Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon Forbidden West was launched to the PC in March of 2024 and is based on the Decima game engine. For the PC release, Horizon Forbidden West added support for ultrawide and super ultrawide resolutions, as well as NVIDIA DLSS 3 upscaling and frame generation, FSR and XeSS, and NVIDIA Reflex. The game features a visually detailed experience with high-quality textures, detailed character models, and an environment with day-night cycles and weather. For our manual run-through, we have chosen an area in the game that walks the character through a long distance between Chainscrape and Barren Light.
Native Resolution
Horizon Forbidden West is a game that is sensitive to VRAM capacity, because it makes use of higher VRAM since it is based on the PlayStation console. We can see that play out in all the graphs here to follow. Above, we are running the game at 1440p native resolution with the highest in-game quality settings. Only the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB allows a playable gameplay experience in this game at 1440p native resolution. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB chokes, because 8GB just isn’t enough to enjoy this game at 1440p native, and highest in-game settings. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is 14% faster on average and 25% faster in 1% Lows; it’s a pretty big difference.
DLSS Upscaling
The thrashing with an 8GB video card at 1440p continues even with DLSS Upscaling Quality enabled. The issue isn’t the average FPS, but rather the 1% Lows and minimum FPS, with hitching, stutterting and pausing on the 8GB GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. It makes it so that the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is very playable, with high framerates of 60FPS for 1% Lows, but half that with the 8GB GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is 15% faster on average and 72% faster in 1% Lows.
4K with DLSS Upscaling
4K is simply a no-go with the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB video card; it throttles hard with its limited VRAM capacity. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is borderline playable at DLSS Upscaling Quality, but lowering it to “Balanced” or even “Performance” is very playable. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is 115% faster on average and 204% faster in 1% Lows.