Forza Horizon 3 now much better (patch)

[leelaa14]

So I just fired up forza horizon 3 after reading they made optimisations in the latest patch. The game is perfect for me now. I was getting drops to 45 fps in the city at max settings, 1440p and shadows on low.
Now it's pegged at 72 fps with all settings maxed, including shadows. (I keep the framerate capped to 72 for a consistent framerate)

[NinJake]

Cool, I haven't played the game in like 5 months or so. Might have to jump back in it!

[IrshaadH]

What's cpu usage Like?  Is one core still pegged at 100% usage?

[leelaa14]

Just now, IrshaadH said:

What's cpu usage Like?  Is one core still pegged at 100% usage?

Haven't checked. Though before the patch I know I was bottlenecking. In the city cpu usage would be at 100% on all four cores.

[IrshaadH]

5 minutes ago, leelaa14 said:

Haven't checked. Though before the patch I know I was bottlenecking. In the city cpu usage would be at 100% on all four cores.

Yeah, that's why I'm curious to see of that changed.  It wasn't really a bottleneck because even the most powerful i7's had the same cpu usage.

[leelaa14]

4 minutes ago, IrshaadH said:

Yeah, that's why I'm curious to see of that changed.  It wasn't really a bottleneck because even the most powerful i7's had the same cpu usage.

I'll have a quick check now. Will do a run through the city and see what's going on.

[IrshaadH]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/forza-horizon-3s-hot-wheels-expansion-out-now-alon/1100-6449916/

 

Just came across this article citing significant cpu performance gains and a lowering of the minimum spec.

 

I've been playing this game on my xbox because I couldn't stand the stuttering, I'm definitely going to fire this up again on my rig to test it out!

[leelaa14]

8 minutes ago, IrshaadH said:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/forza-horizon-3s-hot-wheels-expansion-out-now-alon/1100-6449916/

 

Just came across this article citing significant cpu performance gains and a lowering of the minimum spec.

 

I've been playing this game on my xbox because I couldn't stand the stuttering, I'm definitely going to fire this up again on my rig to test it out!

So I just had a mess about in game. I uncapped the fps and set the camera to outside the car at the furthest distance. CPU usage was high, though my usage is high in most games.
Had spikes to 100 every now and then in the city, but it's a huge improvement over pre patch. i feel like I can enjoy it now as it used to be a bad experience going from a smooth framerate outside the citiy and then plummeting to the 40's when you enter it.
My fps was averaging around 75 inside the city at max settings including 8xmsaa at 1440p inside the city and 100+ outside the city.

Edit, obviously take what I say with caution, as I'm only giving you info on my experience.

[IrshaadH]

21 minutes ago, leelaa14 said:

So I just had a mess about in game. I uncapped the fps and set the camera to outside the car at the furthest distance. CPU usage was high, though my usage is high in most games.
Had spikes to 100 every now and then in the city, but it's a huge improvement over pre patch. i feel like I can enjoy it now as it used to be a bad experience going from a smooth framerate outside the citiy and then plummeting to the 40's when you enter it.
My fps was averaging around 75 inside the city at max settings including 8xmsaa at 1440p inside the city and 100+ outside the city.

Edit, obviously take what I say with caution, as I'm only giving you info on my experience.

Your observations make sense given your specs.  I have a very similar rig, so I look to checking out the performance improvements as Well!

[JJVGaming]

I play maxed settings 4x msaa on a gtx 1060 and i5 4590, can confirm I am able to get 70 fps average on surfers paradise, no drops below 60

[IrshaadH]

OK, so I fired the game up and noticed significant performance improvement.  I also saw that there's an option to activate multi-thread CPU processing in the settings menu.  In addition, every single graphics setting is more defined with descriptions on its impact to performance and CPU/GPU workload.

 

The only instance where I notice dropped frames is when starting up races -- my guess is it has to do with streaming.

[IrshaadH]

Quick update;

 

It seems that V-Sync is the cause of the frame drops.  THe same region where I noticed, say, 55fps with V-Sync on would render at 75+ with it off.

[Snadzies]

I'm going to have to give the game a try again.

The game generally ran well but there were a few places the performance would drop noticeably, like the main strip in Surfers Paradise and a bit in the rain forest.

One special event racing a train would run in the single digits at times, basically when ever I panned the camera towards the train.

 I have a 5820k oc'd and, like others noticed, a single core would be getting hammered while the rest were under considerably less of a load.

[IrshaadH]

OK, I've spent quite a bit of time with the PC version over the last day and I'm afraid I'll have to retract much of my praise for the new update.

 

Now, I must say, it is a welcome update in which I'm glad to see CPU performance improvements.  However, now, instead of one core being at 100% utilization, all four are!  And, this type of performance does not scale at all between the very low preset and ultra -- I get the exact same framerate dips regardless.

 

My guess, based on the experience I've had so far, is there's a fundamental problem with the way in which this game streams new assets, because the only instances where I see frame drops are at the beginning of races and when driving into new environments.

 

I do hope they continue to work on this game, because, just looking at other Xbox anywhere titles like Gears 4, I am convinced it is possible to have near-perfect PC optimization.

[leelaa14]

Just now, IrshaadH said:

OK, I've spent quite a bit of time with the PC version over the last day and I'm afraid I'll have to retract much of my praise for the new update.

 

Now, I must say, it is a welcome update in which I'm glad to see CPU performance improvements.  However, now, instead of one core being at 100% utilization, all four are!  And, this type of performance does not scale at all between the very low preset and ultra -- I get the exact same framerate dips regardless.

 

My guess, based on the experience I've had so far, is there's a fundamental problem with the way in which this game streams new assets, because the only instances where I see frame drops are at the beginning of races and when driving into new environments.

 

I do hope they continue to work on this game, because, just looking at other Xbox anywhere titles like Gears 4, I am convinced it is possible to have near-perfect PC optimization.

Have you tried playing around with the maximum pre rendered frames? If you have a fluctuating framerate then set it to 3. Not sure how much this will improve, but may help a little.

[IrshaadH]

Just now, leelaa14 said:

Have you tried playing around with the maximum pre rendered frames? If you have a fluctuating framerate then set it to 3. Not sure how much this will improve, but may help a little.

I've tried all the avaiable settings for this and don't see a difference at all.  The only improvement comes when I turn V-Sync off, but then the screen tearing is too much to bear.

 

Have you had better luck with this game?  I know our rigs are quite similar, so I'm interested to hear what your experience has been like.

[leelaa14]

Just now, IrshaadH said:

I've tried all the avaiable settings for this and don't see a difference at all.  The only improvement comes when I turn V-Sync off, but then the screen tearing is too much to bear.

 

Have you had better luck with this game?  I know our rigs are quite similar, so I'm interested to hear what your experience has been like.

Yeah it's running fine for me. I've put shadows down to high from ultra. I don't use in game vsync as I use gsync. But yeah, running very well for me. You using the latest gpu drivers? Though honestly, not sure how much that would help.
One thing I have done is disable game mode on my system. So if you haven't, it may be worth a try.

[IrshaadH]

Just now, leelaa14 said:

Yeah it's running fine for me. I've put shadows down to high from ultra. I don't use in game vsync as I use gsync. But yeah, running very well for me. You using the latest gpu drivers? Though honestly, not sure how much that would help.
One thing I have done is disable game mode on my system. So if you haven't, it may be worth a try.

Nice,  I disabled game mode since I saw Linus' video on it.  Perhaps a new driver might fix some of the problems I'm having.  I did notice similar performance drop when I played Gears 4 for the first time before updating to the game-ready driver for that title.  Perhaps Nvidia might be able to offer a fix..

[leelaa14]

5 minutes ago, IrshaadH said:

Nice,  I disabled game mode since I saw Linus' video on it.  Perhaps a new driver might fix some of the problems I'm having.  I did notice similar performance drop when I played Gears 4 for the first time before updating to the game-ready driver for that title.  Perhaps Nvidia might be able to offer a fix..

If you do go for a newer driver, i would also reccomend using ddu to do a clean install of it.
Also, do you have Forza Horizon 3 set to maximum performance in Nvidia control panel? 

[JJVGaming]

26 minutes ago, leelaa14 said:

If you do go for a newer driver, i would also reccomend using ddu to do a clean install of it.
Also, do you have Forza Horizon 3 set to maximum performance in Nvidia control panel? 

Just a quick question, but how do u find Forza in the control panel? I've tried to find it before with no success

[leelaa14]

Fire up the game, quit and then go to nvidia control panel. Then go to manage 3d settings, program settings and click add. It should be there in the recently used list.

[Snadzies]

Performance for me has been better for me however there is a new issue introduced with the Hotwheels DLC.

 

It seems if you have the Bliz Mtn DLC and the Hotwheels DLC both installed then you can't travel to Bliz Mtn as you'll get stuck in an infinite loading screen.

My last play session had been in Bliz Mtn so instead of a infinite loading screen I just get a CTD when I load my save file.

 

The current work around is to uninstall the Hotwheels DLC and that will allow you to load up Bliz Mtn.

 

Seems to be fairly wide spread as there is a 9 page topic about it on the official forums of people just saying they have the same issue and listing their Gamer Tag (as requested by an employee).

https://forums.forzamotorsport.net/turn10_postst97448_After-Hot-Wheels-Expansion-Blizzard-Mountain-won-t-work.aspx

 

 

Really, the Forza Horizon 3 release was a pretty big mess as it had bad performance issues, crashes and various bugs that took several months to work out and every time they add major DLC they introduce another set of major issue that takes them a couple months to fix.

[ZimFreak]

Major Props to Turn 10 for listening to the players and fixing the problems. They also added wheel support for most popular wheels.

[Clyne]

Running 1440P Ultra with 60FPS fine, it's just that there's lower drops now and then. 

[IrshaadH]

1 hour ago, Bubblewhale said:

Running 1440P Ultra with 60FPS fine, it's just that there's lower drops now and then. 

What's your CPU usage like now?