Forza Horizon 3 is getting rave reviews, but its PC port is clearly troubled compared to its Xbox One counterpart. While unconfirmed, player testing may reveal why the title’s Windows 10 performance is so poor.
The analysis comes to us from Rockstonicko of the Forza forums, with additional details from imGlitch on Reddit. After testing Forza Horizon 3 in a series of different environments, the user deduced that the game’s memory and GPU management are essentially perfectly tailored to the Xbox One system spec. In other words, Forza Horizon 3 on Windows 10 is somewhat a “file save as” copy of the console version.
Specifically, it was found that the allocated system memory and video memory used by the app are 4,258 MB and 4,365 MB respectively. Conveniently, this total nearly matches the Xbox One’s 8 GB of system RAM. The GPU’s power draw also averages around 150 watts while other PC games can push as much as 310 watts. Low power consumption is another feature that’s necessary for console games. Last but not least is a 1 GB dynamic memory buffer that aficionados say is commonly a sign of integrated GPU support or standardized machines like Xbox One.
Forza Horizon 3 still stutters on high-end PCs after patching because the game isn’t necessarily built for the platform. It runs on Windows thanks to kernel commonalities with the Xbox framework, but very little seems to have been finely tuned otherwise. This is especially true considering even the game’s developers contacted users on Reddit to iron out stuttering kinks. It’s evident that not much quality assurance went on to ensure the Windows 10 build was actually prepared for wide public release. It has all the settings PC gamers might want but with little optimization.
The situation becomes all the more troubling considering PlayGround Games’ close ties to Microsoft. While the studio itself is technically independent, Forza has been an Xbox-exclusive franchise from the start. Forza Horizon 3 was made by a third-party team with all kinds of first-party benefits. How is it that some help couldn’t have been provided to make the Windows 10 port more effective? After all, Gears Of War 4 has been analyzed as essentially built from the ground up for PC. The same attention to detail definitely didn’t happen here.
Forza Horizon 3 is available now on Xbox One and Windows 10. If you have to use the PC build, check out our performance guide to get the best possible framerate!
What do you think of this PC analysis? Does it sound right to you? Tell us in the comments section!
