One of the happiest days is when you press the on button to your new beast of a PC. It turned up only hours earlier, and as electricity breathes life into it, the months of saving and dreams of running the latest games have finally collided. Not moving a muscle, you wait as the bios gives way to the operating system, all the while thinking to yourself, this is so much faster than my last PC.
You turn to your real/virtual shelf of games and ponder, what on earth is going to be the best game to showcase the abilities of my new machine? Well I am going to suggest 5 great games to take the virginity of your PC with, but like all Up For Debates, I want you guys to get involved with your suggestions. Then hopefully we will have an awesome list of first games to play on your new machine. Games that can benchmark your new PC, while simultaneously have you stare on in wonder at the impressive visuals your new gaming computer can deliver.
To clarify on the title of this article, these games are not necessarily games that have released in 2015, but games that are great benchmark showcases today for your brand new gaming rig. Of course the game has to also have already released.
I am looking for games that look gorgeous, push the performance of your hardware, but dont leave you depressed that you have just bought a rig that cant even play a game that has already released. That last bit is hopefully unlikely but can happen with games like, Assassins Creed Unity, when it released.
Feel free to put these in your own order by voting at the bottom, but I am going to list these benchmark showcase games from 5th, through to my 1st choice and favourite.
5th: Assetto Corsa - I am starting the list off with a racing sim. Lovingly recreating the world of racing and every inch of a track, these types of games will bring real life gaming directly into your new rig. With numerous graphics settings, Assetto will help you appreciate your new PC.
4th: Total War: Attila - The latest version of the Total War series, Attila, has some significant visual enhancements over its predecessors. Zooming about a battlefield and swooping down amongst the hundreds of life like models, as they clash with the enemy on the defended settlement ramparts, will certainly test your hardware. These PC only titles will make you pleased you have a modern PC.
3rd: Dying Light - Fast paced, first world parkour across a well designed and visually impressive city. The point of view is personal, offering you and your new PC an awesome experience.
2nd: Far Cry 4 - An amazing open world, with stunning environments and scenery. When you climb to the top of a tower and have all the graphics options ramped up to max, Far Cry 4 is a wonderful visual experience. Its also a great fun game that you can pick up and play. Flying or driving, hunting or swimming, Far Cry 4 is a splendid candidate for first game on your PC.
1st: Shadow of Mordor - This is a great game and puts almost daft VRAM requirements onto your graphics card. You can turn the game up to Ultra only if you have 6GB VRAM. Either way, a very enjoyable game, with great looking visuals and some highly customisable graphics settings. So you can adjust to suit your new PC performance and still get a wonderful experience. SoM was our game of the year in 2014 and so we urge you to try this regardless of you having a new PC or not.
Other titles worth mentioning are the classic benchmark games from the recent past. Battlefield 4 & Crysis 3 are both beautiful by today's standards and set the visual benchmark when they released.
If you want to view your frames per second while playing your new games then there are third party software that you can run while playing your games. FRAPS is the usual one, but there are other options as well.
Please also remember to submit your latest frames per second results to GD on a game's rating page, once you have played it.
Quick side note: Take GD with you when you visit Youtube or wherever else you happen to travel, with our
So there we go. I want you guys to share your suggestions below. What games would you put into your brand new PC? A game that you feel best highlights the strengths of your new hardware, while displaying a veritable treat for the eyes.
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First game I tested with my GPU was Far Cry 4 - coz I got it free with the graphics card - then Shadow of Mordor after :-D awesome looking games :-D
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I got Crysis 3 with my GFX (never settle forever) so that was, of course, the first game I tested. I wrote a blog about how it performed.
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NEVER SETTLE FOREVER SPACEEEEEEEE
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Crysis 3 is very well done for PC, I was also surprised I didn't lag on my old rig. This is one thing I will never understand that if you can run games like Crysis with such graphics on a bad computer, why do we have bad lags on other games
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Crytek has always loved PC gamers... Other publishers on the other hand, make games that run like crap even on consoles (WD and ACU) and their PC ports are halfhearted... Basically, they release games that are unfinished at launch (BF4, WD, ACU) while Crytek takes care to polish everything...
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Watchdogs runs like crap even on my 970. It doesn't matter if you play on med or high setting there's stutter throughout the gameplay and frame-rates are very inconsistent. One moment it's over 70fps, just when you move the character or camera a bit the next second it drops to mid 40s from 70s. And that happens all the time. I don't see these issues with games like Crysis 3 and others. Even AC Unity on Ultra high/FXAA runs around 60fps consistently, far better than WD.
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Haha, on the same PC which ran Crysis 3 flawlessly, GTA IV was horribly ported and I had lags are terrible settings. It was awful. CD Project and Crytek are my two facourite stuiods, they care about their gamers. I'm sure there are others, but these are two good ones.
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I also did my first benchmark with Crysis 3 :D
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My first game on my rig was Murdered:Soul Suspect and it run like 60fps all maxed out I am really not far away of choosing a new GPU for my PC really it all depends if they release them
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I would suggest to wait for better hardware and keep this GPU for a while. 270X is a great card and you can always overclock it. Also, cheaper and better hardware always keeps coming out :P
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I meant to say upgrading it to the R9 380
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After I got this laptop, I installed and tested all the Crysis series games... I also made a blog about it... I was surprised that Crysis 3 actually ran with playable frame rates on HD 4000...
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that tells you so much about Crytek's optimization abilities.
Ubi... you listening?
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Just got a new CPU, so I've been using Far Cry 4 as one of my benchmarks. Its pretty good, but games like The Witcher 3 and Batman that come out later this year will be the better benchmarks.
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played FC4 and SoM, neither were something groundbreaking,
checked Asseto Corsa gameplay videos and it looks boring, I believe driving and vehicle behaviour may be realistic but I'm not into so hardcore driving, rather arcade racing,
for me Age of Empires III and The Witcher II are games to test at first usually,
as far as I can say AoE on SSD doesn't feel anyhow quicker xD
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Farcry 4 is horribly optimized, atleast on my rig. Stutters like there was no tomorrow, same goes for Advanced Warfare. I'd say Shadow of Mordor is a nice game to test, its good looking and well optimized. I'd test Crysis 3 after.
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I had awful stuttering with Advanced Warfare on my 2GB 770, I turned textures down to medium and it ran fine after that. Textures looked a bit yuck but it was worth it becuase it wasn't freezing and crapping itself the whole time!
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I don't agree with this list at all, tw:attila and far cry 4 are very badly optimised and won't represent your rigs power. E.g. crysis3 runs at 50 fps ultra 4xmsaa but far cry 4 runs only 35-45 fps at ultra with just 2xmsaa.
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Which one looks better? I'd say crysis 3
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I've always wanted to try Far Cry 4 on my pc. Buying that and GTA 5 soon
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With all it's settings at max Far Cry 4 is the best looking first person game I've ever seen, I'd say a good margin ahead of even Crysis 3 and if you get the same experience as me then it'll run just as well as crysis 3 too. It's a fun game too, I'm sure your rig will handle it brilliantly :-)
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My CPU isn't powerful enough for the games coming out now so what do you think I should get to replace it?
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You CPU isn't powerfull enough???
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there is some games even my CPU is limiting performance. :P like Total War series. it's because of ancient engine not supporting more than 2 cores. :/
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He was plain stupid, he never specify hungry games, he say coming games in general, all of them.
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Even if your CPU is not powerful enough and sometimes limits your performance, Difference won't be that big. Your CPU is still strong enough. So save your money
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replace your glasses,first of all :)
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Not powerful enough? What games are you playing?
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You deserve all that downvotes:
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Saying your CPU is not good enough for coming games, IN GENERAL, is plain stupid.
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At least specify the reference games
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When I bought my laptop I started with Battlefield 4 since that was the most intensive game I had which could barely run on my previous pc, later when I got some more money I decided to play shadow of mordor.
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my first was (Of course) Skyrim + mods&ENB...at the beginning I bought my rig just for playing it, because with my previus machine I reached 30fps with the help of many Saints :)
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First gaming I tested was Crysis 3 at 1440p :D
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I'd add star citizen if I could :) even the alpha (arena commander) looks better than anything else out there, and pretty demanding. (I can run it on low thanks to my budget GPU)
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Well, I'm about two weeks away from a total system upgrade. After many months of saving and some help with this years income tax I will be upgrading to an Devils Canyon i5 4690K paired with an ASUS Sabertooth Mark2 Z97! And finally a Creative SoundBlaster Z sound card...The first game I will play is BF4 to see how it performs then I usually do a few runs of futuremark to test stability while overclocking. I will be running my devil@4.5GHz tho I will try for 5GHz...
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I don't think 2500k >> 4690k is worth that much money to be honest.
If you want better gaming performance upgrade your GTX760 to somehting like GTX970
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I kind of agree but I have my old parts sold off to a friend of mine to off-set the cost. So I get a slight upgrade and he finally gets to try Intel out and get away from AMD...
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Oh ya and mark I thought about a better video card but honestly I'm limited to 1080P due to my max res on my monitor. So a 970 over a 760 in 1080P seems like a huge waste to me. Both cards are still going to give me HQ 60+ FPS in 1080P right? Unless I can convince the ol' lady to let me upgrade my monitor! lol
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I replaced my 570 with a 970 installed the os on a ssd i can say for a fact the 2500K is a beast ultra/60fps@1080p i just game so ill probably use it until it burns out.
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Great CPU! I bought mine back in 2012 and runs like a champ...
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When i bought my new card, i tested it with AC:U.
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Same, if you can run that .... you know you're good haha :)
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Oh yeah, we bought our card almost at the same time :))
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I remember I started TW:Rome2 as first game I got my current rig built...I wasn't so happy as fps issues was still present :D but then I launched WarThunder...maxed settings @1080p and still got 140-200 fps in planes and 50-60 in tanks without V-Sync. that was...satisfying :P with my old PC I got only 14fps with low in tanks @760p
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1st.When i bought this rig i first tested SoM. It was awesome game.