Forza Horizon 4 PC Performance Thread

xyla · Oct 23, 2018

Posted in another thread about the game, but maybe anyone knows something about it in here:

I don't really understand how the game is so CPU limited on PC. 60FPS shouldn't be that hard if the One X can handle it that easily while running on 2011 pimped laptop cores.
I'm not running state of the art with a i5-4460, but it's still considerably better than the X CPU. I'm also running a 970 and that's just a 50% while playing - but I can't run Discord and the game at the same time, because as soon as the CPU spikes, I can't talk or understand anything anymore.

Am I looking at it from the wrong angle? Is my CPU that much worse than I think it is? Playing at 1080p60 with mostly middle settings, some are set to low.

Edit: Maybe that's also the patch? I can't remember it being this bad when I last played it before - around a week ago.

noomi · Oct 23, 2018

I really need this game to get that audio thing fixed, I cannot play on my TV :(

J_Viper · Oct 23, 2018

Did a recent patch break performance or something?

I swear I was staying above the 70 FPS range, but now I can't move above 60, as if it's locked, even though I have no FPS lock on

Also, the game now looks slightly pixelated, even though I'm running it on Ultra. I also realized there are no other cars on the road. What in the fuck happened to this game?

EDIT: A driver update reset seems to have fixed the FPS issue, but the graphics still look much worse than they should on Ultra settings at 1440p.

Is that some sort of known glitch?

SleepSmasher · Oct 23, 2018

So, apparently the vegetation draw distance issue, mentioned as "increased" in the latest patch notes is still pretty much the same thing after installing the latest update here. I wonder if this is ever going to be fixed.

Talus · Oct 23, 2018

felipepl said:
So, apparently the vegetation draw distance issue, mentioned as "increased" in the latest patch notes is still pretty much the same thing after installing the latest update here. I wonder if this is ever going to be fixed.

Well, I don't know what to say, but I think the grass draw distance is WAY farther than before now. Much much better.

SleepSmasher · Oct 23, 2018

Remij said:
Well, I don't know what to say, but I think the grass draw distance is WAY farther than before now. Much much better.

Weird, grass pop in looks exactly the same for me.

Talus · Oct 23, 2018

felipepl said:
Weird, grass pop in looks exactly the same for me.

Gimme a sec and I'll post a vid which you might be able to compare with.

Maybe I'm wrong, but to me, I remember a very visible line in which you could see grass being drawn in, but now it's much less noticeable and farther out.

icecold1983 · Oct 23, 2018

felipepl said:
So, apparently the vegetation draw distance issue, mentioned as "increased" in the latest patch notes is still pretty much the same thing after installing the latest update here. I wonder if this is ever going to be fixed.

give it a good 15 months. thats how long it took to fix forza horizon 3 on pc. also is there a log file for forza horizon 3 that shows every update released with date and list of fixes?

SmartWaffles · Oct 23, 2018

The pop in change is kinda noticeable for me. I wouldn't call it a drastic improvement as some of you might expect but it's there regardless.

xyla said:
Posted in another thread about the game, but maybe anyone knows something about it in here:

I don't really understand how the game is so CPU limited on PC. 60FPS shouldn't be that hard if the One X can handle it that easily while running on 2011 pimped laptop cores.
I'm not running state of the art with a i5-4460, but it's still considerably better than the X CPU. I'm also running a 970 and that's just a 50% while playing - but I can't run Discord and the game at the same time, because as soon as the CPU spikes, I can't talk or understand anything anymore.

Am I looking at it from the wrong angle? Is my CPU that much worse than I think it is? Playing at 1080p60 with mostly middle settings, some are set to low.

Edit: Maybe that's also the patch? I can't remember it being this bad when I last played it before - around a week ago.

You can't directly compare CPU overhead between consoles and PC. And 4th gen i5s are kinda mediocre in today's standards if not overlocked, Horizon 3 and 4 are very, very CPU hungry games. On the X the lower resolution helped to get the 60fps they need because the overall lower rendering cost reduced CPU drawcalls as well.

SirMossyBloke · Oct 23, 2018

How the hell do I stop notifications/achievements causing my screen to switch off HDR, display the achievement, switch HDR back on and then turn everything green until I alt-tab 3 or 4 times?

It's a pain in the ass.

SmartWaffles · Oct 23, 2018

SirMossyBloke said:
How the hell do I stop notifications/achievements causing my screen to switch off HDR, display the achievement, switch HDR back on and then turn everything green until I alt-tab 3 or 4 times?

It's a pain in the ass.

You can disable the Xbox app from showing all notifications. When a notification pops up, open the sidebar, right click on the title, disable it there.

Rewind · Oct 23, 2018

Is hdr broken on pc? I can't get it to be recognized in the brightness settings even though I have it on in windows and it works in other games.

dsk1210 · Oct 24, 2018

Rewind said:
Is hdr broken on pc? I can't get it to be recognized in the brightness settings even though I have it on in windows and it works in other games.

HDR has worked perfect from the start for me.

Strange.

Ramathevoice · Oct 24, 2018

I'm not sure about grass draw distance (maybe I trained myself not to notice it), but I'm seeing a good improvement for things like roadside fences with the patch, so that's definitely something.

vitormg · Oct 24, 2018

I found a solution for those with sound problems with TVs. Go into advanced settings and change frequency to 48000MHz(studio quality), rather than 44k standard. It solved the issue for me

Serious Sam · Oct 24, 2018

Ramathevoice said:
I'm not sure about grass draw distance (maybe I trained myself not to notice it), but I'm seeing a good improvement for things like roadside fences with the patch, so that's definitely something.

They definitely improved foliage draw distance and LODs. Transitions from low detail trees to high detail isn't so jarring any more. Grass draw distance is improved too I think but it could still be better, in some cases grass draw line is very visible and doesn't look great. This is good improvement overall, I just wish that people with good hardware were allowed to push graphics quality even further.

xyla · Oct 24, 2018

J_Viper said:
Did a recent patch break performance or something?

I swear I was staying above the 70 FPS range, but now I can't move above 60, as if it's locked, even though I have no FPS lock on

Also, the game now looks slightly pixelated, even though I'm running it on Ultra. I also realized there are no other cars on the road. What in the fuck happened to this game?

EDIT: A driver update reset seems to have fixed the FPS issue, but the graphics still look much worse than they should on Ultra settings at 1440p.

Is that some sort of known glitch?

Completely different for me - runs buttery smooth after the patch yesterday. Don't know what that CPU thing was, but it's gone now. Stutters every other 15 minutes for a little, but that's most likely VRAM due to the 970 issues, got that in other games too.

SmartWaffles said:
The pop in change is kinda noticeable for me. I wouldn't call it a drastic improvement as some of you might expect but it's there regardless.

You can't directly compare CPU overhead between consoles and PC. And 4th gen i5s are kinda mediocre in today's standards if not overlocked, Horizon 3 and 4 are very, very CPU hungry games. On the X the lower resolution helped to get the 60fps they need because the overall lower rendering cost reduced CPU drawcalls as well.

Yep, I know that I can't expect to run anything in 60FPS and 1440p or 4K, I don't make any illusions on that. I also don't expect to run anything on high settings and 60FPS, but medium is mostly comparable to console settings very often and I'm fine with that. And the CPU is still much better on 1080p than anything on consoles right now - or at least it should be.

I've read that the i5-4460 isn't really able to be overclocked, that's why I never tried - do you know if that's true?

SmartWaffles · Oct 24, 2018

Yeah you can't overclock non K CPUs. I had an similar 4th gen i5 at my old work place, it really wasn't pleasant gaming on that.

BraXzy · Oct 24, 2018

Still waiting on fixes for the texture resolution / anisotropic filtering issue..

MaLDo · Oct 24, 2018

BraXzy said:
Still waiting on fixes for the texture resolution / anisotropic filtering issue..

Force Anisox16 in game profile.

Deleted member 12317 · Oct 24, 2018

MaLDo said:
Force Anisox16 in game profile.

No, that's the bug, you must let the game force it, if forced in the driver it gets blurry.

I have it forced globally and had to add a rule to FH4 to "application controlled".

xyla · Oct 24, 2018

SmartWaffles said:
Yeah you can't overclock non K CPUs. I had an similar 4th gen i5 at my old work place, it really wasn't pleasant gaming on that.

Thanks, I see - I'll probably upgrade sometime next year or so and I'll have a Switch and an Xbox One S, so I'll manage for a while.

MaLDo · Oct 24, 2018

GSY Miguel said:
No, that's the bug, you must let the game force it, if forced in the driver it gets blurry.

I have it forced globally and had to add a rule to FH4 to "application controlled".

Ops, it worked for me in the demo. I have not tried it yet in the full game.

Deleted member 12317 · Oct 24, 2018

MaLDo said:
Ops, it worked for me in the demo. I have not tried it yet in the full game.

That was the same in the demo actually, without forcing it in the driver it was nice in-game. Maybe a driver update forced it to be application controlled.

DangerousGamble · Oct 24, 2018

The LOD/Draw Distance is so much better in this update. Glad they were listening to the complaints. I think it's on par if not better than the X1X version now.

khamakazee · Oct 24, 2018

DangerousGamble said:
The LOD/Draw Distance is so much better in this update. Glad they were listening to the complaints. I think it's on par if not better than the X1X version now.

The audio issues seem to be worked out now too.

RedlineRonin · Oct 24, 2018

So is everyone on newest drivers then at this point? I'm still on 399

leng jai · Oct 24, 2018

Not sure if it's placebo but pop in seems to have improved on max settings.

khamakazee said:
The audio issues seem to be worked out now too.

The engine audio definitely isn't even close to be fixed.

khamakazee · Oct 24, 2018

leng jai said:
Not sure if it's placebo but pop in seems to have improved on max settings.

The engine audio definitely isn't even close to be fixed.

There was an audio bug on Windows that had to do with headphone amps, it's now been fixed.

leng jai · Oct 24, 2018

khamakazee said:
There was an audio bug on Windows that had to do with headphone amps, it's now been fixed.

Ah yes my apologies. I use an external DAC though and I still had to toggle Atmos on and off to get the game to launch properly.

DangerousGamble · Oct 24, 2018

For those wondering, here are the new values in the config file in regards to the environment LOD vs the old values (credit to the guys at the Forza Forums):

Old values from config at extreme dynamic geometry quality:
TreesLODDistanceScale="1.000000"
GrassLODDistanceScale="1.000000"
BushLODDistanceScale="1.000000"

New values:
TreesLODDistanceScale="1.250000"
GrassLODDistanceScale="2.000000"
BushLODDistanceScale="1.500000"

yellow wallpaper · Oct 24, 2018

Decided to switch my new card into the old dinosaur to see what it could do at 4k. I gotta give credit to playground for optimizing the game very very well. Just noticed I am missing 1.35gb of vram. uh oh time to head back to microcenter.

Talus · Oct 24, 2018

Not the best comparison... different seasons and TOD...and slightly different angle.. but yea, you can easily tell that the foliage draw distance has been pushed out farther, and it blends better as well..especially in motion. Big improvement.

Old pic I took:

New pic:

flipswitch · Oct 24, 2018

Excuse the ignorance, when did it release and how big is this patch?

Never mind, put on PC, had already downloaded part of it, however it wouldn't continue to download even after stopping and restarting it.

I restarted my PC and it's downloading..

icecold1983 · Oct 24, 2018

Remij said:
Not the best comparison... different seasons and TOD...and slightly different angle.. but yea, you can easily tell that the foliage draw distance has been pushed out farther, and it blends better as well..especially in motion. Big improvement.

Old pic I took:

New pic:

the before pic was you having no issues? looks awful

Chromie · Oct 24, 2018

I still haven't been able to play this fucking game. It keeps crashing and has been since launch. I've tried lowering settings to the lowest possible, changing my audio settings to 48000/16 bit, and unsintalling MSI Afterburner and Rivatuner.

What do I need to do?

flipswitch · Oct 25, 2018

During start up it crashes or gameplay?

Chromie · Oct 25, 2018

flipswitch said:
During start up it crashes or gameplay?

I get to the main menu and when I'm loading into it the game crashes. Every single time.

flipswitch · Oct 25, 2018

That sucks big time, still not able to play it.

Ever thought of re-downloading it, or check event viewer in Windows after it crashes?

Booting up in safe mode?

Are you using onboard sound or a card?

Talus · Oct 25, 2018

icecold1983 said:
the before pic was you having no issues?: looks awful

Yea... so awful!! ... You're such a drama queen. =/

I never said there wasn't any issues. I said my game looked the same as the X1X and that I didn't have the same terrible LOD pop in which other people were having. I specifically told you that not everyone had the same issue... which you were sure everyone on PC including myself was. Now look at you in here... trying to start shit with your snide comment... "bu but your pic looks awful.. :'( " ... lol.. then the game looks awful... Who am I to argue with the only authority on the matter? ...but you were specifically saying that it looked WORSE than the X1X version and that the PC version was broken for everyone. Wrong..

Look at my pic:

And look at another persons pic:

So yea... considering my pic is the same that it is on Xbox One X... and that I specifically tested them and compared...I'd say it's fair to say I "didn't have any issues" and that it was fine in regards to being as good as it could be... ie (not a pc specific issue) And now it's much better than before... which is another thing I might add that you just claimed last night likely "wasn't fixed because it would be another 13 months before PG fixed their shit PC versions"

Anything else icecold?

icecold1983 · Oct 25, 2018

Remij said:
Yea... so awful!! ... You're such a drama queen. =/

I never said there wasn't any issues. I said my game looked the same as the X1X and that I didn't have the same terrible LOD pop in which other people were having. I specifically told you that not everyone had the same issue... which you were sure everyone on PC including myself was. Now look at you in here... trying to start shit with your snide comment... "bu but your pic looks awful.. :'( " ... lol.. then the game looks awful... Who am I to argue with the only authority on the matter? ...but you were specifically saying that it looked WORSE than the X1X version and that the PC version was broken for everyone. Wrong..

Look at my pic:

And look at another persons pic:

So yea... considering my pic is the same that it is on Xbox One X... and that I specifically tested them and compared...I'd say it's fair to say I didn't have any issues and that it was fine in regards to being as good as it could be... ie (not a pc specific issue) And now it's much better than before... which is another thing I might add that you just claimed last night likely "wasn't fixed because it would be another 13 months before PG fixed their shit PC versions"

Anything else icecold?

i dont think the top pick is how it looks on X. it looks bugged for you as well. what i said was that the game is a mess on PC, you then said the game works flawlessly for you and just like any game a few people have issues. forza horizon 4 at that time was far from a normal functioning game where a select few people had issues

rashbeep · Oct 25, 2018

wow so this game finally looks better than horizon 3!?

/s

Talus · Oct 25, 2018

icecold1983 said:
i dont think the top pick is how it looks on X. it looks bugged for you as well. what i said was that the game is a mess on PC, you then said the game works flawlessly for you and just like any game a few people have issues. forza horizon 4 at that time was far from a normal functioning game where a select few people had issues

I think you've convinced yourself that that's the case and yet aren't willing or able to accept the fact that it's not.

That's right.. I said the game works flawlessly for me. What else am I supposed to say? You got on my case because I described my experience... then at the mere suggestion that it might have been someone else's PC which was the problem... you decided to target me. A lot of people had the AF issue where the Nvidia driver was likely the culprit (not a game issue) and then there was an issue with the game that IF you changed a graphics setting from inside the game world, it would cause the LODs to break... so the "issue" only happened if you were messing around with the gfx settings and not restarting the game. Which I assume MANY people were doing because they were tweaking and trying to find the right settings... and let's be real... who wants to wait for the game to restart after changing one setting?

Bam... the AF issue, and then the LOD issue on top of it... made the game look like what people posted.

The reality was that there was one issue with the game... and one issue completely outside of the games' control. It wasn't a broken mess of a game. I had a 1080Ti when the demo released and I basically just set it to extreme and 4K and just played. I wasn't messing around with gfx settings so the issue never came up until later when I was specifically testing for it.

I should add that this is all besides the Windows Store issues... which are very real, and a pain in the ass for lots of people. But that's not a game specific issue either.

Serious Sam · Oct 25, 2018

DangerousGamble said:
For those wondering, here are the new values in the config file in regards to the environment LOD vs the old values (credit to the guys at the Forza Forums):

Good to know. I wish we were just able to edit .cfg files like in the good old days...

RedlineRonin · Oct 25, 2018

Chromie said:
I still haven't been able to play this fucking game. It keeps crashing and has been since launch. I've tried lowering settings to the lowest possible, changing my audio settings to 48000/16 bit, and unsintalling MSI Afterburner and Rivatuner.

What do I need to do?

I didn't have issues with afterburner per se, but this game absolutely hated even 5mhz of overclock on my gpu. I still have afterburner running, but it's all stock clocks.

Septic · Oct 25, 2018

noomi said:
I really need this game to get that audio thing fixed, I cannot play on my TV :(

What's the audio thing?

noomi · Oct 25, 2018

Septic said:
What's the audio thing?

over hdmi to my tv, audio static and lots of noise

Skyfireblaze · Oct 25, 2018

RedlineRonin said:
I didn't have issues with afterburner per se, but this game absolutely hated even 5mhz of overclock on my gpu. I still have afterburner running, but it's all stock clocks.

Interesting, did you check your OC with other applications? I can leave my GTX 1070 running at 1950mhz @ 0.9v and +550mhz on the memory with no issues.

Septic · Oct 25, 2018

noomi said:
over hdmi to my tv, audio static and lots of noise

Oh weird- I thought it might be that. I get audio static on game DVR clips I record through the Xbox feature.

dgrdsv · Oct 25, 2018

FH4's PC audio engine is busted right now. No idea how they've managed to fuck this one up as it's basically the only game out of a couple of hundreds I have installed which is having audio issues on my PC.

Forza Horizon 4 PC Performance Thread

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