Why Forza Horizon 6 Is a Brutal Test for Modern GPUs
Forza Horizon 6 is more than a showcase racer; it is a demanding benchmark for modern graphics hardware. Built on the ForzaTech engine and designed exclusively for ninth‑generation consoles and high‑end PCs, the game drops legacy systems and leans heavily into advanced rendering techniques. On PC, it features ray tracing-enabled global illumination for indirect lighting and ambient occlusion, alongside full-scene ray traced reflections that cover the entire open world and car-on-car reflections. Advanced refraction shaders add realistic rainbow-like effects on plastic and polycarbonate components such as headlights and taillights, further increasing GPU load. These features make max settings with ray tracing one of the toughest real-world workloads in a racing title. For gamers, a Forza Horizon 6 GPU benchmark is therefore an ideal way to understand ray tracing performance and broader gaming performance requirements across current hardware generations.
Test Setup: 47 GPUs, Four Presets, and Native Resolutions
To map out realistic gaming performance requirements, 47 graphics cards from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel were tested using Forza Horizon 6’s built-in benchmark. The test system centers on an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D paired with fast DDR5-6000 memory, ensuring the CPU is rarely the bottleneck. Resizable BAR was enabled, and the game ran on Windows 11 with current WHQL drivers for both Radeon and GeForce cards. The Forza Horizon 6 GPU benchmark covers native 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions across four key presets: Extreme+RT and High+RT for full ray tracing, plus Extreme and High without ray tracing. This structure exposes how different architectures cope with heavy global illumination and reflections, and also reveals unusual behavior in preset scaling between brands and generations. By focusing on native resolution (without frame generation), the results offer clear, apples-to-apples graphics card testing for raw rendering performance.
Ray Tracing Performance at 1080p and 1440p: Who Handles Extreme+RT?
At 1080p with the Extreme+RT preset, only the fastest GPUs can fully flex Forza Horizon 6’s visual features while delivering high frame rates. Nvidia’s RTX 5090 leads with an average of 157 fps, sitting 38% ahead of the RTX 4090 and 45% clear of the RTX 5080. The RTX 5080 averages 108 fps, around 9% faster than the RTX 5070 Ti, which slightly outpaces the RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4080. On the AMD side, the RX 9070 XT delivers 91 fps, trailing the RTX 4080 and the comparable RTX 5070 Ti by about 9%. Midrange contenders show how demanding ray tracing can be: the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB reaches 63 fps, roughly in line with the RTX 4070, RTX 3090, and RX 7900 GRE. Once performance dips below 40 fps on this preset, the experience becomes noticeably less smooth, particularly in fast racing scenarios.
Preset Scaling, Upscaling, and DLSS-Only Frame Generation
Preset scaling reveals some surprising trends in ray tracing performance. Comparing the RX 9070 XT and RTX 5070 Ti, Nvidia’s card is only about 4% faster at Extreme+RT, but its lead stretches to 13–17% at several lower presets. Meanwhile, 1% lows occasionally favor the Radeon at very low settings, suggesting driver-level optimization issues. Upscaling amplifies these gaps: with DLSS on GeForce and FSR on Radeon, the RTX 5070 Ti’s advantage grows to 8–14% at 1440p Extreme+RT. However, frame generation is where Nvidia gains a major exclusivity edge. On PC, Forza Horizon 6 currently supports frame generation only via DLSS for RTX 40 and 50 series GPUs, including 2x to 4x modes and up to 6x for RTX 50 with advanced overrides. There is no FSR Frame Generation or XeSS Frame Generation at launch, leaving AMD, Intel, and older Nvidia owners without any in-game frame interpolation solution.
Practical GPU Recommendations and VRAM Considerations
Translating benchmark data into gaming performance requirements, a few themes stand out. First, Forza Horizon 6 strongly prefers GPUs with ample VRAM: testing shows that getting the most out of max settings and ray tracing realistically requires at least 12GB. For competitive high-refresh gaming at 1080p Extreme+RT, high-end cards like the RTX 5080 and above, or AMD’s RX 9070 XT class, are the most comfortable options. At 1440p Extreme+RT, the RTX 5090 still holds a solid 120 fps, while cards like the RX 7900 XTX maintain around 60 fps by scaling somewhat more gracefully than some newer midrange GPUs. If you are willing to drop to High+RT or High without ray tracing, midrange cards such as the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB or RX 7800 XT can deliver smoother results. Ultimately, choosing the right card depends on your target resolution, desired ray tracing level, and whether DLSS frame generation is available to you.