Horizon Forbidden West | OPTIMIZATION GUIDE | Every Setting Tested | Best Settings

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There is no doubt that Horizon  Forbidden West stands out as   one of the most technically advanced  and visually stunning games on PS5. and now, the game has finally  landed on PC, courtesy of Nixxes. and I have to say, out of the recent Sony's PC ports, this might be the best one yet. the performance stability of  the game on PC is unbelievable. and it's been a long time since I've  seen a game with a smooth Frametime graph and no noticeable stuttering, even during moments of performance fluctuation. additionally, Nixxes has done a great job with the user interface and the Graphics Menu, which allows you to see the visual changes of the graphics settings in real-time. Furthermore, Nixxes has included all available upscalers here and a bench of  tweakable graphics settings. so today and as usual, we'll take  an in depth look at these setting, to examine the performance  and visual impact of each one. and to determine the optimal balance  between good performance and visuals. so, without any further ado, let's get going. Now even though this is a great  port, it's still not perfect yet, there are some issues and some notes I should talk about before we start. the first one is related to Nvidia's Reflex. as you can see here the game runs  smoothly with almost perfect frametimes. now watch what happens when I enable Reflex now we can see that both the  performance and frametimes are worse, and I've seen many users online  having the exact same issue and going to On + Boost makes things even worse as you can see here so for now I recommend keeping  an eye on the game's stability,   if you're using Reflex or Frame generation and speaking of Frame Generation, the game supports DLSS frame generation which of course requires an RTX 40 series GPU. and I've tested this mod by  Nukem which as you might know, enables Frame Generation on RTX 20 and 30 series GPUs by swapping DLSS FG with FSR FG. and the results are not perfect, unlike many   other games, this mod doesn't function correctly with Horizon Forbidden West. and despite increasing the framerates,   it still doesn't feel as smooth as  playing without Frame generation. and I think the reason behind this is the aforementioned issue with Nvidia's Reflex, as using Frame generation requires  this feature to be enabled. The game also supports Dynamic Resolution,   which typically doesn't work well  in most PC games unlike consoles. but regardless, let's give it a test. here the game is running at the high 40s, if I enabled Dynamic Resolution  with TAA to target 60 fps. the game exceeds the 60 fps target  with some drops here and there. however, we can also see that the resolution drop   is noticeable and the image  quality doesn't look great. now let's try Dynamic  Resolution with DLAA instead. and as you can see now with DLAA. the image quality is much  better compared to Dynamic TAA despite the fact that the performance  is identical between the two options. but Dynamic resolution is not a magic bullet, as it has it's limit on how much it can decrease the resolution to achieve the target frame rates. for example here my performance is at the high 30s which is way behind the 60 fps target. and if enabled Dynamic Resolution,   the resolution drop is still not  enough to achieve that 60 fps target. so that's why, if you're willing  to use Dynamic Resolution,   first make sure that you're  base performance is close to 60. and I recommend avoiding TAA and use DLAA or the other upscaler instead, as they can handle lower resolutions  better than the game's TAA. Let's move on to Image Quality. now as as mentioned at the beginning of the video, Nixxes has included all upscalers here. we have DLSS, FSR2.2 and XeSS. and for Native Resolution, we have TAA, DLAA. and even SMAA and the option to disable  AA completely for those who dislike TAA. and if we compare DLSS, FSR2 and XeSS(DP4a). we can see that when it  comes to temporal stability. XeSS looks much worse compared to FSR2   and it suffers from trailing and  ghosting artifacts on particles. and in some other scenes like here. the flickering with XeSS is on another level and it seems like something is wrong with  the DP4a implementation of XeSS in this game. let's get back to the previous scene and here   we can see that DLSS and as usual  looks more stable compared to FSR2. but it suffers from smearing on small  and thin objects as you can see here. additionally all upscalers struggle  with Screen Space Reflections, but FSR and and specially XeSS  look much worse compared to DLSS. Now for native resolution, if we compared  DLAA with TAA we can see the expected result. with DLAA offering superior image quality. but similar to DLSS, it suffers from the same  smearing issue on small and thin objects. and performance wise for Anti Aliasing,   going from Off to SMAA costs around  2%, to TAA 5% and to DLAA 8%. Let's move on to the Graphics section  starting with Texture Quality. and this setting doesn't only affect the   resolution of textures for  most objects in the game. but it also has an impact on Water Surface  as you can see there in the background. and from what I've seen, with  High Textures at 1440p with DLAA,   the game runs fine most of the time. as the allocated Vram is  nowhere near the 8GB limit. however going to Very High  or using higher resolutions,   can make the allocate Vram  gets closer to 8GB limit. which can force the game to start paging and  using textures from the much slower System Ram. and this can cause a lot of issues,  like performance drop and stuttering. That's why for 8GB GPUs, at native 1440p,  I recommend High Textures or lower options. Next we have Texture Filtering,   which affect the quality of textures  when drawn at a sharp or oblique angles. and here similar to most games, this  setting has negligible performance impact. with around 3% and much better visual quality  when going from Trilinear to higher options. so keep it at 8x or 16x. Moving on to Shadow Quality, which of course  adjusts the quality and resolution of Shadow Maps. Now when indoors, we can see that this setting  also controls the amount of shadows being cast. with Low and Very Low casting no Shadows. Medium enabling most of the shadows and both High   and Very High add more of this tree  shadow and enhance it's resolution. This setting also controls Hero Lighting on Aloy,   which is a prominent light source  used to illuminate the character and here we can see here that Medium  and lower options disable this lighting. and performance wise this is one of the most  demanding settings when using higher options. because here at this scene  going from Off to Very Low,   Low and Medium costs around 2%,to  High and Very High around 13%. so here I recommend Medium Shadows. Next we have Screen Space Shadows. this one when enabled add contact  shadows for small details and objects that Cascaded Shadow maps  can't accurately capture. and it can add more depth to  a scene as you can see here. and performance wise enabling Screen  Space Shadows can costs around 3%. however in other scenes like here the performance   gap between the two options  is larger with around 9%. so here 9% is too much for Screen Space Shadows. that's why I recommend keeping this one disabled. Ambient Occlusion is next. in Horizon Forbidden West and  unlike previous Nixxes PC Ports, only Screen Space Ambient  Occlusion or SSAO is included here. there is no HBAO or any other  form Of Ambient Occlusion. and enabling SSAO has a small cost, around 2%. so here I recommend keeping SSAO enabled. Now for Reflections, Horizon  Forbidden West is relying on   a mix of Screen Space Reflections  combined with a cubemap fallback. but the quality of these reflections is  not great even with higher resolutions. and this reflected on the performance side as  going from off to even High has negligible impact. so here I recommend keeping  Screen Space Reflections at High. Level of Detail controls the geometry complexity  and LOD of objects based on their distance. like here we can see that switching to higher   options adds more geometry and  details to objects at a distance. and this setting doesn't only affect static meshes  and other objects but it also impacts NPCs LOD. and performance wise, this setting can vary  depending on the location or the scene. and how much geometry is close to the camera. for example here going from Very Low to Low costs   around 2%,to Med 4%,High 9%  and to Very High around 22%. but here in this village with more  objects and geometry close to the camera,   High and Very High are more demanding. with High costing 27% and Very High a massive 40%. so for this one I recommend sticking  with Medium Level Of Detail. Moving on to Hair Quality. and from what I've seen, this setting only  affects Alloy's Hair as you can see here. and going for Higher Options adds more details  and improves the accuracy of hair rendering. and performance wise this setting  doesn't have a big impact. so here I recommend High Hair Quality. Next we have Crowd Quality. this one is somewhat similar  to the Level Of Detail setting,   but it works differently by only  toggling between two Models for NPCs. For instance, here you can see that using Low   swaps the entire model of these  NPCs with Lower Quality Model. and simultaneously pause or lower  the rate of their animation. and here we can see that when using Low or Medium. the distance at which the game  switches between Lower Quality   and Higher Quality model is close to the camera. and performance wise even when CPU  Bound with a lot of NPCs on screen. we can see negligible performance  impact between the options. so here I recommend High Crowd Quality. Moving on to Terrain Quality. this one adjusts the level of bumpiness and adds   more details visible both up close and  in the distance as you can see here. additionally using Low can cause Pop-in in  the terrain unlike Medium or higher options. and performance wise going from Low to Med costs  around 3% and to High and Very High around 6% so here I recommend Medium  or High Terrain Quality. Next we have Water Quality. This one primarily controls the  quality of water simulation effects. like here we can see that using High,   increases the fluidity and the rate  at which these ripples update at. additionally using Low or Medium disables the  waves at shores, unlike High as you can see here. and performance wise even here which  is an intensive scene for this setting. we can see no significant performance  impact when going to High. and the same thing here at this shore. So for this one I recommend High Water Quality. Moving on to Clouds Quality. this one of course adjusts the quality  and resolution of Volumetric Clouds. like here we can see that  only the Very High option   looks different compared to the other options. however in others scenes like here,   we can see that both High and Very high add  these low level clouds around mountains. and performance wise we can see that going from   low to high costs around 2% and  going to Very High around 6%. however, the Burning Shores DLC introduces a more  robust clouds system compared to the base game. and here in this DLC, we can see  that Clouds are more demanding when using higher option, with High  costing 6% and Very High a massive 23%. so for this one I recommend Medium Clouds. Translucency Quality is next. this setting adjusts the resolution and quality  of objects through which light can pass partially. like these particles here. and performance wise at this scene,   we can see negligible performance impact  when going from Default to High Res. so here I recommend keeping this one at High Res. however, if you're having frame drops  during intensive combat scenarios, make sure to use the Default option instead. Next we have Parallax Occlusion Mapping. typically this setting should give  more depth to flat textured surfaces but in Horizon Forbidden West, the  visual impact is not that noticeable as most surfaces already has a form of  Parallax Occlusion mapping applied to them. like here for example. however, this setting can still have a  visual impact on some other surfaces, like here where we can see a small fluctuation in  this surface when switching between Off and On. or more noticeably here on the sea foam. and performance wise this setting can be demanding  even in areas where it makes small difference like here with around 7% cost. or even here where there is no  noticeable visual impact with around 4%. That's why I recommend keeping this one disabled. Now before we wrap up this section of the video let's take a look at some additional  settings like Field Of View here at this scene we can see  around 4% performance cost when   going from -25 to 0 and 5% when going to +25. next we have some Post Processing  settings starting with Depth Of Field. this effect is used heavily in  cutscenes as you can see here and the same thing during conversations like here, where we can see a performance impact only  when going to the High and Very High options. this effect is also used during  gameplay when opening the weapon wheel, and here we can small performance  difference between the options. And lastly we have Motion Blur. which doesn't seem to have any  significant performance impact. And with all that being said, these are my  recommended settings for Horizon Forbidden West let's now quickly compare the performance  of Optimized Settings and Very High Preset using the High Textures at 1440p DLAA. and let's start with this scene where there  is a lot of detailed geometry on screen, and here we can see around 42% between  Optimized Settings and Very High Preset. next we have this scene with  Water, Volumetrics and Vegetation, and here we can see around 45% performance  increase when using Optimized settings. let's move on to the next scene  where we can see slightly lower   gain compared to the previous one with around 32%. and finally we have this scene from the DLC, where we can see around 34% when going from  Very High Preset to Optimized Settings. So overall, we can see that the performance   gain with these settings can  vary depending on the scene. and I don't recommend  lowering the settings further, especially Shadows and Level of Detail, as doing  so will compromise the visual quality of the game. if you need more performance take advantage of  upscaling or use the game's Dynamic Resolution. Additionally, as we discussed  earlier in the video, it's   recommended to avoid using XeSS and Nvidia Reflex, as both features are currently broken. and with that we arrive at the end of this video,  Thank you so much for watching and for your time. if you enjoyed the video leave a  like, and if not leave a dislike. don't forget to subscribe and hit the  notification bell for future videos. and hopefully, I'll see you all in the next one.
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Channel: BenchmarKing
Views: 81,001
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: horizon forbidden west optimization, horizon forbidden west best settings, horizon forbidden west boost fps, horizon forbidden west fix stuttering, horizon forbidden west optimized settings, horizon forbidden west low end pc, horizon forbidden west fps boost, horizon forbidden west pc performance, horizon forbidden west optimised settings, horizon forbidden west graphics, horizon forbidden west part 1, horizon forbidden west pc port, horizon forbidden west optimisation
Id: RbbFf6aGFuQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)
Published: Wed Mar 27 2024
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