Forza Horizon 6 PC Performance Tested – 13 GPUs Tested

Conclusion

Forza Horizon 6 runs incredibly well on PC, but it is a demanding game when maxed out

Forza Horizon 6 is a beautiful game on PC, and its scalability is second-to-none. Moving from the game’s maximum to minimum graphical preset resulted in a 3.4x increase in framerate. Add on super resolution (upscaling) technologies like FSR 4.1, DLSS 4.5, and XeSS, and it’s hard to imagine any PC gamer having difficulty running this game on modern hardware.

While the game is demanding with maxed-out settings, Forza Horizon 6 can look and run great on lower-end GPUs. The game can also run well on 8GB GPUs with the right graphical settings. Any GPU with 12GB or more of VRAM will not run into any issues when running this game, even at maxed-out settings. This game isn’t a memory hog.

In our 1080p benchmarks, we saw that this game could become CPU-limited, with our highest-end GPUs running at similar performance levels to our Intel i9-13900K. Note that 1st and 5th percentile framerates were higher on AMD GPUs when these CPU-limited performance scenarios occurred. This could be a sign that AMD’s GPUs are less CPU-limited overall.

Is Ray Tracing worth it?

Forza Horizon 6’s ray tracing features are limited to the game’s highest graphical presets. Ray tracing enables RT global illumination and reflections. Depending on the scene, these features can have either a minimal or a massive performance impact. In interior spaces, like tunnels, the visual impact of ray-traced global illumination is massive. Bounce lighting can have a tremendous impact on some scenes. With RT reflections, reflections on puddles and glass-sided buildings become more accurate and less prone to visual artefacts. This delivers more stable and accurate reflections, which has a notable impact on the game’s appearance. This is a big deal when driving through cities or wet areas.

Ray tracing has a big performance hit, but its impact can be seen in many areas. That said, this feature should only be used by gamers with performance to spare. The game looks great without ray tracing, and it is a nice add-on for gamers with higher-end hardware.

An excellent PC release

Honestly, there is very little that we can criticise here. The game is highly scalable and should run well on all modern PCs, even handhelds. One oddity is that this game does not support FSR or XeSS Frame Generation. Only DLSS Frame Generation is supported, and that feels very odd. Playground Games has not stated why these features are excluded or if they will be coming to the game in the future. Hopefully, both XeSS and FSR Frame Generation will be available for the game in time. It is a shame that AMD, Intel, and older Nvidia GPU users have no Frame Generation options.

Overall, Forza Horizon 6 has a solid PC version. The game’s graphical presets offer gamers a high level of scalability, and it still looks good at lower settings. Playground Games knew that their game would be expected to run on PC gaming handhelds, consoles, and high-end PCs, and they understood that assignment. Forza Horizon 6 has an excellent PC version, and the game is beautiful.

You can join the discussion on Forza Horizon 6’s PC version on the OC3D Forums.