AMD Radeon RX 400 and 500 series GPUs might not be able to run Forspoken

AMD Radeon RX 400 and 500 series GPUs are not new by any means. They've been available for over five years and have done a terrific job for many users who still rely on them to this day. However, the release of Forspoken might suggest the end for these GPUs is near, as none of them can run Square Enix's new action-adventure title.

As brought to our attention by a Reddit user named xCuri0, the AMD Polaris-based Radeon RX 400 and 500 series GPUs can't run Forspoken. However, the Nvidia 900 series graphics cards, which are now nine years old, can. Although the two Nvidia and AMD series support DirectX 12, they do it on different feature levels.

Polaris GPUs are unable to run Forspoken due to lack of DirectX 12_1 support while Nvidia 900 series support 12_2 and are able to run it. from Amd

Contrary to Radeon Polaris/GCN4 GPUs, Nvidia Maxwell (most 2nd gen GPUs) can run games built using DX12_1 (feature level 1). On the other hand, Radeon Polaris cards are limited to titles based on DX12_0. The difference between the two feature levels lies in the ability of the former to raster order views and conservative rasterisation. That means Forspoken was probably built using one of these or both simultaneously.

One should note that older games like Metro Exodus Enhanced require the GPU to support the DX12_2 version. As such, only Nvidia Turing, Ampere, and Ada, AMD RDNA2 and RDNA3, and Intel Xe-HPG GPUs can run it.

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KitGuru says: Considering how Forspoken runs on high-end PCs, even if the RX 400 and 500 series GPUs could run it, the gameplay experience would most likely be rough.

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