News Horizon Forbidden West PC port analysis: Another game that can exceed 8GB VRAM use

[Order 66]

From looking at a few youtube videos, people are getting the same FPS as me at 800p, mostly low settings on their steamdecks. Something fishy is definitely going on with my laptop. After work & dinner if I can get the kids down early I'll post my nvidia driver versions, CPU utilization, and screenshot of my FPS

You should probably start a new thread instead of hijacking this one.

 

[brandonjclark]

TechPowerUp has the 3090 in their testing. Basically the same as 4070 Super. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/horizon-forbidden-west-performance-benchmark/5.html

Crap, holding out for the 5k-series sucks.

 

[CelicaGT]

From looking at a few youtube videos, people are getting the same FPS as me at 800p, mostly low settings on their steamdecks. Something fishy is definitely going on with my laptop. After work & dinner if I can get the kids down early I'll post my nvidia driver versions, CPU utilization, and screenshot of my FPS

There is a day one Game Ready driver. I doubt you could have missed it as the launcher throws up a dialogue box to warn you.

 

[Starfal]

This generation is really meh, from both companies. At least AMD seems to be doing better price wise/performance wise... but then again, no DLSS (FSR is a bit worse)

I guess it will be a good time to upgrade in about half a year? 8 months? Yea, 2025 is close enough now. I still see 4080 super selling for over 1200-1450 in my European country. The so called lower 1000 dollar price is a total mythic over here. Bleh. If i spend that much money, i might as well save a bit more and just buy a 5080 for 1500 bucks (let's be real, it probably will be more overpriced than a 4080 lol)

I guess the Witcher 3+ BGate 3 will hold me busy for many more months.

 

[atomicWAR]

My experience has been extremely good. I am not crash free but for a launch title the fact I haven't had more than a single digits worth of 'crash to desktop' issues, I call it a huge win. I am running Horizon FW on a 7950x, 64GB of ddr 6000 cl32, 2TB NVMe drive powered by a 4090 with maxed out settings on a VRR panel (gsync on); I only turned on frame gen, reflex and my experience has been really solid. I do get the occasional double digit frame dips usually during cut scenes and then we are talking 78-90 something which looks really smooth (minimal frame gen artifacting). Most everywhere else in game looks good though I only just cleared out the bristle backs but I have not gone to the meet up with the Tenakth yet and hit the truly open world so my frame rate may yet take a hit. Anyways so far my things generally stays pretty close to my 144hz refresh rate hovering in the high 130s typically if it not running at or past the full 144fps my 144hz panel is capable of, again thank you frame gen.

I'll save my few critiques about key binding problems for a more appropriate thread but generally the game is wonderful. They did a great job ensuring the game looks and runs decent enough, at least by modern standards...I pine for the days games were released fully baked because patches weren't yet thing or even possible.

Well, I wouldn't demand you to do more benchmarking. I'll just say that any buyer considering a 7600 XT should be taking a look at the 6700 XT at the same time, since it will often be better. Although the good times may be over if Newegg pricing for the 6700 XT is any indicator.

Thanks for the work! I didn't see a 3090 in there, though. I'll extrapolate, nvm!

Right? It is so tough to hit every config but at the same time as long as a few cards from a few gens are included you can indeed extrapolate where your card might land. Something all PC gamers find themselves doing at one point or another.

Poor Jarred works so hard. I have seen so many articles posted where he spent all night up (many times more than one I'd guess) just to get us these articles and data points. I know we all appreciate his efforts. Thank you Jarred for all the late nights. I look forward to what you bring us on any given day.

I don't really understand what the fuss is about. Like, I understand that this is yet another game to use more than 8GB of VRAM, but it doesn't seem like it's horribly unoptimized at launch like certain other games. (Jedi Survivor) I mean, It's impressive that a 6800 xt can run it at nearly 4k 60 considering it's current price of ~$400.

Yeah I couldn't agree more. While I have zero worries in regards to VRAM with a 4090...my overall experience has been overwhelmingly positive for a recently launched AAA title. Jedi Survivor WAS a horrendous at launch. Had I not had some faith they'd fix it, I would have returned it that first few days after it dropped. Starfield was another problematic launch title in recent history as well, though Bethesda is kind of notorious for releasing games in a beta (at best) states. If I could stress one things to devs above everything else (graphics, gameplay, story etc included) it would be to wait to release games until they are truly done. If a game requires one patch, excluding day-one patches, to fix most of the stability/performance issues, you released the game to early IMHO.

Thanks for testing the game Jarred, it was really insightful to see how each different GPU architecture performs in this PS5 title. Its wild how the RTX 3080 10GB is now running into some issues with VRAM capacity, and not just 8GB GPUs. At least it only happens at the Very High settings at 4K.

In my opinion, this is one of the best PC ports ever made. The performance consistency across all areas of the game, combined with all the PC-specific features added put to shame many other titles made exclusively for PC. The graphics are absolutely stunning for a game that doesn't have ray tracing as well.

I wish more games were like this. Its so nice to see a game that is of such high quality and yet performs so well.

Absolutely. It is so rare to have a port be this stable at launch. I want to see more titles do this, just like you. Its fair to say PC gamers as a whole would like to see better ports. We have been abused too many times and for too long. Horizon Forbidden West should be the new gold standard for port quality devs aim for. And yes this port can easily shame many PC exclusives, something I find fairly uncommon in this day and age.

 

[Quirkz]

With the increasing relevance of low power gaming laptops and handheld devices like Steamdeck/Ally/etc, I'd really like to see benchmarks on, say, a 3050 laptop at a reasonable TDP, and either steamdeck or Z1 extreme based device.

 

[Amdlova]

Looking these new games i'am so glad to have a 6700xt an 8gb card will be good for 1600x1200 gaming lol

 

[blacknemesist]

This generation is really meh, from both companies. At least AMD seems to be doing better price wise/performance wise... but then again, no DLSS (FSR is a bit worse)

I guess it will be a good time to upgrade in about half a year? 8 months? Yea, 2025 is close enough now. I still see 4080 super selling for over 1200-1450 in my European country. The so called lower 1000 dollar price is a total mythic over here. Bleh. If i spend that much money, i might as well save a bit more and just buy a 5080 for 1500 bucks (let's be real, it probably will be more overpriced than a 4080 lol)

I guess the Witcher 3+ BGate 3 will hold me busy for many more months.

There is a mod for FSR3 but it should be implemented FSR3 natively, at least there is FSR and AMD users aren't left to dry(and the studio).

 

[kealii123]

From looking at a few youtube videos, people are getting the same FPS as me at 800p, mostly low settings on their steamdecks. Something fishy is definitely going on with my laptop. After work & dinner if I can get the kids down early I'll post my nvidia driver versions, CPU utilization, and screenshot of my FPS

Well I can't paste in screenshots, but I'm getting around 42 fps with a low/medium mix @720p.

I dismissed the "day one" driver update because I just wanted to play. I went back and updated to 551.86 for my Razer 17 Pro, 2080 Super (maxq), with i7-10875H. This increased performance in a way, I could go from low everything to a low/medium split with 0 change in FPS.

I get this GPU is starting to get old, but for heavens sake its about the same generation as the Zen 2 in my steamdeck and it gets roughly the same performance at 1/10 the power draw.

I ran Zero Dawn all high 1080p@70ish fps on this same machine.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

For those asking about running the game on the Steam Deck, I've added a section to the article. In short, it seems to work fine. Without upscaling, I got around 35 fps using the very low preset, which looks pretty bad. The low preset dropped that to around 30 fps, and medium settings dropped to 25 fps (all approximate as there's no easy way to benchmark on the Steam Deck). But with FSR 2.2 quality mode upscaling, medium settings ran at around 35~40 fps and looked quite good.

 

[mitch074]

For those asking about running the game on the Steam Deck, I've added a section to the article. In short, it seems to work fine. Without upscaling, I got around 35 fps using the very low preset, which looks pretty bad. The low preset dropped that to around 30 fps, and medium settings dropped to 25 fps (all approximate as there's no easy way to benchmark on the Steam Deck). But with FSR 2.2 quality mode upscaling, medium settings ran at around 35~40 fps and looked quite good.

Someone posted a Youtube video showing that the game ran fine (50+ fps) @1080p on a Radeon RX580 8Gb (the card that wouldn't die), so I don't think the game is THAT performance-starved.
I wouldn't be surprised if the game hit a part of the AMDGPU linux driver that needs some love, and performance may improve somewhat in the coming months, though - especially if it's already running somewhat fine.

 

[CelicaGT]

Well I can't paste in screenshots, but I'm getting around 42 fps with a low/medium mix @720p.

I dismissed the "day one" driver update because I just wanted to play. I went back and updated to 551.86 for my Razer 17 Pro, 2080 Super (maxq), with i7-10875H. This increased performance in a way, I could go from low everything to a low/medium split with 0 change in FPS.

I get this GPU is starting to get old, but for heavens sake its about the same generation as the Zen 2 in my steamdeck and it gets roughly the same performance at 1/10 the power draw.

I ran Zero Dawn all high 1080p@70ish fps on this same machine.

I would definitely check your thermals, a 2080 (even maxq) shouldn't be bested by a 3050 (laptop, 70W) in this title. My settings are a mix of medium/low @1080p. I can achieve about the same frame rate as you with Vsync off. I am using DLSS and DSR, if you are not that may be the issue.

 

[kealii123]

I would definitely check your thermals, a 2080 (even maxq) shouldn't be bested by a 3050 (laptop, 70W) in this title. My settings are a mix of medium/low @1080p. I can achieve about the same frame rate as you with Vsync off. I am using DLSS and DSR, if you are not that may be the issue.

My DLSS is set to "Dynamic" or whatever, with a target of 45.

I don't think its thermals, as other games run fine, but my CPU does seem to never pass 40% utilization

 

[CelicaGT]

My DLSS is set to "Dynamic" or whatever, with a target of 45.

I don't think its thermals, as other games run fine, but my CPU does seem to never pass 40% utilization

CPU load is pretty light in this game, but it does load all 8 cores on my desktop. My laptop is a measly 10300H quad core and it reports 60-70% utilization through the Nvidia overlay. I'm curious now to see what HWInfo shows for per core loads. I'll take a look a bit later. It's just so odd that the difference is so large..

 

[TechyInAZ]

Hey guys, i'm writing this in bold because this is super important. If you have ANY performance problems with the game, TURN OFF Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling in Windows 10 or Windows 11.

I just turned it off, and all of my stuttering problems went away instantly. I also gained like 20% extra performance from the feature off. Its seriously destroys this game.

I have about 15 hours in this game already, and just discovered this problem.

UPDATE: Turns out Nvidia drivers are to blame. If you install them through GFE/Nvidia app, you'll have problems apparently. I just clean installed the driver through the Nvidia website, and it fixed my stuttering problems with hardware accelerate GPU scheduling. I can now turn it on and the game runs great. Previously I was "clean installing it" through the Nvidia app but i guess that doesn't work.

 

[thestryker]

If i may ask: which setting did you use for NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency?

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...can-exceed-8gb-vram-use.3840492/post-23229685

 

[SyCoREAPER]

The game looks good but not that good. Just another case of Sony's partner not knowing or caring how to efficiently port the code.

 

[ismmostaar1]

I can run this game at Low 1080p 35-40FPS with a GTX 1050TI

 

[CelicaGT]

The game looks good but not that good. Just another case of Sony's partner not knowing or caring how to efficiently port the code.

What do you mean? This is probably one of the best out the gate running ports in years. Zero Dawn was a quivering mess when it launched, took them months to get it in the state it should have been at release. Nixxes has done a more than decent job with Forbidden West, only a few minor bugs that were stamped with a hot fix. RT support would have been nice for those that care, but I think it looks fine without.

 

[mhmarefat]

For those asking about running the game on the Steam Deck, I've added a section to the article. In short, it seems to work fine. Without upscaling, I got around 35 fps using the very low preset, which looks pretty bad. The low preset dropped that to around 30 fps, and medium settings dropped to 25 fps (all approximate as there's no easy way to benchmark on the Steam Deck). But with FSR 2.2 quality mode upscaling, medium settings ran at around 35~40 fps and looked quite good.

There is a very good performance metric software on Linux named Mangohud (https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud) I think it works on Steam Deck as well... it has many useful features like "fps_metrics", "fps_sampling_period", etc...

 

[kealii123]

I'm hesitant to buy a new gaming laptop (with kids a desktop isn't viable) with the Qualcomm chips around the corner. Its rumored that even with emulation their 80W chip will be close to an RTX 4070 mobile. Imagine playing 1080p, medium, 60fps, ON BATTERY.

My only worry is Forbidden West appears to require AVX (not supported on ARM)

 

[kealii123]

I can run this game at Low 1080p 35-40FPS with a GTX 1050TI

Yes, there is something fishy with my 2080 Super laptop, hopefully some driver updates come soon

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I'm hesitant to buy a new gaming laptop (with kids a desktop isn't viable) with the Qualcomm chips around the corner. Its rumored that even with emulation their 80W chip will be close to an RTX 4070 mobile. Imagine playing 1080p, medium, 60fps, ON BATTERY.

My only worry is Forbidden West appears to require AVX (not supported on ARM)

I suspect support for x86 games running via emulation on the Qualcomm chips will be spotty. Maybe they'll work, maybe they won't. As far as how fast the GPU will be on the QC chip, I'll believe it can match Nvidia when I see it. Intel has taken years to get it's GPU to equal a midrange Nvidia chip from two years earlier. There's nothing magical about QC where I'd expect it to do better. And for Windows, it will have to do just as much work as Intel to get performance and compatibility to an acceptable level (Intel still isn't quite there).

 

[kealii123]

I suspect support for x86 games running via emulation on the Qualcomm chips will be spotty. Maybe they'll work, maybe they won't. As far as how fast the GPU will be on the QC chip, I'll believe it can match Nvidia when I see it. Intel has taken years to get it's GPU to equal a midrange Nvidia chip from two years earlier. There's nothing magical about QC where I'd expect it to do better. And for Windows, it will have to do just as much work as Intel to get performance and compatibility to an acceptable level (Intel still isn't quite there).

On my Qualcomm CX Gen 3 windows tablet, which probably runs at 7 watts, many games won't run. But the ones that do run at about the same resolution/fps/settings as my steamdeck throttled to 7 watts. These new Qualcomm Nuvia/Orion chips are a significant jump (as much as 1.5x) performance per watt of what their ARM chips have been up till now. They also run at up to 30 watts or 80 watts, depending on which of the two models. Qualcomm also claims that emulation will be much better (IDK if they mean there will be a microsoft software solution), and that work offloaded to the GPU doesn't need to be emulated.

Here is Baldurs Gate 3 running at 1080p 30fps, which is probably about what a laptop RTX 4060 can do:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1772295505524973783

View: https://twitter.com/Lexcyn/status/1772295505524973783


If this chip takes off, and Windows on ARM finally becomes a thing, maybe devs will compile games for it. That would give us a GPU that should stand toe to toe with a laptop RTX 4070 but running on less than half the watts (essentially comparable to the M3 Max).

As for price, they are shooting to compete against Apple, so no way laptops with them will be "mid range priced"

 

[kealii123]

UPDATE: I was getting crappy performance, then Geforce Experience updated my drivers to v552.22 and it was a breath of fresh air. A solid 60 fps on all medium, detail on high, mid level DLSS thats actually tolerable. This was 4/17, and just a day later Forbidden West updated and I'm back to 35fps on all medium, DLSS maxed out so everything looks like its a sand mosaic (RTX 2080 super only supports DLSS2, no frame generation). H:FW has updated several times since but still I have the crap performance.