The Forza Horizon 5 PC specs are pretty steep, huh
A GeForce RTX 3080 for “Ideal” quality!
The Forza Horizon 5 PC system requirements are out in full, and hoo boy, are you gonna need the best graphics cards to max it out. Revealed in a blog post, the new specs both update the previously listed Minimum requirements on Steam, and include an “Ideal” tier on top of the Recommended requirements. This doesn’t specify a particular resolution, but does ask for either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon Radeon RX 6800 XT as the GPU – two of the most powerful, expensive, difficult to buy graphics cards on the market.
This Ideal spec stops short of suggesting latest-gen CPUs as well, though its listed picks of an AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT or Intel i7-10700K are still well within enthusiast territory. Even the Recommended specs are a big step up from their Forza Horizon 4 equivalents, too: the fifth installment is asking for a Radeon RX 590 or GTX 1070, as well as either a Ryzen 5 1500X or Intel Core i5-8400 chip. And the same 16GB of RAM as the Ideal requirements, to boot.
The GeForce GTX 970 and Radeon RX 470, both of which were among Forza Horizon 4’s Recommended specs, are demoted to Minimum specs for Forza Horizon 5. This tier only demands 8GB of RAM, though CPU requirements are on the up as well, with the Ryzen 3 1200 and Intel Core i5-4460 making the list. The game also looks like a storage hog, needing 110GB of SSD or hard drive space to install. Here are the requirement lists for each tier:
Forza Horizon 5 Minimum PC requirements
- OS – Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
- CPU – AMD Ryzen 3 1200 / Intel Core i5-4460
- RAM – 8GB
- GPU - AMD Radeon RX 570 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
- Storage – 110GB available (HDD or SDD)
Forza Horizon 5 Recommended PC requirements
- OS – Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
- CPU – AMD Ryzen 5 1500X / Intel Core i5-8400
- RAM – 16GB
- GPU - AMD Radeon RX 590 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
- Storage – 110GB available (HDD or SDD)
Forza Horizon 5 Ideal PC requirements
- OS – Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
- CPU – AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT / Intel Core i7-10700K
- RAM – 16GB
- GPU - AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT / Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
- Storage – 110GB available (SDD)
Forza games have always been pretty, but have never really highballed system requirements because of it. And other than ultra-luxe cards like the RTX 3090 and RX 6900 XT, the Ideal listed GPUs are about the most muscular you can (theoretically) buy; it wouldn’t surprise me if Forza Horizon 5’s idea of “Ideal” is all-out, max settings 4K. The addition of ray tracing partially explains the increased demands (as does, y’know, two years of tech improvements happening since Forza Horizon 4), though this apparently won’t be part of regular racing. Ray tracing only applies to ForzaVista, the parked-up vehicle viewing mode where you simply ogle your unlocked cars in a suspiciously clean garage.
In better news, the blog post also confirms that the PC version will unlock the framerate, include adjustable FoV and, like its previous instalment, be playable in ultrawide 21:9. Forza Horizon 5 also uses a similar technique to ray tracing for its in-game sounds, which will apparently be able to realistically recreate the effectS of bouncing off different surfaces before landing in your ear holes. Hopefully that will help satisfy those who felt FH4’s cars sounded a little too weedy.
Forza Horizon 5 is out on November 5th. If you want to get your rig up to speed before then, take a look at our best CPU for gaming picks.