How To Fix Forza Horizon 5 FPS Drops, Stuttering, and Lagging on PC in 2024

Forza Horizon 5, the highly acclaimed racing game, has captivated players with its stunning visuals and immersive open-world experience. However, a number of PC gamers have reported encountering frustrating performance issues such as FH5 FPS drops, stuttering, and lagging during gameplay.

Users across various the web have shared concerns that their gameplay sessions are being marred by sudden drops in frame rates, disruptive stutters, and unexplained lags, despite running the game on well-configured systems.

In this article, we will explain the tested solutions to fix Forza Horizon 5 FPS drops, stuttering, and lagging on PC. Apply these solutions to ensure a smoother and more enjoyable gaming experience on PC.

How To Fix Forza Horizon 5 FPS Drops, Stuttering, Lagging on PC

Some of these fixes will surely help you.

1. Memory Leak and Restarting the Game

Monitor your system’s resource usage while playing FH5. If you notice a gradual increase in memory usage over time, it could indicate a memory leak.

Restarting the game periodically can help alleviate this issue temporarily. Check for game updates or patches that might address memory management problems.

2. Disable the Resizable Bar in BIOS/UEFI

Resizable Bar is a feature that allows the CPU to access the entire GPU frame buffer, potentially improving performance. However, in some cases, it might cause issues.

To disable Resizable Bar, access your BIOS/UEFI settings during the system startup (usually by pressing Del, F2, or another key as indicated on your screen), navigate to the advanced settings, and look for the Resizable Bar option.

Disable it and save changes.

3. Update Graphics Card Driver

Most of the time Forza Horizon 5 FPS drop occurs because of an outdated graphics driver installed on your PC. Make sure you have updated your GPU drivers to their latest version.

NVIDIA and AMD do release game-specific updates that you can download and install on your PC but it takes time.

Especially, if you are a newbie or you don’t have time or skills then there are chances that you might end up installing the wrong graphics drivers.

So we recommend downloading Driver Easy software on your PC. This program is a professional system driver updater that automatically scans a PC’s old driver and updates it instantly.

We have personally used this tool on our Windows 11 PC. The most favorite part is its outstanding scanning feature. You can instantly know which PC part needs to be updated.

The Driver Easy is an N0.1 software updater tool in its field with a mega database of more than 600000 drivers. Users have been using this tool for the last 12 years to fix their PC errors.

So download Driver Easy and let it deal with all the system drivers.

4. Check Xbox One Controller Connection

Ensure that your Xbox One controller has a stable and strong Bluetooth connection with your PC. If you experience lag or frame spikes, try keeping the controller within a reasonable range of the Bluetooth receiver to avoid interference.

Additionally, consider updating the controller firmware through the Xbox Accessories app.

5. Optimize Game Settings

Adjust in-game settings to find the optimal balance between visual quality and performance.

Lowering graphical settings, and resolution, or turning off specific features like shadows, anti-aliasing, or depth of field can significantly impact performance.

Test different combinations to find what works best for your system.

Open Forza Horizon
Go to Settings then Graphics
Turn off Night Shadows
Set Shadow Quality to Low
Turn off MSAA
Turn off FXAA
Set Reflection Quality to Low
Set World Car Level of Detail to Low

6. Play FH5 Offline Mode

Playing in offline mode can reduce the impact of server-related issues on performance. If you primarily experience problems during online play, switching to offline mode might provide a smoother experience.

Keep in mind that certain online features may be unavailable in offline mode.

7. Disable Windows Variable Refresh Rate

Variable refresh rates can sometimes lead to performance inconsistencies, and turning it off may stabilize frame rates.

For Windows 11 users, navigate to the graphics settings (Settings > System > Display > Advanced display settings > Graphics settings) and ensure that the variable refresh rate setting is disabled.

8. Lower ‘Deformable Terrain Quality’ FH5 Setting

Another solution is to lower the ‘Deformable Terrain Quality’ setting in the game.

This can be accessed in the graphics or advanced settings of the game options. Lowering this setting from ‘Extreme’ to ‘Ultra’ or another level seems to resolve the FPS drop issue in the sand areas.

9. Check CPU Bottleneck

The Horza Horizon FPS drop in the sand areas might be due to a CPU bottleneck, especially when using the ‘Extreme’ setting for ‘Deformable Terrain Quality.’ Lowering this setting can alleviate the workload on the CPU and improve GPU utilization.

10. Roll Back NVIDIA Graphics Drivers

Some users reported that the issue may be related to the latest NVIDIA graphics drivers. Rolling back to a previous driver version, such as 531.29, has been mentioned as a potential workaround. To do this, uninstall the current graphics driver using a tool like DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) and then install the older driver version.

11. Disable ‘RT Reflections’ or Set it to Lower Quality

Players have also reported Forza Horizon stuttering when entering photo mode during a race. It is due to the ‘RT Reflections’ setting.

Users suggest either disabling ‘RT Reflections’ or setting it to a lower quality level (e.g., from ‘Extreme’ to ‘High’) to avoid framerate dop and performance issues.

12. Disable Third-Party Overlay

Disable overlays from third-party applications, especially GeForce Overlay. Some overlays can interfere with in-game performance and cause crashes.

Steam, Discord, and GeForce have overlay feature that enhances the game’s performance. At the same time, overlays can interfere with in-game performance and stuttering and lagging issues.

If you have activated the overlay feature then disable it and then play the game. Those who are using MSI overlay should also disable it.