10 best games for benchmarking a gaming PC

Summary

• Gaming PCs are specifically designed for rendering video game graphics at playable framerates, unlike general use PCs.
• Benchmarking PC performance in games is crucial due to variations in PC builds; use recommended games to assess capabilities.
• Top game titles like Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Red Dead Redemption 2 are excellent benchmarks for PC performance.

Every computer runs on the same basic components, including a CPU, a GPU, RAM, and others. However, gaming computers generally utilize stronger parts in order to render video game graphics at playable framerates. That’s not to say you can’t play games on general use PCs, just that gaming PCs are more suited to the task – and less likely to catch on fire when you max out settings.

Since PC builds vary wildly between model and manufacturer, it’s downright impossible to determine how components will fare when you play a game, even when publishers provide minimum and recommended specs. Nine times out of ten, you can only reliably measure your PC’s graphical performance by putting it through the ringer to benchmark it. Plenty of games out there can help you gauge your computer’s capabilities, but here are the ten that we recommend, at least as of 2024.

10 Baldur’s Gate 3

Roll to see if your computer doesn’t explode

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the best RPG of 2023, if not the best game of 2023, as demonstrated by its numerous awards. The title faithfully translates the current Dungeons & Dragons ruleset into video game format and gives players a beautifully realized world full of memorable characters to befriend and betray. Quite frankly, Baldur’s Gate 3 offers so much content that it would be worth playing even if it weren’t a reliable benchmark.

While many isometric games are easy to run, Baldur’s Gate 3 is an exception. The developer, Larian Studio, recommends an Nvidia 2060 Super or an AMD RX 5700 XT. These GPUs should work in most situations, but the game world can get pretty crowded pretty fast, which will tank most systems. However, the true benchmark test doesn’t start until you take advantage of the game’s robust element system and create a chain reaction of exploding barrels. How long will your GPU last until the framerate bottoms out to the single digits?

9 Cyberpunk 2077

Wake up. You’ve got a city to burn in 4K.

Cyberpunk 2077 has quite the impressive redemption arc. When the game initially released, it was a buggy mess, but now you can experience the world the way CD Projekt RED initially intended. In Cyberpunk 2077, players are free to make the street samurai of their dreams. Are they masters of manipulation via hacking, or do they prefer to get up close and personal with shotguns and cybernetically-augmented arms? That freedom to make yourself a legend however you see fit defines the Cyberpunk 2077 experience.

The majority of Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in Night City, a bustling metropolis full of tiny details. In order to make the world shine, CD Projekt RED recommends at least an NVIDIA RTX 2060 Super or a Radeon RX 5700 XT. But if you want to see every bit of chrome shine, you’re going to need to turn on ray tracing. For that, you will need an RTX 3080Ti or an RX 7900 XTX at minimum. While you can always turn down Cyberpunk 2077’s graphics to get a stable framerate, challenging your PC to run smoothly without missing the game’s gorgeous visuals will surely test its capabilities.

8 Alan Wake 2

You too would be scared of the dark if you had to face it at 60 FPS and with ray tracing

Alan Wake 2 is the latest title by Remedy Entertainment. The game continues the saga of the titular Alan Wake and his fight against an unknowable, eldritch entity. This time, he is joined (kinda) by FBI agent Saga Anderson. While gameplay dives much further into the survival horror genre than the first Alan Wake game, it doesn’t abandon any of the David Lynchian Twin Peaks-style weirdness that permeated the original.

Out of all the games you can use to benchmark a PC, Alan Wake 2 is currently one of the most demanding. Remedy recommends an NVIDIA RTX 3060 or a Radeon RX 6600 XT, but that is just the tip of the iceberg thanks to ray tracing and other post-processing tricks. If you want to play the game as intended, you need an RTX 4070 at minimum. Should your gaming PC match or exceed that benchmark, the result will be nothing short of photorealism at 60 FPS.

7 Red Dead Redemption 2

Home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play in 4K.

Rockstar Games is essentially the king of open world titles, and for the time being, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the company’s crowning achievement. The game acts as a prequel to the original Red Dead Redemption and follows Arthur Morgan as he tries to survive a Wild West that is becoming a lot less, well, wild. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the definitive cowboy life simulator, as players can freely roam a vast world teeming with characters and wildlife. Rockstar put so many tiny details into the game that you could cut out half of them and still have more than most open world titles.

To call Red Dead Redemption 2 “beautiful” would be an understatement; the game is nothing less than art in motion. Textures are crisp, and the lighting and physics systems stand above most other video games, open world or otherwise. Confusingly, the recommended and minimum system requirements are fairly low: NVIDIA GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480. This is because playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on its minimum settings would be an injustice. You need to push your system to its limits to truly appreciate the world Rockstar crafted.

6 Elden Ring

Don’t let low framerates or graphics settings tarnish your experience

Elden Ring is the latest masterpiece by FromSoftware, the studio that effectively invented the soulsborne genre. Like its preceding Dark Souls franchise, Elden Ring is all about overcoming crushingly impossible odds through repetition, experimentation, and friendship (i.e., summoning allies to gang up on enemies). Even though Elden Ring is the company’s first open world title, FromSoft crushed it by creating a gorgeous world begging to be explored.

While the meat of Elden Ring lies in its combat, the game is full of jaw-dropping vistas and imaginative locales. FromSoftware recommends an NVIDIA GTX 1070 or an AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, which don’t sound like much. However, while these specs seem low compared to many other games on this list, they hide the true challenge: maximizing graphics while maintaining framerates. Elden Ring is challenging enough as it is when the game looks its best, and you don't want to sacrifice that visual quality and smoothness.

5 Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade

Midgard never looked this beautiful on the PlayStation

Audiences have wanted a Final Fantasy VII remake ever since Square Enix and Sony teased the concept on the PlayStation 3. While the companies finally made these dreams come true in 2020, PC audiences had to wait a year-and-a-half to play the game. Final Fantasy VII Remake stars the same cast as the original Final Fantasy VII, only this time the action unfolds in real time. Moreover, the narrative diverges in significant ways and weaves those changes into a clever metanarrative.

Technically speaking, you can’t play Final Fantasy VII Remake on PC, but you can play its upgraded version, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. Not only does this version add more story content, but it also improves the lighting, resolution, and particle effects by leaps and bounds. Players who want to meet or exceed the graphical fidelity of the PlayStation 5 version need at least an NVIDIA GTX 1080 or an AMD Radeon RX 5700. While the PC port isn’t as optimized as the PlayStation 5 original, you can benchmark your computer by seeing if it can diminish or even eliminate stuttering with sheer GPU brute force. If you can, you will probably be able to play the upcoming PC ports of Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth no problem.

4 Resident Evil 4

Everyone’s filling out their “how to make a remake in 60 FPS” bingo cards

The Resident Evil 4 remake is, as its name suggests, a remake of the seminal Nintendo GameCube classic of the same name. The game still follows Leon on a mission to rescue the president’s daughter from a village cult enslaved to mind-controlling parasites, but this time with vastly superior graphics and controls. The remake’s enemies and locations have received new life thanks to the RE Engine, and the ability to actually move while aiming is the difference between night and day. Resident Evil 4 is a case study on how to properly remake a game, and its use as a benchmarking tool only increases its value.

Since the Resident Evil 4 Remake runs on the same engine that powered Resident Evil 7 and Village, you need a somewhat beefy computer if you plan on cranking the graphics (and scares) to the max. Capcom recommends an NVIDIA GTX 1070 or an AMD Radeon RX 5700. However, that is without ray tracing. Once you flip on that setting, you will need an RTX 3060, RX 6700 XT, or greater to play the game with decent framerates (via TechPowerUp). If your computer can survive countless waves of Ganados and their shapeshifting heads while rendering ray-traced puddles, it has passed the benchmark test.

3 Forza Horizon 5

Drive like there’s no tomorrow without 4K

Like the rest of the Forza Horizon franchise, Forza Horizon 5 is a racing simulator that focuses on (sometimes) realistic speed and physics within an open world setting. This entry takes players to a fictionalized representation of Mexico and boasts the largest map in the franchise to date. Not only are the racetracks varied and intricately detailed, but the game includes hundreds of cars to collect and customize.

Forza Horizon 5’s emphasis on realism extends to its graphics. The sun bounces off cars with realistic glare, and the skybox is a thing of beauty. However, you need quite the graphics processor under the hood to power these effects. The developer, Playground Games, recommend at least an NVIDIA GTX 1070 or an AMD RX 590. However, many players report that the game’s PC performance is inconsistent at best, so you will need a much beefier system if you don’t want to encounter any issues. The stronger your computer, the more likely it will pass any Forza Horizon 5 benchmarking test.

2 Star Wars Jedi Survivor

Play or play not at 60 FPS, there is no try

While Respawn Entertainment made a name for itself with the Titanfall franchise, specifically Titanfall 2 and its battle royale spinoff Apex Legends, the studio’s Star Wars Jedi series is just as good but for different reasons. The latest entry, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, continues the journey of one of the last surviving Jedi in the galaxy (pun definitely intended), Cal Kestis. Gameplay is a mix of souls-like action and tense parkour platforming that improves on what Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order started, and the characters are just as charming as ever.

While the combat and narrative of Star Wars Jedi Survivor are excellent, the game falls behind in PC performance. Simply put, the game isn’t optimized. EA and Respawn Entertainment recommend either an NVIDIA RTX 2070 or an AMD RX 6700 XT, but even with those GPUs, many players still report stuttering issues. On one hand, these performance problems have solidified Star Wars Jedi Survivor’s title as the worst PC port of 2023 (and 2024, since these issues are still prevalent). On the other hand, if your computer can brute force the game to perform with a minimum of stuttering, you have a beastly setup that won’t become obsolete anytime soon. Forcing a subpar port into submission is an unorthodox benchmark test, but it works.

1 Metro Exodus

Crawl out through the fallout on a ray-traced train

Metro Exodus is the third and currently final entry in the Metro franchise. Like the rest of the series, Exodus tells a gripping story of survival in a post-nuclear apocalypse Russia, but instead of taking place mostly in dark subway corridors, the game opens up and lets players explore the irradiated wasteland of the surface. Survival is still a key component to both the gameplay and narrative, but the new setting direction gives players more location variety than before.

When Metro Exodus initially launched, the game required an Nvidia GTX 1070 or AMD RX VEGA 56. However, in 2021, the developers, 4A Games, released an enhanced edition that supports ray tracing and global illumination. While these additions make the world shine like never before – and make indoor areas all the more terrifying – the developers recommend at least an NVIDIA RTX 2070 or an AMD RX 6700 XT to support them. And if you want to push the game engine as much as it can, you need an RTX 3080 or RX 6900. Or greater. You can use Metro Exodus as a benchmark to turn your computer into the little gaming PC that could.

Always be on the lookout for the next big AAA title

More often than not, AAA titles boast the most impressive graphics, which likewise require powerful graphics cards. If you need to benchmark your newest PC, use the latest hot AAA title, especially if it supports ray tracing. And if the PC port sucks, even better: Any opportunity that lets you try to solve performance issues with sheer brute component strength is a blessing in disguise. While the above games should keep your PC benchmarks busy for the next several years, always keep your ear to the ground for something new.