Forza Motorsport’s PC Performance Is Highly Disappointing [UPDATED]

[UPDATE] It looks like the exceedingly low performance registered in this Forza Motorsport test compared to others now available online may be caused by some game and/or driver-related bugs. The developers and NVIDIA have been informed so that they may investigate the issue. We will update this story with any findings as soon as we have them.

[ORIGINAL STORY] It has been six years since the last Forza Motorsport game was released. Redmond-based developer Turn 10 Studios had previously kept a steady schedule, releasing a new installment every two years since the series debuted in 2005 on the original Xbox console.

The thrice-as-long development phase was due to many factors. COVID certainly contributed, as it did for any game in development in 2020 and 2021. However, Turn 10 also desired to overhaul many underlying aspects of Forza Motorsport, chiefly the physics simulation system, which was described as much more realistic. In a notable example, the developers mentioned a 48x fidelity jump in the tire collision model compared to the previous game.

As the first Forza game released exclusively on the Xbox Series S|X consoles (in addition to PC), the new racing game also featured a brand new version of the ForzaTech engine.

Ahead of the launch, the developers claimed major visual improvements such as volumetric fog, physically based rendering (PBR), a fully procedural cloud system, and real-time ray traced reflections and ambient occlusion (with global illumination coming to the game with a post-launch update). On Xbox Series X, Forza Motorsport offers three selectable modes: Performance (4K, 60fps), Performance Ray Tracing (4K, ray-tracing, 60fps), and Visuals (4K, ray tracing, 30fps).

However, this article is about the PC version. Turn 10 shared the official system requirements a month ago, confirming the presence of the NVIDIA DLSS 2 and AMD FSR 2.2 upscalers, in addition to Microsoft's DirectStorage.

I was able to check out a pre-release review build (updated with the latest patch delivered a few hours ago) of Forza Motorsport on a PC that's far more powerful than the ideal requirement set out by the studio. To be clear, the ideal spec is:

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
• RTX 4080
• 16GB RAM
• NvME SSD

The test configuration is equipped with:

• AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• RTX 4090
• 32GB RAM DDR5
• WD_BLACK SN850 NvME SSD

Unfortunately, Forza Motorsport does not run well at all on this beast of a PC. On the contrary, it is a stuttery, nearly unplayable mess with ray tracing enabled to the maximum (full reflections plus ambient occlusion), and not even NVIDIA DLSS set to Performance mode (upscaling to 4K from 1080p) can allow it to reach 40 frames per second, as you can see in the built-in benchmark tool result above.

I also tested the benchmark with ray tracing completely turned off. Unfortunately, the frame rate only improved by 10FPS, and the stutter count was even higher.

Now, it should be noted that the benchmark tool is particularly intensive since it is set to take place on the Hakone circuit at night with lots of surrounding lights. In a subsequent Free Play Quick Race, I chanced upon the Grand Oak Raceway National Circuit in overcast weather. Here, as you can see in the second half of the gameplay capture embedded below, the frame rate was much higher than the benchmark's. However, some stuttering was still annoyingly present, even with ray tracing disabled.

Our full game review will follow up soon. In the meantime, it's already clear that Turn 10 has a lot of work to do on the PC performance. NVIDIA DLSS 3 and AMD FSR 3 can definitely help, but it's not up to upscalers alone to ensure a smooth gameplay experience on PC. Forza Motorsport doesn't even look that spectacular, to be honest. Right now, it straight up loses the direct comparison with Forza Horizon 5, which still looks amazing two years later and runs flawlessly (as any racing game should).

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