Back then, no technology was too great or too poor for the benchmark of benchmarks for PC gaming. Whether it was chips for supercomputers or tiny chips, the first question was always, “Can it run Crysis?”.
That game has “killed” many graphics cards for years after its release. However, the graphical technologies that the game once boasted have now been overshadowed by newer technologies. The latest games today are more hardware-intensive than the Crysis of yesteryear.
However, the question that needs to be asked is: which game is the most hardware-demanding, and will continue to be hardware-intensive years after its release like its predecessor Crysis did?
Microsoft Flight Simulator
The first candidate is Microsoft Flight Simulator. This game, the most realistic simulation of the real world, is always ready to gobble up more graphics cards. And here is the recommended configuration published by Microsoft
CPU: Ryzen 7 Pro 2700X / Intel i7 9800X GPU: Radeon VII / Nvidia RTX 2080 VRAM: 8GB RAM: 32GB HDD: 150GB (SSD recommended) Bandwidth: 50 Mbps
The minimum configuration for the game isn’t anything terrifying, but Crysis was once the same. It was famous for the differences between low, medium, and high graphics settings.
In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the difference likely lies in the volume of clouds. With each additional cloud, the GPU must calculate more directions that light will move. All of this happens in real-time and, of course, will consume a lot of hardware.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus was released last year, but it still makes this list because this game dares to do what few others do: a hardware-demanding graphics setting. The Extreme setting is what the game developers want their game to display in an ideal world. A world where graphics cards are cheap and available everywhere, unlike the grim world we live in where the $2499 RTX Titan can only run the game sluggishly.
The Extreme setting is a “dinosaur” combination of graphic options: 200% shading rate, high-quality textures, detailed shadows, Nvidia’s exclusive Hairwork and PhysX technology, Ray Tracing for all lighting and reflective surfaces added in the Two Colonels DLC. Forget about being playable; even the RTX Titan only averages 59 fps and drops to 38 fps minimum at 1080p.
Crysis Remastered
The successor to Crysis should probably be Crysis itself, right? This time Crytek is not holding back, unleashing everything: ray tracing, high-resolution textures, particle effects, thicker fog,… These features are certainly beyond the capabilities of the best cards from 2007, but what about compared to this year’s cards? Let’s wait and see.
Cyberpunk 2077
A forthcoming title from the same developers of Witcher 3 – CD Projekt Red. This open-world game has so many neon lights and reflective surfaces that it will drain your machine if you dare to enable Ray Tracing. However, there is still no official configuration available, but it certainly won’t be a wallet-friendly setup for gamers. If you want to estimate what budget you need to prepare, we also have a gaming configuration article for Cyberpunk 2077.
Source: PCGamer.com translated by HNC