Forza Horizon 4 Optimized Settings: Best Graphics Settings for PC

Forza Horizon 4 is among Microsoft’s late-release successes after it was rolled out on Steam. It is among the most-played PC titles with a concurrent player count of nearly 76K. The game plays and feels much like its successor, Forza Horizon 5, except it’s set in Britain. The game lacks ray-tracing and upscaling but offers several graphics settings to customize the visuals for optimal performance. This optimization guide highlights the best settings for high-end and low-end PCs.

Windows/System Settings to Optimize

• Enable Resizable BAR.
• Turn on Game Mode.
• Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) and Windowed Optimizations.
• Use the Windows “High Performance” power profile and set your GPU power management mode to the same.
• Disable Memory Integrity. Windows Menu->VBS->Device Security.
• Ensure you use the proper XMP/EXPO memory profile (if available).
• Overclock your GPU if you’re narrowly missing the 60 FPS mark.
• Here’s a guide with more detailed instructions.

Forza Horizon 4: PC System Requirements

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Contents & Testing Methodology

• Benchmarks at a glance:
  1. Resolution Scaling & Presets.
  2. Texture Filtering & Shadow Quality.
  3. Textures & Geometry Quality.
  4. Anti-Aliasing.
  5. SSAO & Reflections.
  6. Terrain & Detail.
  7. Lens Effects & SSR.
  8. Shader & Particle Quality.
  9. VRAM usage.
  10. CPU bottlenecks.
  11. Best Graphics Settings for Forza Horizon 4.
• Hardware setup used:
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
  • Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420.
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti FE.
  • Motherboard: MSI MPG B650 Edge WiFi.
  • Memory: 16 GB x2 @ 6000 MT/s CL30.

Forza Horizon 4: Resolution Scaling & Presets

Forza Horizon 4 scales well with resolution, which is impressive considering it launched roughly six years ago. Using the “Ultra” quality graphics preset, we recorded an average of 149 FPS at 4K, 193 FPS at 1440p, and 215 FPS at 1080p.

The premade graphics quality presets show a similar level of performance scaling. From 149 FPS at 4K “Ultra,” the framerates rose to 188 FPS at “Medium,” and 239 FPS at “Very Low.” Forza Horizon 4 should be able to run on the oldest PCs as long as you have a DX12-compatible graphics card.

Texture Filtering & Shadows

Texture filtering, along with “Motion Blur” and “Night Shadows,” has a negligible impact on performance and should be left at the maximum quality. You get sharper textures and fewer blur-related artifacts.

Shadow Quality grants a substantial performance boost when completely disabled. We’re looking at a 7% FPS bump versus the higher-quality options. However, the game looks particularly bland without shadows, so leave it at “Ultra.”

Textures & Geometry

Environmental Textures have a substantial impact on the game’s VRAM usage. We observed an average graphics memory consumption of 5.5 GB at the lowest, 6 GB at “High,” and 7.3 GB at the highest quality option.

Static geometry doesn’t impact the framerates as it’s loaded into the memory at launch. It does, however, impact the graphics memory consumption. We observed a VRAM usage of 6.8 GB at “Very Low,” 7.05 GB at “Low,” and 7.3 GB at the “Ultra” quality option.

Dynamic geometry is rendered in real-time, and as such, directly impacts performance. The lowest option is 4-5% faster than the highest. Fortunately, “UItra” performs similarly to the former while retaining much of the detail.

Anti-Aliasing

Forza Horizon 4 offers two traditional anti-aliasing technologies, namely FXAA and MSAA. FXAA doesn’t reduce performance, while MSAA can cut framerates by up to 20%. The 2x variant is ideal for most PCs.

Ambient Occlusion & Reflections

Ambient Occlusion drastically improves visual fidelity by adding the illusion of depth to the scene. The highest quality option is 6% slower than the lowest. The majority of gamers should be content with “High.”

Reflection Quality sets the detail of pre-rendered “cube-mapped” reflections. These low-resolution reflections are loaded at the start and can reduce framerates by 6-7%. We recommend sticking to the highest or the second highest quality option.

Windshield Reflections enable the rendering of the front window reflections. They only marginally impact performance.

Detail & Terrain

World Car LOD sets the quality of different vehicles in Forza Horizon 4. Higher settings include additional details, including technical and synthetic, while the lower options gradually filter them out. The average framerates drop by 6-7% at the highest quality option. For the best performance, leave it at “High.”

Deformable Terrain sets the quality of deformable surfaces. It is loaded at the beginning and doesn’t notably impact performance. Leave it at the highest setting.

Lens Effects & SSR

Lens Effects control the quality of various artificial lens-based effects like lens flare. If enabled, they can decrease performance by as much as 4-5%. The “High” quality option performs almost like “Off.”

Screen Space Reflections are used to render onscreen reflections on glossy surfaces. They can be quite taxing and should be disabled if you’re experiencing poor performance. Disabling them grants a 6% FPS boost at 4K.

Shaders & Particle Quality

Shader Quality controls the interaction of light with various surfaces. It determines the color of different objects when they interact with sunlight. It marginally impacts performance.

Particle Effects set the resolution of dust, smoke, and other micro-particles, and their impact on lighting. They too negligibly impact performance.

Forza Horizon 4: VRAM Usage

Forza Horizon 4 uses nearly 8 GB of graphics memory at 4K “Max.” Reducing the visual quality brings down the VRAM usage to 6.5 GB, 5.5 GB, and 4.5 GB at the “Ultra,” “High,” and “Low” quality presets, respectively.

Decreasing the resolution doesn’t have a notable impact on performance. We noted a drop of 600 MB upon switching from 4K to 1080p at the “Ultra” quality preset.

Forza Horizon 4: CPU Bottlenecks

Forza Horizon 4 is almost completely GPU-bound with an average GPU-Busy deviation of 4% at 1080p. Higher resolutions like 1440p and 4K are entirely GPU-bound.

Forza Horizon 4 Performance Summary

Unsurprisingly, reflections and shadows are the most taxing graphics options, followed by “World Car LOD,” SSAO, and “Lens Effects.” The last three can be reduced to “High” for a lofty performance gain.

Best Graphics Settings for Forza Horizon 4

Optimized Settings	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC
Resolution	4K (3840×2160)	1440p (2560×1440)	1080p (1920×1080)
Target FPS	120 FPS	120 FPS	90 FPS
Texture Filtering	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Shadow Quality	Extreme	Extreme	Extreme
Environmental Textures Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Static Geometry	Highest	Ultra	Ultra
Dynamic Geometry	Extreme	Extreme	Ultra
FXAA	On	On	On
MSAA	4x	2x	Off
Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)	Ultra	Ultra	High
Reflection Quality	Extreme	Extreme	Extreme
Windshield Reflections	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Mirror Quality	Extreme	Extreme	Extreme
World Car LOD	Ultra	Ultra	High
Deformable Terrain	Extreme	Extreme	Extreme
Lens Effects	Ultra	Ultra	High
SSR	Ultra	Ultra	High
Shader Quality	Ultra	Ultra	Ultra
Particle Quality	High	High	High

CPU	Core i7-12700K/Ryzen 7 5700X	Core i5-12600K/Ryzen 5 5600	Core i5-12400 AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPU	RTX 4070/RX 7800 XT	RTX 4060/RX 7600	RTX 3060/RX 6600
Memory	16 GB (dual-channel)	8 GB (dual-channel)	Less than: 8 GB (dual-channel)
	High-end	Midrange	Low-end PC