PC Performance Analyses

Forza Horizon 4 PC Performance Analysis

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A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft and Playground Games have released a demo for Forza Horizon 4, giving us a taste at this open-world racing game. The game is officially releasing on October 2nd and since Microsoft has provided us with a review code, it’s time to benchmark this new racer and see how it performs on the PC platform.

For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i7 4930K (overclocked at 4.2Ghz) with 8GB RAM, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti and GTX690, Windows 10 64-bit and the latest version of the GeForce and Catalyst drivers. NVIDIA has not included any SLI profile for this game, meaning that our GTX690 performed similarly to a single GTX680.

Playground Games has implemented a wide range of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Anisotropic Filtering, Shadows, Motion Blur, Environment Textures, Static Geometry, Dynamic Geometry, MSAA, SSAO, Reflections, Windshield Reflections, Mirrors, World Car Level of Detail, Deformable Terrain, Screen-Space Reflections, Lens Effects, Shaders and Particles Effects. There are also options for FXAA and Night Shadows, Colorblind, Field of View, and the game supports 30fps, 40fps, 60fps, 120fps or unlimited framerates. Not only that, but for each option Playground Games has added a small description that explains whether “X” option affects the CPU, GPU or both.

In order to find out how the game performs on a variety of CPUs, we simulated a dual-core and a quad-core CPU. And we are happy to report that Forza Horizon 4 can run with 60fps even on our simulated dual-core system, however, we had to enable Hyper Threading as the game would not boot at all when HT was disabled. Contrary to Forza Horizon 3’s launch version, Forza Horizon 4 can scale on more than four CPU cores/threads and runs silky smooth on a variety of CPUs. As such, we are pretty sure that a large number of PC gamers will be able to play the game with constant 60fps (provided they are not GPU limited of course).

Forza Horizon 4 is one of the few games that run way, way better on AMD’s hardware. Our AMD Radeon RX580 was almost able to match GTX980Ti’s performance. Similarly, the gap between the NVIDIA GTX980Ti and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 was huge. Forza Horizon 4 is undoubtedly the game that AMD users can use to showcase their GPUs, and it will be interesting to see how the RTX2080Ti performs on this particular game.

While our NVIDIA GTX980Ti was able to run the game on Ultra settings and with MSAA 4X at 1080p with more than 60fps, it was unable to offer a constant 60fps experience at 1440p. Still, and in case you are wondering, in 4K the game ran with better framerates than those witnessed on Xbox One X. On the other hand, our AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 was able to offer a constant 60fps experience at both 1080p and 1440p, and was able to run the game with an average of 60fps in 4K.

Forza Horizon 4 comes with five presets: Very Low, Low, Medium, High and Ultra. However, PC gamers can also push some settings to Extreme values, surpassing the default Ultra preset. At 1080p, both our GTX980Ti and RX Vega 64 were able to offer a constant 60fps experience on all graphics settings.

Graphics wise, Forza Horizon 4 is the most beautiful racing game to date on the PC. The rain effects are gorgeous, the dynamic time of day is great, the lighting system is fantastic, the cars are highly detailed. There is really nothing to complain here. We did notice some distant pop-ins of objects but most players won’t be able to spot them while racing (thanks also to the clever use of Motion Blur). The fact that this is an open-world racing game that looks great and performs so well is a great achievement, and shows how incredible the engine powering Forza Horizon 4 actually is.

Still, this isn’t a perfect PC game as we did experience some crashes (especially when changing settings) and when Rivatuner Statistics was enabled. We also experienced some minor stutters on AMD’s hardware (that were absent from NVIDIA’s hardware) so AMD will have to further polish its drivers. Furthermore, some settings require a complete restart of the game which is a bit annoying, especially when you’re trying to test custom settings.

So yeah, while Forza Horizon 4 is not a perfect PC game (and I doubt we’ll see many “perfect” PC games), it’s undoubtedly one of the most optimized PC games of 2018. Right from the start, the game runs with more than 60fps on a wide range of PC configurations, and comes with a lot of graphics settings so you can adjust your experience. As you’d expect, the game supports both wheels and keyboard, and displays proper keyboard on-screen prompts. It’s also the best looking racing game on the PC right now, so that’s another big plus!

98 thoughts on “Forza Horizon 4 PC Performance Analysis”

    1. He and the Xbots have been saying a new DX12 game would let the X run games like it was a GTX 1080. But like usual an RX 580 or GTX 1060 matches it.

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      1. they can trust what they want important is that with a mix of ultra and high i play 4k 60 on my rx480 strix oced to 1400mhz dinamic optimization off!

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      2. Here 980ti (1070 level of performance) barely keeps it’s min fps above 30fps with MSAAx4, and you suggest much slower 1060 would run that game with the same result? I doubt. Besides there are games like far cry 5, shadow of the tomb raider and especially wolfenstein 2 where xbox x performance is clearly much better compared to what you can get on GTX 1060. For example wolfenstein 2, GTX 1060 with 2GHz OC runs that game at min/medium settings in 4K dynamic at 45-55 fps, and 35-45 fps in native. In comparison xbox x runs that game at higher settings, 55-60 fps in 4K dynamic and 40-60fps in 4K native. Obviously GTX even with 2GHz cant match what xbox x is doing and it should not surprise anyone because xbox x use totally custom made GPU (RX 580 on steroids), unlike 580 it has few vega features like delta color compression allowing for better perfromance at higher resolutions and it has build in dx12 for much higher latency between GPU and CPU communication. Basically what MS have done is, 6 tflops on xbox x is far more efficient than the same 6 tflops on standard polaris GPU, and you can forget about matching xbox x results on rx 580 or gtx 1060, you need faster GPU. Consodering what xbox x is doing on 500$ console is very impressive.

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        1. I can’t wait for next Xbox in 2020/2021… MS is now fully focused on high end hardware. Xbox One X is 2-3x faster in every game than PS4 Pro and still is much more quiet.

          Hardware MS team responsible for designing Xbox One X and Surface are the best…

          2019 – Xbox One X “Slim” in 7nm for 350 usd
          2020 – Xbox One Scarlett (next gen) in 7nm for 500 usd

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c7bcd220e7cebaacc4f20b0cfe76eabdb0d9da8bb785cce092b0cf785112efd3.jpg

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          1. 2-3X faster despite not being 2-3X more powerful spec wise how the hell is that possible oh wait it’s not

          2. Nier Automata: 2160p on Xbox One X… 1080p on PS4 Pro
            Hellblade: 2160p on Xbox One X… 1080p on PS4 Pro
            Overwatch: 2160p on Xbox One X… 1080p on PS4 Pro
            … and 20 more games where Xbox have 4x higher resolution

            1. Xbox One X have 9 GB of memory for games… PS4 Pro only 4.5 GB available for games. Its 2 times more

            2. Xbox use 384-bit memory… PS4 Pro only 50% slower 256-bit memory. Xbox use memory faster than GTX 1080 which also use slow 256-bit memory (only Xbox One X and GTX 1080TI use 384-bit memory)

            3. Xbox have much faster CPU with additional DX12 hardware processor (creation of “DX12 draw call” don’t use CPU on Xbox). PS4 Pro still use CPU to creating graphics draw calls

            Every new game have at least 2-3x higher resolution on Xbox One X… some gamers use 4x higher resolution. And of course Xbox One X is much more quiet thanks to liquid vapor chamber cooling.

        2. That’s not 1070 performance you’re getting, my 1070 beats the X easily, you’re doing something wrong man. I can max every single setting including MSAAx8 and Extreme settings and I get 4k/30 or 1080p /60 no problem.

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      1. i know is worst of an rx 480 that’s thne point 😀 3 years old 250$ GPU ! at least this time not false advertising , is a beginning

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        1. Xbox One X run this game in native 4K ultra with MSAA 4x 30fps… On Radeon 480 or GTX 1060 you will have 5-10 fps in such settings

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          7. si volendo dopo te lo faccio 😀 il problema e che DF nn so mai chiari un sacco di opzioni manco le prendono in considerazione tipo i partecellari gli shaders

          12. Si è vero, ma è possibile che DF considerato che le altre opzioni sono, più o meno, “Ultra”.

            Ma chiaramente, non manca molto per un 4K 30fps perfetto.

          13. si ma era solo per zittire il rincoglionito , allora per tagliare la testa al toro tutto maxed cosi zitto e finito, io nn sono un peasant , metto mix ultra high e gioco 4k 60, cosa che lui nn potra’ mai fare con quella scatoletta!

          14. Si una flessibilità che non è possibile con la sua scatoletta. La sua mente è prigioniera.

            Non preoccuparti per la mia richiesta, la bestia è “morta” :p

          16. ho provato ma cambia di due o 3 FPS , quindi tanto vale tenere tutto maxato, poi certe opzioni nn so come stanno ed altre sono un mix customizzate per lx o dinamiche, quindi replicare appieno la x nn e’ semplice! preferico il mio personale tra 52 e 65 4k freesynch monitor nn perdo fluidita anche se varia 😀
            PS il motion blur nn lo tengo perche’ mi fa cagare 😀

          18. Notice how when you own him he just stops commenting? He’s too much of a brat to admit you were right.

          19. the x box x is ridicoluse.. owned by an old i7 3930k , 7 years old and a 250$ dollars GPU near 3 years old 😀

  2. At least you could get RivaTurner to work at all. The game totally crashes out when I try to use it. I tested it on my 4770K @4.5ghz and G1 970 at 1505mhz at 1080P Custom/Extreme settings with MSAAx2 and was getting around 52 / 64 fps. Not bad at all really.

    Plays a whole lot better than FH3 did at launch.

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  4. Great that on day one it runs better than FH3 with smooth pacing/mt support, has tons of settings options, a ton of content, and best of all doesn’t appear to be molested with microtransactions. A game done right. Of course no game is perfect and for me seems like an oversight that there is no toggle for chromatic aberration – the one effect that drives me up a wall.

    Regardless, Playground is well deserving of the praise its getting. Good to see studios still hanging in there and not trading their hard earned reputations and good will in lieu of the popular cash grab scams and gimmicks.

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  5. “The game is officially releasing on October 2nd and since Microsoft has provided us with a review code” …and the screenshots are ALL from the demo version.

    Strange 😀

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        2. Yes. Digital Foundry have already commented on the performance advantage that Intel CPU’s have in this game. The performance difference is quite large between the two…

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          1. I have LFT at ~3100MHz CL14-15-15 (D-die not B-die) on HeroVI

            Now im considering some good B-die 32GB to run @ 3600 CL14 or at last 3466 CL14 😀
            ZEN 8/16 will Fly as an Eagle then…

      3. Are these benchmarks using the 411.70 Nvidia driver that was just released? You really need to give that kind of information (driver versions) when you are doing benchmark analysis articles John… “Latest” driver doesn’t cut it. You need to list the actual version.

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  6. My experience with FH4 was near flawless. Rivatuner was working fine and performance was very good. This game is a “must buy” if you like racing games and do not have a “no-buy” policy on M$ store.

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  7. “While our NVIDIA GTX980Ti was able to run the game on Ultra settings and with MSAA 4X at 1080p with more than 60fps, it was unable to offer a constant 60fps experience at 1440p”

    Are you talking manual Ultra settings or the Ultra preset? The presets are actually a mix of settings, Ultra preset still has quite a few things on High not Ultra and MSAA on 2x.

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  8. How long did you test the game John ? i’m asking because memory leak issue in Apex,7 and FH3 kicks in after 2 hours or so.

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      1. In my experience things like that happens when GPU will run out of vram. Forza 7, horizon 3 and 4 are all vram hungry games. I have seen the same thing in many games when I had 680GTX 2GB, but on 11 GB 1080ti the same games run without memory leak problems.

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        1. Yes, that’s why they call them memory leaks and what you did was brute forcing through bad coding. it won’t free up the useless codes on memory, more memory = still happens but takes longer. in Forza series i guess it’s more related to system memory than v-ram.

          And TBH, why would they fix this issue when all these performance tests are just few minutes tests and none of them try go deeper.

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          1. On 11GB card I could see sometimes 4GB vram usage in the same game where I was experiencing memory leak before on 2GB 680GTX so I was just basically using too high texture settings before, it was my fault and not game. You should monitor your vram usage during forza gameplay and if you will see vram usage is maxed out then you need to use lower textures resolution settings. Forza games need around 5-6 GB vram maxed out and if you have GPU with less vram then you absolutely have to lower some settings, because otherwise you will see problems like memory leaks.

          2. Again, Forza issue was related to system memory not vram (it was there even on low settings). also maxing out sys memory or vram doesn’t mean your going to have issue in most games. a game can fill +6gb vram but runs as well on a 4gb card without even a single issue.

          3. If game use 6GB vram and you have just 4GB vram on your GPU then your system ram will be used in a hybrid way and depending of the game it can run well or bad. For example games that use vram just for cache purposes, these games run fine on my old 2 GB card, but game that use all allocated for real then even small higher vram usage will cause either stuttering or memory leak (at certain point your fps will be literally cut in half). When it comes to forza 7, horizon 3 and horizon 4 demo I never had issues but again I’m playing on 11 GB card. On my old 2GB 680 I could run many games that used 3GB or even 4GB vram, but when I have explored whole map or played for longer period of time (one hour for example) then I could see huge fps reduction at one point so for example 60fps was cut in half. I had problems like that in multiple games, especially open world and on 11GB card these problems never happened.

          4. Again, memory leak is different, yeah of course by not having the min requirements your game will run bad and it cause stutters and stuff, but FH3 and FM7 and even Apex all had memory leak issues because of bad coding, maybe drm related or winstore and stuff, you didn’t experience it because you brute forced your way into all these issues or you didn’t played long hours or you just lucky.

          5. Memory leak imply it will fill all aviable memory eventually, and that’s not happening now on my 11 GB card, VRAM and system RAM usage stays the same even if I would play for hours. When I had 2GB card and I was using ingame settings for 3 or 4 GB vram cards my PC was forced to use system ram in a hybrid way, and that hybrid ram usage was causing memory leak problem. Eventually memory leak filled all aviable ram in my PC and games became unplayable. So you can fix completely your memory leak problems by using GPU with more vram because right now hybrid ram usage is responsible for your memory leak problem.

            You can try playing some old games like crysis 2. When it come out people have said it had memory leak problems and I indeed experienced memory leaks problems on my old 768MB GPU. Because you have 4GB vram just play that game and you will see crysis 2 runs great, and system and ram usage stays the same, and the same would happen with forza games if you would use GPU with more vram.

          6. You are wrong, it’s not the hardware, it’s the devs. memory leak happens when it forget/fails to clean uselss info loaded into memory, it’s not something in user’s end, it’s just bad coding. yeah of course you will face this issue less when you throw more money into your hardware, that doesn’t FIX the problem and it’s still there, this is just brute forcing your way into bad coding.

          1. Of course most people complain about it when something is wrong, thats how they know something is wrong with the product, nothing wrong with that, but saying Runs fine for me in support forum is just stupid and not helpful in any case. btw, what was the topic ? i forgot 😀

    1. Xbox One X run this game in native 4K ultra with MSAA 4x 30fps…

      On Radeon 480 or GTX 1060 you will have 5-10 fps in such settings. Why? Because both RTX 480 and GTX 1060 use very slow memory. Too slow for 4K and high settings.

      Radeon 480 use slow 256-bit memory
      GTX 1060 even slower 192-bit memory

      You can’t compare those low-end cards to Xbox One X which use 384-bit ultra fast memory (Xbox memory is faster than in GTX 1080)

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        1. For sure, nevertheless trying to fool people is all he got.

          Facing the truth should be quite hard for the one behind this alt account, especially considering his time spent on internet trying to convince that the X is better than a GTX 1080/1080Ti

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          2. To be honest, don’t even know if he owns a console regarding the time he spent, making his dumb pictures or trying to fool us with his BS.

            If he owns something, pretty sure he don’t play that much

          3. ahahhaha , yeah but is like im trying to convince english people that my english is better , that i m not english 😀

        2. Sorry but your GTX 1070 use very slow 256-bit memory… Only GTX 1080TI and Xbox One X use much faster 384-bit memory.

          Your GPU have 6 TFLOPS like Xbox One X… but with such slow memory you can’t beat Xbox. Check any benchmarks

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    1. Because maxed out game dips to 28fps on 1070, so with a little tweaks it should run locked 30fps, exactly as xbox x version

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  15. “GtX 1070 28fps dips in 4K maxed out, so it’s safe to say xbox x offers similar level of performance in that game.”

    So you are telling us that a 1070 running with higher settings than the X is equal to the X…

    By the way, even DF already confirmed a locked 30 fps at 4K extreme with a 1070…

    So nope clearly nope…

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    1. Maxed out 28fps min, so even 1070 need a little tweaks in order to keep 30fps performance level all the time. I bet with xbox x settings 1070 would keep 30fps level of performance all the time

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