Last week, Sony released the Complete Edition of Horizon: Forbidden West on PC. Powered by the Decima Engine and ported by Nixxes, it’s time to benchmark it and examine its performance on the PC platform.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 551.86, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Nixxes has added a lot of graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, Water, Clouds, Hair, Crowd, Level of Detail and more. The game also has a FOV option, and supports DLSS 3 Frame Generation, as well as Intel XeSS and AMD FSR 3.0 Super Resolution. However, there is currently no support for AMD FSR 3.0 Frame Generation.
Contrary to Horizon Dawn, Forbidden West does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, we benchmarked this area. From what we could see, this was a really demanding area early in the game. As such, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game runs.
To see how the game runs with different types of CPUs, we simulated dual-core, quad-core, and hexa-core CPUs. And, to my surprise, the game requires 16 CPU threads for smooth gaming. In our benchmark area, a modern-day quad-core system with SMT suffered from numerous stuttering issues. Without SMT, even our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D with all of its eight CPU cores had some stutters. The only way we could get smooth frameratimes was by enabling SMT/Hyper-Threading on all eight cores (meaning that the game had access to 16 CPU threads).
Here, take a look at these screenshots. On the left, we have a simulated CPU with 6 CPU cores and 12 threads, and on the right, we have 8 CPU cores with 16 threads. You can clearly see the frametime spikes/stutters on the 6-core CPU system (also notice the lower GPU usage due to the stutters). And yes, I was able to replicate this multiple times.
So make no mistake. While the minimum and average framerates on a six-core CPU system are above 60fps at all times, you’ll need a top-of-the-line CPU with lots of threads for a stutter-free experience.
At 1080p/Max Settings, most of our GPUs were able to push over 60fps at all times. At 1440p/Max Settings, though, things got a bit more demanding as the NVIDIA RTX3080 could drop to the mid-50s. So yes, this is a really demanding title for gaming at native resolutions. And as for native 4K/Max Settings, the only GPUs that could provide a smooth gaming experience were the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA RTX 4090.
Graphics-wise, Horizon: Forbidden West looks amazing. From the character models to the environments, everything looks stunning. Still, I was kind of hoping to see an even better LOD/View Distance than what we got as there are a lot of pop-in issues. Other than that, though, there is nothing to complain about. Horizon: Forbidden West is one of the best-looking games on PC right now, even though it does not feature any Ray Tracing effects.
All in all, Horizon: Forbidden West requires a top-of-the-line PC system for gaming at Max Settings. Thankfully, the game’s visuals justify its GPU requirements. To be honest, though, I’m a bit shocked by its CPU requirements. This is the first time I see a game suffering from stutters on CPUs with 12 threads. Not only that but as we saw in our screenshot, some of those threads weren’t maxed out. So, there is definitely room for improvement here. Other than that, Horizon: Forbidden West is pretty solid on PC. There is already support for most PC upscalers, there is a FOV slider, there are lots of options to tweak, the KB&M controls are exceptional, and we did not experience any stability issues.
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.”
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Many people use RX 580, Thank you!👍
Great job on this port!
Runs great on PS5 where it was meant to be if you have a PC worse than a PS5 well i don’t get it a PS5 is £450 and a gaming pc at least £1,200
You do know that Sony isn’t just doing PC gamers a favor by having the game ported to PC. They are charging $60 for it. PC gamers have every right to expect a decent porting effort for their money.
yeah they are just by releasing it is a favour to pc players plus we all know pc is where they lose massive dough off porch pirates 😀🍕May you have the best pizza today and everyday after. May the power of the pizza be with you always. 🍕
if you have less than a 4080 and a i9 of course it won’t run well at 4k try it at 1920×1080@60 much better than 22 FPS on 4k mode
When you do that it looks like you’re talking to yourself .
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A 4080 really isn’t a 4k class GPU anyway. It can squeak by in a lot of cases but certainly not in all. A 4090 is the 4K GPU. It’s damn expensive and imo overpriced but 4K gaming has never been about going with less expensive hardware.
It also runs on a potato-class Steam Deck.
What was your point again?
It runs great on a low end PC too if you just nerf the settings so it’s like a PS5 ….. Use the medium preset and you’ll get the exact same experience as a PS5 and likely better FPS because it won’t be locked down to 30
Why get a PC if your just playing games a PS5 is so much more user and developer friendly. The only reason why i guess if you had an extensive steam library or wanted to be naughty. 😀 Most people Google on phone and have smart tvs with internets and apps and can easily use a ps5 on it.
🍕May you have the best pizza today and everyday after. May the power of the pizza be with you always. 🍕
Because you can’t mod PS5 games and what you save on the system cost you make up for by paying an overall average higher price for games
Plus I do a LOT more than just play games on my PC, my PC has paid for itself several times over by making me money. A PS5 wouldn’t make me any extra penny
then that makes sense but for us gamers we only need it to boot and play games that’s why ps5 is great for casual gamers and casual people it has netflix and that stuff on it as well most civilians can’t afford even a ps5 let alone a 4090 itself CPU parts are expensive now it’s actually cheaper to buy from Dell than to make your own pc anymore not as fun as making it yourself
I think that’s the case because the game keeps compiling its shaders in the background.
AFAIK, DX12 still doesn’t have an equivalent to Vulkan’s VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library, which was designed with the intention to eliminate stutters at draw time:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/deb53a63cd5089ed168e0c93167c67116731e953bc4657b449c9cd7a6b276352.png
DXVK is already making use of that extension.
And speaking of it, the recently released DXVK 2.3.1 should further enhance performance with DX11 games in GPU-bound scenarios on NVIDIA by leveraging the VK_NV_raw_access_chains extension.
But note that this extension is currently only available in NV’s Vulkan Beta driver.
However, it should ship as part of the next major driver revision, namely the 555 series.
I’ve heard from NVIDIA that the beta release of that driver is planned for May 15th, so please look forward to that if you are using DXVK.
Similar to zero dawn, patches will fix the issues & mods will enhance gameplay, albeit it’s good port thanks to nixxes. Notable thing here is, Sony keeps delivering PC ports of games while Xbox keeps disappointing it’s audience due to it’s involvement in politics and zero focus on videogames.
What are you talking about? Sony has been working closely with Sweet Baby Inc.
God of War: Ragnarok
Spiderman Miles Morales/2
and now this.
Soyny takes the crown for far left political propaganda.
Even before SBI, there were plenty of others. The worst IMO is neil druckmann, who is the quintessential subversive israeli. The industry really started going downhill with the tlou1 DLC, and tlou2 took things to the next level. Who knows what kinds of ungodliness he’ll shove into the third game.
With ragnarök santamonica was in control and not allowed SBI to fully slap what they wanted but instead reduced violence and made women a bit overpowered instead of what initially intended. But with Jim Ryan gone, things are shifting rapidly inside Sony. Everything will be changed soon.
You forgot the shameless depiction of certain Norse mythological characters as Africans (Angrboda and her grandmother). It spits in the face of Scandinavian culture and they fully know it. It’s pure disdain for Whites.
When the boar took human form it was a black guy also.
Sony is as woke if not more woke than MS, as PC gamers we see Sony improving because they’re new to the platform but if i was a PS player (thank god i’m not) i’ll be really disappointed by this generation, all they had were 3 lazy sequels, some remakes and expansive remasters.
This by far the worst PS generation.
Microsoft urges developers not to create female characters with “exaggerated body proportions” on their official site to support game devs.
The site, titled “Product Inclusion Action: Help Customers Feel Seen” includes a bullet list of considerations they urge developers to make when working on their product. One Twitter user pointed out the language expressly condemning certain female characters as reinforcing “negative gender stereotypes”.
Are you reinforcing any negative gender stereotypes?
Are you unnecessarily introducing gender & gender barriers into your code or design?
Are you creating playable female characters that are equal in skill and ability to their male peers. Are your female characters equipped with clothing and armor that fits their tasks? Do they have exaggerated body proportions?
When the story allows, do you show male characters who display a full range of emotions, including joy, sadness, and vulnerability?
Nice graphics; story, characters, and gameplay is dull and boring just like the first.
Life gets boring when you can’t enjoy it.
With all due respect fren, I don’t think one’s enjoyment of life hinges upon playing a single video game, especially if said individual didn’t like the previous title. I think our good buddy here will be just fine.
Oh for sure, but I think I wrote it on a broader context rather than limited to merely a game. If you really want to have fun you’ll find it anyway in one or something. Otherwise spend all time complaining about everything. Just that.
I don’t think it really applies to his comment in particular because what he said is more like a very short review and not a complaint. However, you’re definitely right about some people just complaining all the time. We do have one or two guys like that here. Not that I’m in disagreement with them, but the relentless blackpilling starts to take a toll on one’s mind and gets really tiring.
IMO it’s best to have a balance, which I think should be something like making a relevant complaint so long as it doesn’t turn into an epic novella. I think most people have that balance here, including our friend you responded to. He’s had his account for almost 11 years now and has roughly 1400 comments, which averages out to one comment every three days, meaning he hardly spends any time “complaining” if at all.
That’s great news then. Because I found Story, characters and gameplay fun in the first game.
lod problem is a pain in the a*s. wtf .still a thing in 2024 .
its water really begs for ray tracing they had to add ray tarced reflectons
Nixxes has done a tremendous job here! I can’t believe how smooth and fast this game runs! I have an older machine (Dec 2018 w/ 2080 TI) and I have all maxed at 1440p DSR on (60fps) and DLAA (native res) and its glorious! Can’t believe someone here put down Nixxes; they have very competent devs and people to achieve this magic I’m seeing. I don’t know what else people expect? I mean in a sea of game releases that have so many issues up front (Last of Us, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Dead Space, Jedi Survivor) I think Nixxes hit it out of the park here! What am I missing?
2080ti mullers a PS5 you should expect this at a bare minimum.
I don’t get the fuzz about this game’s graphics. I admit the shadowing is really detailed, but moving into the art style is where it really disappoints, it looks very videogamey and generic and at times childbook colorful which is not my thing.
Looks cartoony mate I agree.
Proper overrated.
Go play Dark Souls where everything is dark and dingy and boring
When you see the name Nixxes on a pc port you can expect at least 3 things:
1- the game will look average .
2- the game will require too much for how it looks and twill run like crap.
3-john will say this is the best looking ,running,optimized game ever, he will use the word amazing for sure, no matter how average the performance to visual ratio is.
This pattern also applies to craps made by remedy or with UE5 engine (if they use nanite and lumen).
This comment is gonna be disliked because I am telling the truth. Truth here is bitter most of the time.
100% True for the UE5 part, but as for Nixxes, they’re for now the best port studio we had for PS games, the games looking average is not their fault, they’re just porting the game after all
like i just want the games at the base minimum to work and have good rig scalability. these nixxes ports as of recent plus patches has been just that. A shame about who ever is doing the last of us ports.
man, Nixxes ports always look average and run like crap. they are to blame of course.
The Sony games that have been ported by Nixxes are by far the best ports, i don’t know what you’re talking about, even back when they were porting SE games they had very good ports most of the times
you are wrong. Nixxes ports are crap.
Are you fcking retarded? Their porting projects is top notch in the business. And their job is only ensure that it run smoothly on various combination of hardware, not how it look you dumb a$$. Shove your sh!tty “truth” in your a$$ and get the fvck off.
In real word, you would politely suck my di*k and be silent. Only on the web you dare speak to me like that you fa**ot.
In real world your d*ck is so small it would serve better as a toothpick …..
In real world your d*ck is so small it would serve better as a toothpick …..
Seems your’ talking to yourself fa**ot.
Yeah if the game was a marvel of optimization it would run at dynamic ,1080p 30 FPS PS4 settings on a 1050ti 8GB of ram and an FX 8350 CPU.
The base game is a ps4 game after all. Nixes games are pretty demanding and require 3 months of patches at least to run better.
I don’t understand the massive hard on people have for this studio.
Nixxes always sucks man
You made everyone dumber from reading that. Congratulations.
its crazy how great this game looks. I wasnt a fan of the first’s gameplay when i first tried it but The visuals here make me want to spin it again even if i end up uninstalling again lol.
dont its a trap.
yeah visuals can really keep a game going just look at cp77, just wandering around adds playtime and then add in mods and it’s about new stuff like cars etc and visuals. Thankfully I got pretty bored of the first hzd way back in 20 when I played it, so nah visuals isn’t going to do it this time and finding all that space for it plus my mid range system wouldn’t handle it well anyways. Then the nasty ladyboy you play as and all the other crap nope.
I don’t think i even got that far lol. I remember being annoyed with stealth and having to run around for a long while in an open world. Maybe after I finish Tears of the Kingdom I’ll give it another chance.
I don’t get stutters with my 8700k, however the frame times can hit just over 20ms at times.
It’s been generally decent after using the HDR max brightness fix mod and disabling reflex boost. But there’s a major issue with frame generation on it. In some scenes it’ll provide a 40-60% FPS boost. In others it’ll be a very choppy 5-10% increase. It got so bad I just ended up turning off frame generation.
The game seems to have a bug in some cutscenes where it doesn’t flush the VRAM properly after the cutscene so your framerate tanks because it’s hitting system RAM because VRAM is full, It happens mainly on GPUs with 10 GB or less VRAM using the highest texture settings
I haven’t seen it myself personally since I have 12 GB on a 1440p ultrawide but a lot of people are having problems with it. However there is definitely something not quite right with the Direct Storage memory management
I’m on a 4090 and vram isn’t being hit. Seems to be multiple issues with the game arm.
There also seems to be problems with Intel CPUs that use the P-core/E-core architecture. Like I said I’ve seen none of these problems on a 5800X and a 4070 TI @ 1440p ultrawide.
Dedication to customer satisfaction akin to a personalized CRM experience.
Nixxes is GOD TIER when it comes to PC ports. They should start their own studio.
Nixxes makes Capcom look like useless clown amateurs.
IKR. Less than 60 people but they surely on the summit when it comes to PC porting.
IKR. Less than 60 people but they surely on the summit when it comes to PC porting.
A 3080 10 GB is going to run into VRAM problems @4K and probably even 1440p unless you turn down textures a notch. There also seems to be a VRAM flushing problem with some cutscenes which will really tank framerates if you run highest textures on anything with less than 12 GB VRAM
That most likely explains the performance on par with the 2080Ti and how the 6900XT absolutely destroys it in comparison.
More piece of garbage Japanese developers defending Capcom and their microtransactions. This time it’s the ***hole from the Tekken franchise, another Japanese franchise full of DLC and microtransaciton garbage.
All we need now is the Japanese gacha developers and Konami’s pachinko division telling gamers microtransactions and gambling is good for them.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/87f32d3180d7dc26d99d5872862a0f7bbbd6e8ab03b0fa4c969a8284f16b1ed5.png
I love how they complain about feature they themselves implemented. Shows the mentality and intelligence really.
yeah no one asked for all that stuff it’s just there to induce addiction and then profiting off of it, which the asians seem prone to. High res and definition has nothing to do with it either, that’s for everything not just games so it’s standard. Since they’re digital non supply limited items they’re mostly worthless irl and the thousands of games a year that come out prove that even more so the increased prices are pure greed nothing more. If I can’t own it I can’t steal it and their EULA’s make it clear it’s just a license to use not any sort of ownership. Dooshes.
I am waiting for a sale.
Adaptability that rivals an A/B test – always refining and improving.
I’m pretty sure the cpu issues is caused by the fact that you are simulating a 6 core cpu, and not using a real 6 core cpu. I have yet to see any reports from anyone complaining about issues on 6 core CPUs.
All PS5 games are developed to use 7 cores and 14 threads while 1core/2 threads are locked out for the OS
However 6 cores/12 threads on a PC will keep up with 7 cores/14 threads on the PS5 because the PS5 CPU is nerfed with lower clocks and voltages in order to keep the total package TDP within reasonable levels. In a game like this it’s even nerfed more because on a PS5 in order to increase the GPU section’s speed they have to lower the CPU’s speed to keep the package TDP within specs
Not sure about your cpu results doesn’t seem to line up with other reviews or player experiences. Min frames with 6/12 is less than 1fps compared to 8/16 per other reviewers.