as it stands. Heck, everything else pretty much prior to Payback, was better in running than Heat… to be frank about it.
Hello. I want to ask how to set up that CPU limiter when I have 6 cores, 12 threads. If someone can help me with this. I have like 80-93% usage of CPU on Heat. Thank for any help on this.
Go to Program Files (x86) > Origin Games > Need for Speed Heat.
Then right click and select create New > Text Document.
In this text document paste
Thread.ProcessorCount 4
Thread.MaxProcessorCount 4
Thread.MinFreeProcessorCount 0
Thread.JobThreadPriority 0
GstRender.Thread.MaxProcessorCount 8
After this is pasted rename the text document to: user.cfg
Ensure that it does not have .txt extension.
It should not look like this: user.cfg.txt
It should only read as – user.cfg
Go to Program Files (x86) > Origin Games > Need for Speed Heat.
Then right click and select create New > Text Document.
In this text document paste
Thread.ProcessorCount 6
Thread.MaxProcessorCount 6
Thread.MinFreeProcessorCount 0
Thread.JobThreadPriority 0
GstRender.Thread.MaxProcessorCount 12
After this is pasted rename the text document to: user.cfg
Ensure that it does not have .txt extension.
It should not look like this: user.cfg.txt
It should only read as – user.cfg
Getting an essentially locked 60 at 1800p with some nvcp image sharpening and near max settings on a 1080 ti. HDR is borked though working only with borderless window mode on and borderless window being double buffered or an unlocked juddering mess. SDR at fullscreen looks fine but I’ll wait to buy (doing the trial) after they’ve fixed the HDR issues
Hi!, so… i had a i5 7200U which have 2 cores and 4 threads, kinda meh but anyways, im using this line:
Thread.ProcessorCount 2
Thread.MaxProcessorCount 2
Thread.MinFreeProcessorCount 0
Thread.JobThreadPriority 0
GstRender.Thread.MaxProcessorCount 4
and the game doesn’t start at all, black inifinite screen at startup, what im supose to do to the command work? i tried so many different ways to put this cfg in my game in every single set up with 2 cores and 4 trheads doesnt work at all!
same problem,shit optimized game
Yesterday I had about 20-30 fps. After todays patch it’s now completely broken with 10 fps in menus and everywhere. Wth. i7 4770k, nvidia rtx 2070 super..
On a Dell Optiplex 980 desktop, running Win 10 Pro, Intel i7 CPU 860@2.80 GHz, stock except for RAM, which I booted to 8 GB, replaced the graphics card in it originally with a Nvidia GeForce GT720, monitor is an HP LV2011 (1600×900 rez). I optimized, using another players guide on Steam, by going into task manager, ending anything running in the background not absolutely necessary & setting the .exe on high priority. I even went into the Nvidia control panel & changed the screen rez down to 1280×720… and still having issues getting hit with a DXGI error code, stating something about having removed My graphics card from the system & or trying to run a graphics update in the middle of game play or some such nonsense.
With the suggested workaround by creating a .cfg file, what would I need to set that for in order to attempt to get this ‘hot mess’ to play.
I have NFS Payback & a couple other games by EA & can play them, with minimal muss or fuss… though with payback, it took some doing to get it to play decently.
Any info would be greatly appreciated… thanks.
p.s.
I have NOT overclocked My card, in any shape, form or size… wouldn’t know how to, even if My life depended on knowing how to do so.. *chuckles wryly*
I have a .cfg file created, using the base example, thus far, so all I would need to do is know what numbers to insert & save after imputing them.
Ok,
Have some info to update this comment with…
Think the basic config used in the example in the article is what was needed to use.
That said, in addition to using that.. I have also added in the following items, from other previous releases of NFS line up, prior to Heat… that matches up with the folder layout, that is. I avoided anything that came from earlier incantations that did NOT match that criteria.
The ones in question are as follows:
Need for Speed: The Run
Need for Speed: Rivals
Need for Speed: 2015
Need for Speed: Payback
If you have access to these, then you can look into doing what I did, described as follows:
Having Heat open in 1 window & the others in the list above open in separate windows, I then compared the side by side, as was possible.
I then compared the files visible in Heat, as the basis & made note of what was NOT there, in Heat as was in them.
I did NOT copy/past folders from these, instead focused on the files that were visible outside of them, from these games, that WERE NOT in the heat main folder.. that were NOT included in Heat.
End result, other than a bit of very minor hitching of the game, am NOT getting that bloody DXGI error message.. and the video play has improved, so as to NOT make the game such a hot mess.
The only difficulty faced now, is getting the steering, to NOT be twitchier as a $2 crack addicted prostitute… :/
Still have to figure out how to get that resolved, as I use a PS3/PC adaptable controller & NOT a steering rig set up… if any 1 has a solution to that, will continue to monitor here.
If any do NOT have access to that line up of games, contact Me via master.lee.7.66@gmail & will see what I can do to assist on the files from them that I have used from them, so that you can insert them yourself.
Am including a snap shot of the heat folder, as it stands now… so it can be seen how it differs from the stock mess download/install as it stands now.
p.s.
A shame I had to swap from Opera to Edge, in order to be able to attach the snap shot… https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f808b0259c87405fde35ba5dafb17f440cc34046812366d4168b1c5ca6e467f.png
p.p.s.
1 other thing of note.. I ended up having to go with rez in game, stepped down from My monitors native rez of 16×9 to 1280×720 in game.
The other modifications in game that I did, was shut everything off that could be done to that status & set the rest of it up, to low.
As stated above, the game is… about 98-99% as stable as it is going to get, until & unless EA does an update to correct the hot mess nightmare that they & their side dev’s made of it…
God, I hate being 7 months behind every one else on this.. :/