Good games to test a new rig (new rig operative! giveaway added)

Thanks for the GA!

Crysis

maybe W3 in 1440p, that's pretty demanding

and The Division has a free weekend running, maybe that

I think dishonored 2 has a demo, and the game isn't very well optimized, so that might be a good option.

Also... Suck it up and buy witcher 3.... Aside from being a great benchmark test, it's a phenomenal game and well worth owning! :D

I played ABZU and RYSE last month and both are beautiful and worth to play:) But this games are best when you connect your PC to big TV screen and play on pad controler.
Good luck with testing:)
As SHIV highly recommend Witcher 3 it is one of the best game I ever played;)

GTA V
Witcher 3
Metro games (yes, still)
Arkham Knight

I would recommend BF1 that afaik is one of the most demanding game (on maxed settings)
Or if you dare challenging the bad developers, try CTU, that is poorly coded and could freeze also on a 1080!

benchmark tools (i.e. RE6)

Since you included benchmark tools, I guess FurMark and 3DMark ^^ 👀

Minecraft.

If you have Skyrim, try those Skyrim with enb + ultra mods
http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrim.html

Grey Goo

shit optimization. Will push your CPU and GPU

I think one of the Crysis games was famous for being taxing on the PC ...

ABZU is a bit of a bitch and Doom runs well even on a 486. ;) Tomb Raider should be able to make your new baby sweat.

bump

The new Unreal Tournament is free which you could test.

Or Star Citizen, if you catch one of the temporary free trials.

Mafia 3 (Demo)

Project CARS and Alien Isolation... Mortal Kombat is bad optimiced. Also i would try Doom demo.

Cities skylines, planet coaster, arma 3 are very demanding games. Also flight simulators.

And just for the fun - cityconomy, that game runs worse than witcher 3 on maxed settings lol

Bump =)

I think the most demanding AND fun might be:

1. Batman: Arkham Knight
2. Doom (demo, try buying it on sale tho)
3. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux

I aimed to build my first desktop last december, however I was disencouraged to invest around $1.5K for a gaming machine... by the end of January I changed strategy, I started buying budget pieces on sale and now I'm only missing RAM for a $600 rig with an RX 470, I hope that next month I will build it and test it out with Witcher 2+3, Xcom 2, Doom, Wolfenstein and a couple of other backlogged games of mine.

What's your CPU-GPU combo? :D

Skyrim with lots of massive graphic overhauls? 2k to 4k textures should be a nice test.
EDIT: Sorry, should have searched thread for "Skyrim" before I recommended it.

I know that you don't want to buy new games only to do some benchmarks, but maybe you should consider a month of Origin Access. It's great value for money and has plenty of games suitable for testing new hardware: SW Battlefront, Crysis 3, Titanfall, Battlefield Hardline, Dragon Age Inquisition and 10hrs trials of Battlefield 1 & ME Andromeda.

EDIT:
And from your library: Bioshock Infinite, Remember Me, Thief, DMC, GRID 2, Far Cry 3, Metro 2033 & LL

Bump. Thanks for the ga + this topic.
Bought myself a brandnew pc earlier this week. :)

FWIW, The Talos Principle ran well on my current seven-year-old computer with a GTX 260 card in it. (It even runs... well... it runs on my mini Linux computer that doesn't have a dedicated graphics card. But it doesn't run all that well.) Tomb Raider also ran very well on the 260.

I finally upgraded to a GTX 750 TI semi-recently and ABZU and DOOM both run very well on that, with no other changes. DOOM sometimes takes some time to load, and has occasional lag only on very large maps, but otherwise looks amazing and runs smoothly. i.e. although it looks awesome, it's running great on my (relatively) potato computer, and might not be the best benchmark for gauging whether or not other games will work -- DOOM is extremely well-optimized by its dev team, imho. I'm still on a Core 2 Duo (3.0 GHz), but have 8 GB of RAM installed (this helps a lot for many games), and am running 64-bit Win 7. (It was impossible to run it at all on the 260 due to not having the DX shader levels it required.)

I still haven't tried it again since the game's launch, but ARMA 3 ran terribly on the old graphics card -- almost playable, but not really. (ARMA 2 was fine.) It might be a good test.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is also practically (seriously) unplayable on my mini Linux computer, but I saw a significant performance improvement on that one when upgrading the graphics card on my 7-year-old computer. So that could be another good benchmark.
Ditto +1 to Skyrim (although when I doubled RAM up to 8 GB from 4 is when I really saw a significant difference there, in load times).

I haven't tried the others on your list (yet...).

Only one I can think of not already mentioned might be FINAL FANTASY XIV: Stormblood Benchmark