NACON has released the latest installment in the Test Drive series: Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. Powered by the KT Engine, it's now time to benchmark it and test its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB DDR5 at 6000MHz, AMD's Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA's GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 560.94, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 drivers. In addition, we disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
KT Racing has added many graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of textures, lighting, shadows, global illumination, and more. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 3 with Frame Generation. Unfortunately, however, there is no support for AMD FSR 3.0. Instead, the game uses AMD FSR 2. This is a bummer because those who don't have an RTX GPU won't be able to use FG to improve their performance.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown doesn't have a built-in benchmark tool, so we used the game's starting area for our CPU and GPU benchmarks. This seems to be the most demanding area early in the game, so it should give us a pretty good idea of overall performance.
To see how the game runs on different CPU types, we simulated dual-core, quad-core, and hexa-core CPUs. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was completely unplayable on our dual-core PC system, so you'll need at least a modern quad-core CPU. Ideally, this CPU should support SMT/Hyper-Threading.
It's also worth noting that this game is one of the few that gets major benefits from SMT/Hyper-Threading. Check out the minimum frame rates on our 7950X3D (with all eight cores enabled). Thanks to SMT, we saw an 18% performance increase in minimum frame rates, so be sure to enable it for this title.
To reach 60 fps at 1080p/Ultra settings, you need a really powerful GPU. Even our NVIDIA RTX3080 couldn't offer 60 fps at this FullHD resolution. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT, on the other hand, was able to reach 60 fps at all times. The game seems to favor AMD's GPUs over NVIDIA's GPUs. After all, the gap between the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the NVIDIA RTX 4090 in this title is not that big.
At 1440p/Ultra settings, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and NVIDIA RTX 4090 were the only GPUs that could deliver a smooth gaming experience. And as for native 4K/Ultra settings, there is currently no GPU that can deliver a 60 fps experience.
The good news is that the game can be downscaled via the graphics settings. At native 4K with high settings, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 was able to hit 60 fps at all times. And if you don't want to lower your settings on such a high-quality GPU, you can enable DLSS 3 frame generation. As I've previously reported, the DLSS 3 implementation in this title is great.
Graphically, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown looks good. Its biggest feature at Ultra settings is its amazing LOD. Object and texture pop-in is kept to a minimum, which can result in a smoother and more coherent image. The cars also look detailed, and your headlights cast shadows on all objects. The textures of the environments could have looked better, however (as you will easily spot some low-res textures). The game's default AA solution is also terrible (and you'll need DLAA to smooth out many of the aliased edges). Overall, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown isn't a bad game. However, it doesn't really seem to justify its huge GPU demands at Ultra settings.
All in all, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a mixed bag. It's not the worst optimized PC game, but it doesn't come close to Forza Horizon 5 either. I'd also say it feels better than The Crew Motorfest. While The Crew Motorfest runs at 60fps at native 4K/Ultra on the NVIDIA RTX 4090, it lacks many of the PC features that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown supports. Not only that, but TDUSC has an unlocked framerate. It also has a MUCH BETTER draw distance. Oh, and we didn't experience any major stuttering while playing. And while there's room for improvement here, it's nowhere near as good as you might have initially thought. It's fine. Not great, but not terrible either!
John is the founder and editor-in-chief of DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fanatic and is a huge supporter of the modding and indie communities. Before founding DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. Although he is a diehard PC gamer, his gaming roots lie on consoles. John loved – and still loves – the 16-bit consoles and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. However, the PC platform won him over consoles. This was mainly due to 3DFX and its legendary dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on “The Evolution of PC Graphics Cards”.
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