Horizon Zero Dawn Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis

[W1zzard]

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the most successful titles on the PS4, and it’s finally available for PC. Graphics are among the best we’ve ever seen. In our performance review we test 27 graphics cards to get a feel for how demanding HZD is.

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[Searing]

This game is a great example of why we need better video cards on PC. 8GB VRAM is played out and better textures and rendering aren't happening on PC because of it, I won't buy another card without 16GB (and I hope I'm not very disappointed this fall). 75fps at 1440p with a 2080 Ti is painful, I'm ready for a 120fps card. Let's hope nVidia or AMD can deliver something 60 percent faster.

 

[Imsochobo]

3900x and vega64 no problems, other than my vega screaming in this game..

 

[Lionheart]

More like this game is a great example to not outsource this PC port to another game dev & rush it out the door, I have this on PS4 Pro, I'll stick to that pleb version until they remedy this PC port.

 

[Xzibit]

TR: Horizon Zero Dawn PC fixes are Guerrilla Games' ‘highest priority’ right now

In a post on Steam’s news hub, spotted by a forum denizen over at ResetEra, Guerrilla Games issued a ‘quick update’ in response to reports from players experiencing technical glitches and crashes, letting gamers know that it’s a matter of the ‘highest priority’ to investigate those reports.

The developer wrote: “We appreciate those who have already taken the time to report their issues on Steam, Reddit, or via our website. If you are still encountering crashes or bugs, please continue to use those spaces, or refer to our FAQ if you are unsure of how to proceed. Your reports are, and have already been, incredibly helpful for our teams.

“Thank you for your patience as we continue to investigate issues; we will update you all as soon as we have more news.”

Forbes: Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC Port Is A Beautiful Disaster

 

[ZoneDymo]

I suggest anyone interested in this game checks out Digital Foundry's technical breakdown, its not all sunshine.....

 

[dirtyferret]

This game is a great example of why we need better video cards on PC. 8GB VRAM is played out and better textures and rendering aren't happening on PC because of it, I won't buy another card without 16GB (and I hope I'm not very disappointed this fall). 75fps at 1440p with a 2080 Ti is painful, I'm ready for a 120fps card. Let's hope nVidia or AMD can deliver something 60 percent faster.

or a great example of half assed optimization considering it's the older version of the death stranding engine

 

[Searing]

More like this game is a great example to not outsource this PC port to another game dev & rush it out the door, I have this on PS4 Pro, I'll stick to that pleb version until they remedy this PC port.

I don't think that is the entire problem. PC hardware plateaued with the GTX 1080. It runs at 30fps on the PS4 Pro, so you need a GPU 4x faster than the PS4 Pro's RX 580 equivalent to get 120fps. That happened last gen. The Xbox 360 is about a Radeon 2900XT. You got 4x the speed by the time the Radeon 5870 (or GTX 560 Ti) was out the door just 3 years later. The PS4 is about a Radeon 7870. 4x that is a 1080 Ti (just 4 years later, I loved 2017, best year ever for gaming even if it was expensive). But 4x the RX 580? Not happened yet. The 2080 Ti is about 2.5x the speed. To get 4x the speed we need another 60 percent as I said. If the 3080 Ti isn't 60 percent faster (which is unlikely) we'll be waiting another 2 more years to get 4x the PS4 Pro and get our games back to 120fps.

3, 4, then 6 years to beat consoles decisively?

 

[Xuper]

How come 1650 with 4GB is faster than RX580 8GB on all Resolutions even 4K ? I guess AMD only focused on Navi cards.you can see at 4K res , RX5600 with 6GB Matches GTX 1080.

 

[Searing]

How come 1650 with 4GB is faster than RX580 8GB on all Resolutions even 4K ? I guess AMD only focused on Navi cards.you can see at 4K res , RX5600 with 6GB Matches GTX 1080.

You mean the 1650 Super, which is basically a 1660, so it outperforms the RX 580 as expected like in other games. The RX 5600 XT is based on the same die as the 5700 and is expected to match the 1080 also.

 

[Agent_D]

It would be worth testing this game at different CPU core/thread counts; preliminary testing was showing 30%+ increase in FPS from 4c/8t to 8c/16t at 1080p. This seems to go into the 1440p realm as well from what I've personally experienced.

On my setup: Asus Strix X570-E, 3900X (4.25GHz @ 1.275v w/SMT off and 4.25GHz @ 1.3v w/SMT on), G.Skill Trident Z Neo 3600MHz, Radeon VII @ 2050/1200 - 1120mv, installed on an Inland 1TB NVMe PCI-E 3.0; Game settings: 2560x1440, Fullscreen, 80 FOV, Ultimate preset with Motion Blur off - with SMT off (12 cores) I was seeing average FPS of ~75fps, with SMT on (12c/24t) it was averaging ~105fps. I didn't spend a lot of time on taking numbers or creating similar scenarios in game, so take this with a huge grain of salt.

I've personally had almost 0 issues with the game on my setup, 2 crashes in 30 hours but no other issues.

 

[altermere]

amazing visuals? compared to what? it doesn't look better than DAI or Witcher 3 yet needs a rig almost twice as powerful to run even at 1440p. it's definitely not the new Crysis, more like new Boiling Point.

 

[dirtyferret]

It would be worth testing this game at different CPU core/thread counts; preliminary testing was showing 30%+ increase in FPS from 4c/8t to 8c/16t at 1080p. This seems to go into the 1440p realm as well from what I've personally experienced.

not sure who did this "preliminary testing" but there is no real benefit going from 4c/8t to 8c/16t

 

[Anymal]

amazing visuals? compared to what? it doesn't look better than DAI or Witcher 3 yet needs a rig almost twice as powerful to run even at 1440p. it's definitely not the new Crysis, more like new Boiling Point.

Exactly! W1zz lost me at: In terms of graphics, Horizon Zero Dawn looks highly impressive, both the environments and character models are extremely detailed. Mos deff not! Smoke and mirrors as usual, game is old and made for mediocre Polaris.

 

[Agent_D]

not sure who did this "preliminary testing" but there is no real benefit going from 4c/8t to 8c/16t

Interesting; I saw it here: https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

It does seem that there were some discrepancies with that IGN chart for some reason; everywhere else I can find is showing very similar results to the chart you posted.

 

[dirtyferret]

Interesting; I saw it here: https://www.ign.com/articles/horizon-zero-dawn-pc-port-analysis

not sure as he mentions using 50% of 1080p for that test. DSOgaming used 800x600 w/ Intel 9900k to remove the GPU as much as possible but had different numbers then IGN. The IGN numbers look off.

 

[Agent_D]

For sure; either I misread the IGN graph (which I thought said 50% of 4k for 1080p ) or it was a mistype when the article launched and they corrected it afterwards. It did seem odd to have such a high discrepancy on framerates at 1080p when I first read it, so now it makes a lot more sense.

 

[Cheeseball]

Exactly! W1zz lost me at: In terms of graphics, Horizon Zero Dawn looks highly impressive, both the environments and character models are extremely detailed. Mos deff not! Smoke and mirrors as usual, game is old and made for mediocre Polaris.

Not sure what you're seeing but W1zzard's screenshots look really nice:

Significantly better looking than Dragon Age Inquisition and it can take on Witcher 3 at its maximum settings with HairWorks enabled. I've been replaying Witcher 3 recently (cross-saving between the Switch and PC) so I have the visuals still fresh in my mind.

 

[Searing]

Horizon is one of the best looking games ever. Play the first hour and you'll see.

 

[Xuper]

You mean the 1650 Super, which is basically a 1660, so it outperforms the RX 580 as expected like in other games. The RX 5600 XT is based on the same die as the 5700 and is expected to match the 1080 also.

at 4K, rx580 is still faster than 1650 super.right now this game needs at least 6GB to play smooth.yet at 4K , rx580 is slower than 1650 super.I bet stutter will occur a lot on any 4GB card.

 

[wolf]

@W1zzard Have you done any testing with pci-e set to different bus speeds? looks like a couple of sites notice significant drops in performance even with more midrange cards, in the order of 15-20%+ @ 8x rather than what we'd expect to see like 1-3% on an RTX2080Ti.

I'd also appreciate any insight you have into whether that is something that could be addressed by patching, especially given Death Stranding doesn't suffer from that drop at 8x, or if you think it's just something we'll have to live with.

As always your content is much appreciated and very thorough, with a standout for me being that you pick sections of gameplay that represent real world performance.

 

[renz496]

will vega end up like Fury?

 

[The Quim Reaper]

When you start the game for the first time, update your display driver, or change the graphics card, the game will go through a really long "compiling shaders" process. It will peg all your CPU cores at 100% for several minutes (!) on a 8c/16t Core i9-9900K

I can confirm this and I have to say its the first time I've seen any game push my 9900K core temps above 80c!

...during normal gaming though, temps are in their usual 40c-50c range, so no worries.

I knew the initial shader compilation would push temps high as I've seen it before with shaders being compiled in the WiiU emulator Cemu, but not for as long or as high as what happened with HZD.

 

[biffzinker]

I can confirm this and I have to say its the first time I've seen any game push my 9900K core temps above 80c!

...during normal gaming though, temps are in their usual 40c-50c range, so no worries.

I knew the initial shader compilation would push temps high as I've seen it before with shaders being compiled in the WiiU emulator Cemu, but not for as long or as high as what happened with HZD.

I pulled up task manager during the shader compile, and on my 3800X total CPU usage was 64% which dropped down to 49%. All eight cores 16 threads were in use at the 64% though. Task Manager was reporting a total clockspeed of 4.2 GHz.

 

[watzupken]

This game is a great example of why we need better video cards on PC. 8GB VRAM is played out and better textures and rendering aren't happening on PC because of it, I won't buy another card without 16GB (and I hope I'm not very disappointed this fall). 75fps at 1440p with a 2080 Ti is painful, I'm ready for a 120fps card. Let's hope nVidia or AMD can deliver something 60 percent faster.

I disagree. This game is a great example of a poor port to PC considering it is using pretty much the same game engine as Death Stranding. There are other games out there with similar graphic quality, but does not perform this poorly.