Developer Turn 10 has released the PC specifications for Forza Horizon 5, revealing how much firepower you'll need to run the new racing game. Microsoft and Turn 10 list three spec sheets, including a minimum specification, recommended specification and ideal specification for playing the game.
Thankfully, the spec sheets tell us Forza Horizon 5 can be played on a lot of older gaming machines with very low minimum requirements. However, to push everything to ultra, you'll need the latest hardware from AMD, Nvidia or Intel.
The minimum requirements for the game include a Ryzen 3 1200 or Core i5-4460 for the processor, a Radeon RX 470 or GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, 8GB of RAM, and 110GB of hard disk space. These are pretty light system requirements for a game coming out in 2022. The only real problem is the 110GB space requirement which can take up most of a small SSD.
Forza's recommended specifications increase the CPU requirements to hyperthreaded (or SMT) quad-core processors, including a Ryzen 5 1500X and Core i5-8400. For graphics, that gets increased to a Radeon RX 590 and GeForce GTX 1070, with memory getting bumped up to 16GB. This will be the spec sheet you want to pay attention to if you want an experience in Forza Horizon 5 that isn't plagued by poor detail and low frame rates.
Luckily, these specs are also quite light, besides the fact that getting a graphics card is still impossible these days. But, if you have managed to grab an RX 590 or GTX 1070 or better, you are in very good shape to play. These days, getting a CPU that meets the requirement of a 1500X is very cheap, and so is buying a 16GB kit of RAM, whether it be for a desktop or laptop.
However, if you want to play Forza Horizon 5 at the highest quality presets, that will require much better hardware. Forza's ideal spec requires an 8 core Ryzen 7 3800XT or Core i7-10700K for the CPU, and a Radeon RX 6800 XT or GeForce RTX 3080 for the graphics card.
These requirements make a lot of sense with all the graphical upgrades Forza Horizon 5 offers. The biggest of them all is ray tracing support, which is probably why the GPU requirements are so high.
Additionally, Forza Horizon 5 will also support 21:9 ultrawide displays natively which is ideal for cockpit racing.
Microsoft also lists several racing wheels from Logitech, Thrustmaster, and Fanatec that will be supported from the start. Expect wheel support to grow in future updates.
- Logitech: Driving Force, G25, G27, G29, G920, G923PS, G923XB, Momo
- Thrustmaster: Ferrari 458, T150 RS, T300 RS, T500 RS, TMX, T-GT, TS-XW, TX, TS-PC
- Fanatec: V1, V2, V2.5, CSL, CSL DD, DD1, DD2, Universal HUB device
Forza Horizon 5 will be available on November 9th from the Microsoft Store as well as Steam but can be pre-ordered today. Forza Horizon 5 will also be available on Xbox Series X and S and streamable from the Xbox Cloud Gaming platform, if you find your PC isn't up to the task.
