A couple of days ago, we informed you about some bizarre CPU utilization we witnessed in the PC demo of Forza Motorsport 7. And while some claimed that we were a bit hasty about our observations – as this is a demo – it appears that we were right. Turn10’s Evan Bolin has confirmed that the game is intentionally maxing out one CPU core.

As Evan claimed, the game is using 100% of one CPU core and that is an expected behaviour.

“Some users may notice that the game utilizes nearly 100% of one of their processor cores. This is expected behavior; we intentionally run in this manner so we can react as fast as possible in order to minimize input latency. Users on power-constrained devices, such as laptops and tablets, might want to use a Performance Target of “30 FPS (V-SYNC),” which will reduce processor usage and minimize power consumption.”

Now the problem with Forza Motorsport 7 is that there is noticeable stuttering in the menus, and occasional (though not as frequent on our i7 CPU) stuttering while playing. Not only that, but it feels really weird witnessing a game that does not scale great on more than two CPU cores.

Furthermore, this similar issue was present in Forza Horizon 3. However, Turn10 worked with Playground Games and released a patch that fixed the awful multi-threading CPU scaling.

Since Turn10 acknowledged this issue, it’s pretty safe to say that the final build will behave similarly to the demo. The good news here is that the demo was running with constant 60fps on our PC test system, despite the fact that only two of our CPU cores were maxed out.

Whether Turn10 will release a patch in order to offer better CPU multi-threading capabilities remains to be seen!

UPDATE:

Microsoft PR told WCCFTech that Forza Motorsport 7 is not limited to running on one core, and that the game can use as many cores as are available. Do note that we never claimed that the game does not scale on more than one or two CPU cores.

“Forza Motorsport 7 is not limited to running on one core. There seems to have been a miscommunication along the way. “Forza Motorsport 7” uses as many cores as are available on whatever system it runs on, whether that is a 4- to 16-core PC or the 7 cores available on Xbox One.”

However, and as we have already showcased, it’s a fact that the game maxes out one or two CPU cores. As such, and despite MS’ claims, this will undoubtedly lead to CPU bottlenecks due to this awkward behaviour (which obviously can be resolved by implementing better multi-threading functionalities). After all, this exact thing happened with Forza Horizon 3 (though the CPU limitations in that particular game affected even those with high-end CPUs, not just those with low-end CPUs).