Ray Tracing is only available in the Forza Vista mode, and while it looks and performs great, it would have been impressive to see it in the actual game while racing. At 4K, I have to turn a few settings down to get 60fps but even then a native 4K 60fps performance is quite possible. In my testing the game can easily run at 60fps at 1440p on my RTX 2060 Super, and that’s at native resolution with higher graphical settings.
By the time the game launches, the Xbox Series S version of the game will run offer a 1440p/30fps ‘Quality’ mode and a 1080p/60fps performance mode.
Playground Games has confirmed that the game will get a patch for increasing the resolution to 1440p on the Xbox Series S at launch, which currently renders the game at 1080p. Memory usage also rarely exceeded over 12GB, being well under spec for the Xbox One X console, which runs the game at 30fps at a maximum resolution of 4K. And that’s true as I rarely saw CPU usage above 30%.
What about the performance balance between the CPU and GPU? Considering the game is still built around the Xbox One consoles, it stands to reason then that the game doesn’t use the CPU as heavily. Aliasing may not be as noticeable when playing near 4K resolution, especially when played on a bigger screen than a typical monitor measured 24-27 inches. The resolution scaler usually kicks in for distant objects and is quite noticeable at lower resolutions, although the game’s native performance is good enough to not use it in that situation. To get an idea of just how aggressive the resolution scaler is, take a look at it in action when used at 1080p: Of course, those playing on a 4K monitor will notice the resolution degrade in the farther viewing distance, and the scaler doesn't look particularly well at 1080p. With the feature turned on, I could easily get 60fps at 4K with the scaler set to 'Performance' mode. For that, the 'resolution scaling' feature comes in quite handy. This is quite good, but these won't be the settings that the Xbox Series X version of the game will utilise. At native 4K, Forza Horizon 5 runs around 45fps on an Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 Super when played on the highest settings. This prompted me to push the game, and my system, even harder to run in the 4K territory, and the results were just as expected. On my PC I have no problems maintaining a frame rate above 60fps even at the highest of settings.
Here's how the game runs at 1080p across all of its graphical presets on my PC: By default, the game seems to be well balanced for modern systems, which shouldn't be surprising considering it is meant to run on the ageing base Xbox One consoles at sub-1080p resolutions. So, onto the benchmarks then? Forza Horizon 5's PC version comes packed with a built-in benchmark, along with a good list of customisable settings. Of course, you can still play the game on lower graphical settings and have a great experience, and thanks to Playground Games’ new implementation of a 'Resolution Scaling' feature, Forza Horizon 5 can run across a variety of hardware with the result being a fast, breezy racer that plays as well as it looks. Compared to the console space, my PC is roughly between an Xbox Series S and the top of the line Xbox Series X in terms of compute power when it comes to gaming, so it's interesting to see how the game performs when pushed to the max.