Best Forza Horizon 5 Settings For FPS And Performance

When it comes to optimization, Forza Horizon 5 runs very well on a wide range of computers. The game has a lot of different graphics settings that you can choose from. However, a lot of the settings will require you to restart the game for the changes to apply, so it can become really frustrating to identify the differences between all of the settings.

If you are also having a difficult time trying to choose the right settings for your game, we have the perfect guide for you. In our Forza Horizon 5 Best Settings Guide, we will walk you through all of the important settings and compare the differences between them so that you can choose the correct settings for high-quality visuals and maximum performance. 

Forza Horizon 5 System Requirements

Before we jump into the Optimized Forza Horizon 5 Settings Guide, ensure that your system specifications meet or exceed the recommended system requirements.

Forza Horizon 5 Minimum Requirements 

• OS: 64 bit Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• Memory: 8 GB
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 470 
• Storage: 110 GB available space 

Forza Horizon 5 Recommended Requirements

• OS: 64 bit Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
• Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
• Memory: 16 GB 
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1070 (10GB) or AMD Radeon RX 590
• Storage: 110 GB available space 

Forza Horizon 5 Ideal Requirements

• OS: 64 bit Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
• Processor: Intel Core i7-10700K or AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT
• Memory: 16 GB
• Graphics: Nvidia RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800XT
• Storage: 110 GB available space 

Best Forza Horizon 5 Graphics Settings

First up, let’s quickly check the Best Graphics Settings in Forza Horizon 5:

In this part of the Forza Horizon 5 Best Settings Guide In this section, we’ll examine every Graphics Settings Forza Horizon 5 has to provide. We will evaluate the settings with screenshots to give you an understanding of the effects each setting has and assist you in selecting the best choice for a better experience when you play Forza Horizon 5.

Anisotropic Filtering – Medium

Anisotropic filtering gives clarity to distant surface textures that are seen at an angle. You can choose from 3 different options for this setting: Low, Medium, and High. You wouldn’t notice a big change in the visuals or performance by changing this setting. Medium will give you a 1% performance boost so we recommend keeping this setting on Medium.

Shadow Quality – High

The difference between these settings isn’t very big, you can hardly tell the differences between the Extreme and the High Settings. Dropping down the Shadow Quality from Extreme to High will give you a huge performance boost of up to 7.5%.  Turning Shadows Off will give you a 13.5% performance boost but it isn’t recommended because it completely turns off all the shadows in the game which makes it look very bad. 

Night Shadows – On

This setting controls the Shadows formed by the lights at night time. This includes the car lights, street lights, and all the other lights that turn on after it gets dark. Turning this setting Off will give you a small boost of 2% performance. We recommend leaving this setting On for impressive visuals, also because the performance boost with the setting turned off isn’t worth it.

Motion Blur Quality – High

This Setting adjusts the quality of the Motion Blur Setting that you have applied in the Video Settings of the game. It doesn’t change the amount of Motion Blur. Low looks worse than the other settings as it makes the blur appear grainy. You can change this setting to High for a very small 0.5% performance boost.

Environmental Texture Quality – Ultra

The Environmental Texture Quality can be dropped down to Ultra for some extra FPS boost, but lower than that isn’t recommended. Turning this setting to High will also automatically change the Environmental Geometry Quality to High. Leave Environmental Texture Quality on Ultra for a 2% FPS boost.

Environmental Geometry Quality – Ultra

The Environmental Geometry Quality controls the quantity/density of objects in the game. It doesn’t affect the visual quality of those objects. For example, there will be lesser people in the crowds at the festival at lower settings, but the texture quality would remain the same as the higher settings. You’ll see less amount of grass on the ground on the lower setting, and some of the plants will also be missing. Here, the Ultra setting looks decent and will give you a 6% increase in performance.

Anti-Aliasing MSAA – 2x

FXAA – On

FXAA is another Anti-Aliasing method used in Forza Horizon 5.  It has 2 settings, On and Off. It has a minimal effect as compared to the MSAA and it tends to blur the edges of the objects to achieve a smoother image. We recommend turning this on along with MSAA for an even smoother-looking image and taking grip of Best Forza Horizon 5 Settings. 

SSAO Quality – Ultra

Screen Spaced Ambient Occlusion controls cast shadows over objects in the game. It mostly affects the ambient environmental shadows in the game. SSAO doesn’t really give you any huge performance boost until you turn it completely off, which doesn’t look very good. We recommend leaving this setting on Ultra.

Reflection Quality – Ultra or Medium

Reflection Quality setting only affects the reflections on the body of the cars. High, Ultra, and Extreme settings look very identical to each other. The quality of the reflections starts getting worse when you go below the High setting. To see a decent FPS boost you have to go down to Low, but at that point, the reflections are very low resolution and low refresh rate. There isn’t any noticeable difference in performance either between High, Ultra, and Extreme settings. You can change this setting to Medium for a small 1.5% performance boost.

World Car Level of Detail – High

World Car Level of Detail sets the detail level on your car and all the other cars in the game. This setting has 5 options: Extreme, Ultra, High, Medium, and Low. The differences between these options are very minimal. The Low setting looks just as good as the higher settings with a very small difference like the car badges appearing to be less detailed. We recommend changing this setting to High for a 3.5% performance boost.

Screen Space Reflection Quality – High

This setting only affects the quality of reflections that are formed in the rivers, water puddles, and wet roads after rain. There are 5 options for this setting: Ultra, High, Medium, Low, and Off. Honestly, you won’t be able to tell a difference between the Ultra and High setting, and you’ll get 4.5% higher FPS at High. Changing this setting to Off will completely remove any reflections from the water which doesn’t look very good. High seems to be the right choice here.

Lens Effects – High

This setting controls the various dirt and water droplets effects that can appear on the screen when you’re driving through the mud or while it’s raining. It’s worth changing this setting to High at almost no visual cost. If you don’t like these effects, you can turn them completely off. Turning this setting down to High will give you a 2% more FPS.

Shader Quality – High

The shader quality setting controls how accurate the lighting will be. Reducing shader quality can cause the scene to appear dull and flat. Forza Horizon 5 has 5 different options for Shader Quality: Low, Medium, High, Ultra, and Extreme. Turning down the Shader Quality setting can give you a huge increase in FPS, but at the huge cost of visual quality. You can turn this setting down to Low or Medium for a 19-21% increase in FPS performance. We recommend keeping this setting on High as it looks a lot better than the lower settings and it can give you a 3.5% increase in performance.

Deformable Terrain – Extreme

This Forza Horizon 5 setting controls ground surfaces that change shape when you drive on them. For example mud and sand. This setting has 5 options: Extreme, Ultra, High, Medium, and Off. When you are driving on the sandy beach your car tyres will deform the ground and leave tyre imprints in the ground. This setting controls how much of this effect you see. The Extreme setting has the most pronounced visual effect. Turning this setting Off removes the effect altogether. It’s difficult to accurately benchmark the performance hit between the different options. We recommend leaving this setting on Extreme if your PC isn’t struggling to run the game.

Particle Effects – Medium

You can set the Particle Effects to Medium without noticing any big difference. Don’t go all the way down to Very Low or the Sandstorms in your game will vanish. Unless you want the sandstorm to disappear, keep this setting about Very Low. Without affecting the game’s graphic quality, you can easily adjust this level to Medium for 1.5% greater performance than Ultra.

Ray Tracing – RTX – Optional

The Ray Tracing option in Forza Horizon 5 only works in the Forzavista mode that can be toggled in the garage that lets you take a closer look at your car. Ray Tracing is not applied at any other point in the game. We tested all three modes for Ray Tracing and couldn’t find any big difference between them. You can choose any of the three options as it doesn’t make a big difference to the performance or the visual quality of the game.

Video Settings

This section of Forza Horizon 5 Best Settings Guide covers the video settings that affect Resolution and other Screen Settings in Forza Horizon 5. These settings do not have the same impact on the performance of the game as do the Graphics Settings but they can help improve the overall experience.

Frame Rate – Unlocked(Variable)

This Forza Horizon 5 setting allows you to put a limit on the frame rate of the game. This setting comes down to personal preference. if you want your FPS to be at a constant 30 or 60, you have the option to do that with this setting. In this guide, we were looking to squeeze as much performance from the game as possible so we kept the frame rate Unlocked.

Verticle Synchronization – Off

VSYNC is a feature allowing frame synchronization of Forza Horizon 5 with the gaming monitor’s refresh rate. It is recommended to turn this feature off to avoid any input lag or latency issues. If you are experiencing Screen Tearing or high fluctuations in frames per second, you can turn this back On.

Motion Blur Type – Short

This setting controls the type of Motion Blur that can be applied in the game. This setting has 3 different options to choose from that are Off, Short, and Long. Usually, we wouldn’t recommend putting motion blur on as it could reduce performance and reduce visibility in FPS games but since this is a racing game, having motion blur on could improve the experience by enhancing the sense of speed when driving at high speeds. We recommend changing this setting to Short. 

Resolution Scaling – Off

Resolution Scaling should be turned off, as any setting that you apply in the game will lower the graphics in-game and then scale it up. This setting is somewhat similar to Nvidia’s DLSS, but it doesn’t use the same technology.

Nvidia Settings For Forza Horizon 5

Let’s briefly preview all the Nvidia Settings for Forza Horizon 5:

Once you’re done with the most critical Graphics setting to use in Forza Horizon 5, you could squeeze more performance from Your Nvidia Graphics Card by making adjustments within the Nvidia Control Panel and updating your GPU drivers to the most recent version. Follow the instructions in this article to maximize Forza Horizon 5 for your Nvidia Graphics Card.

Download the Latest Game Ready Drivers For Forza Horizon 5

As we move into Forza Horizon 5, we can Nvidia Settings It is strongly recommended that you upgrade your graphics card drivers to the latest Game Ready Drivers By Nvidia. You can do this via GeForce Experience, or directly download the drivers from on the Nvidia site.

1. Then, open GeForce Experience. Then click Check for Updates > Check to make sure that version 496.49 or greater is installed.

Nvidia Control Panel Settings For Forza Horizon 5

1. First, Open the Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > Add Forza Horizon 5.exe
   

   

2. Go to the Add > Browse
   

   

3. Now add Forza Horizon 5 from the Installation directory of the game.
   

4. Make the changes below.
5. Set Image Sharpening – Sharpen 0.50
6. Select Application Controlled for Anisotropic Filtering.
7. Switch on antialiasing Gamma Correction.
8. Turn on Low Latency Mode.
9. Set Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance.
10. Set Preferred Refresh Rate to Highest Available.
11. Enable Shader Cache.
12. Turn on Texture Filtering – Anisotropic Sample Optimization.
13. Allow Texture Filtering – Negative LOD Bias.
14. Set Texture Filtering Quality to High Performance.
15. Turn on Texture Filtering Trilinear Optimization.
16. Select Auto Under Threaded Optimization.
    

17. After you’ve made these modifications then head into the Change Resolution Tab, and follow the steps.
18. Select the native resolution as well as the maximum refresh rate your monitor can provide.
19. On the step 3 page, enable”Use NVIDIA Color Settings” on the page “Use NVIDIA color settings” option. Make sure that the settings match the image below.

After that, you can go adjust the Size and Position of your Desktop and make the changes below.

1. Scaling Mode: Aspect Ratio.
2. Perform Scaling on the Desktop.
3. Resolution: Current.
4. Refresh Speed: the highest rate available.

Windows 10 Optimizations For Forza Horizon 5

After we’re finished with the most crucial Forza Horizon 5 settings, your FPS should already have increased by a significant amount. If you’re running an old PC and wish to make sure your system is playing the game at its maximum potential There are a few Windows 10 optimizations that will ensure that your computer is operating at its best when playing Forza Horizon 5. When you’re done with these adjustments after which you can expect an immense performance improvement on the fly. These settings will let to turn off background programs, allow the game to make use of your GPU effectively, block unwanted overlays, and so on.

Enable Ultimate Performance

Normally, Windows 10 runs at an extremely balanced and optimized power plan. This puts an energy limit on your PC by default. This can be fixed by switching your PC’s Power Plan from Balanced to Ultimate. This will let your CPU operate at a higher speed and use all that your computer’s CPU. This will significantly improve the speed of performance on your computer. For enabling Ultimate Performance mode, follow these steps:

1. Open Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell With Administrator Privileges, and copy and paste the code below.
   

   

2. powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02 -d5df -448d-aa00 -03f14749eb61

   

3. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to view what is the Ultimate Performance that is mentioned inside the code.
4. Afterward, go to begin >> Modify Power Plan > Power Options.

Power Plan.

5. You can then mark Ultimate Performance then you’re finished.

Set Graphics Card Priority To High For Forza Horizon 5

Within Windows 10, There is an option in the Graphics Settings menu that allows users to alter the GPU priority for various applications. You can select to include Forza Horizon 5 in the list of games and set its graphic preferences to high. This will ensure that the game uses the entire GPU, and will give you an amazing performance increase. To achieve this take these steps:

Also Read this: Best Borderlands 3 Settings

1. In the Start Menu type and open Graphics Settings.
   

   

2. Then, click on Browse and add Forza Horizon 5.exe
   

   

   

3. Then set its graphics preference to High Performance.
   

   

4. Click on save once you are finished.

Disable Hardware Acceleration And Enhance Pointer Precision

Another technique that can greatly boost the efficiency of your computer by removing Hardware Acceleration from various background applications. This setting is designed to enhance the performance of applications by delegating certain computation tasks for the application to specific hardware components of the system such as GPU and RAM. GPU as well as RAM. This could significantly impact the speed of performance on your computer when playing games while these programs run in the background.

Hardware Acceleration isn’t an actual Windows feature, but it’s utilized in many commonly used third-party applications, such as Discord, Google Chrome, Opera, and many more. It’s not going to affect the application’s primary purpose and only helps you reduce the use of resources. It’s Enhance Pointer precision is a comparable feature, however unlike Hardware Acceleration which is typically used in third-party software This is an exclusive Windows 10 feature that requires to be disabled.

1. Open Discord > Settings > Advanced > Disable “Hardware Acceleration.”
   

   

2. In Opera > Open Settings > Advanced > Browser > Under System > Disable “Use hardware acceleration when available.
   

   

3. Search for Mouse Settings > Additional Mouse Options > Pointer Options > Uncheck Enhance Pointer Precision.

Disable All Unnecessary Applications Running In The Background

If you’re experiencing slow frame rates or irritating stutter issues with Forza Horizon 5. It could be because of excessive applications and Windows Services running in the background which eat up a huge chunk of memory. To eliminate the background apps and experience top performance in Forza Horizon 5. Make sure you close all unneeded background applications in the System Tray and in the Task Manager.

Take a look too: Best Rust Settings for the High-FPS

Apart from an application that runs in the background, you must also remove all unneeded Windows Services that consume a large portion of your PC’s memory. To enable HTML0 to achieve this, follow the following steps.

1. In the Start Menu, Search for Windows Run Application.
   

   

2. Type and Enter “msconfig”.
   

   

3. Go to the services tab and checkmark “hide all Microsoft Services.” This will remove the important ones from the list. Afterward, uncheck all services you feel are irrelevant.
   

   

   

4. After you are done with services, Head to the Startup tab in Task Manager, and disable all the irrelevant applications.

Turn Off Unnecessary Animations

Windows 10 has a lot of unneeded animations that can affect the performance of your computer. The impact might not be as noticeable on high-end PCs however it can affect your performance when using a low-end computer. This article will help you to turn off these annoying animations to get an increase in performance on your computer.

1. In the Start Menu > Type and Open View Advanced System Settings.
   

   

2. Head over to the Advanced tab > Settings > Checkmark Custom and only select the options shown in the screenshot below. Once done, don’t forget to hit apply, and ok.

Clear Temp Folder

Sometimes you have to delete an application on your system. The program doesn’t completely erase everything that is related to the software. It leaves behind a large number of temporary folders and files on the Windows drive. As time passes they take up lots of space on your computer and cause slowdowns to your system. Use these tips to clear the temporary files and reclaim the space on your disk and also improve the performance of your PC.

1. Under Start > Type Run > write and enter %temp%
   

   

   

2. Inside the folder, Press CTRL + A on keyboard > Press Shift + Delete on your keyboard.

Xbox Game Bar

In the final phase, we’re going to implement some Windows 10 optimizations in relation to Xbox Game Bar and other Windows notifications that you can deactivate to increase the performance of your PC. Xbox Game Bar is enabled by default in Windows 10, and it takes a significant amount of performance out of your PC because it is constantly running in the background. If you click an incorrect button, the game may also begin recording your screen. We’ll teach you how to turn off this feature. Xbox Game Bar and notifications accumulate in the task center, which can affect the performance of your PC. To accomplish this follow the steps below.

Optimized Settings For Other Games: Best Escape From Tarkov Settings 

1. In the Start Menu, type and open the Game bar shortcuts.
   

   

2. Disable everything in the Game Bar Tab and Captures Tab.
   

   

   

3. Afterward, open Focus Assist Settings and Disable them accordingly.

Forza Horizon 5 Benchmarks On Optimized Settings

When we applied all the best Forza Horizon 5 graphics settings as well as other optimizations mentioned in the article above we conducted a final benchmark (Video Attached below) to assess the extent of the performance as well as FPS improvement we could achieve and then compared the quality of the graphics that the game’s Ultra setting as well as the optimized settings of eXputers. We saw a staggering 30% improvement in FPS performance, while still keeping the high quality of the visuals.

The final benchmarks were done on the following specifications.

• AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor.
• 16.0 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 Memory.
• MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX.
• GEFORCE RTX 3070 8GB.
• Forza Horizon 5 was Installed on HDD.

Here is a 4-minutes benchmark video that shows the difference between our Forza Horizon 5 optimized settings and the game’s Ultra Settings.

Settings Takeaway

After having followed the Forza Horizon 5 Best Settings guide and implementing all the required Windows 10 and Nvidia Optimizations, you should see a massive improvement in the FPS speed. We spent a great deal in testing the setting to determine which offered the highest performance, while still maintaining good visuals. This guide will allow you to improve the overall experience of gaming.

If you’re trying to reach an acceptable FPS on Forza Horizon 5 below are some essential strategies.

• Check that Windows 10 is up-to-date with the most recent version.
• Check the computer specifications to the needed specifications.
• In the event of random crashes, I’d advise checking your system’s temperature.
• Be sure to increase the speed of your hardware components, if you can.
• Turn on Game Mode on Windows Settings to get a little FPS increase.

March 8th, 2023 (Hotfix) Patch Notes

latest hotfix:

• [PC] Fixed a problem in which the game client would fail while in Benchmark mode.
• The stability of the game has been improved In Eliminator where players may have crashed when they are in a head-to-head match.
• The cost of some EventLab props following budget calculation error fix

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• Best Far Cry 6 PC Settings For High FPS