Most demanding game right now in 2023 ?

Alan Wake II has the highest system requirements I've seen:

aw2.png
 
zandor said:
Same game as always. Chess. Nobody throws super computers at CP2077 or Alan Wake or whatever, buy they build them to win at chess.
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I believe Chess was finally usurped, after 600 years, by Crysis 😉
 
Other than those already listed, Cities Skylines 2. But that's arguable as it's more or less a completely un-optimized piece of software.

Other than those, the first crop of UE5 games with path tracing are also starting to drop. And each of those titles has increasingly high system requirements.
 
From what I've played, Alan Wake 2. Most demanding, but certainly not graphics king. It's an extremely technically advanced game where you stare at drab environments, unimpressive character models, and a visual experience that somehow feels less than the sum of its parts. I predict that the game will undergo massive optimization updates similar to Cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk 2077 is also very demanding, but is a lot more impressive considering its open world. Certainly a contender for graphics king and a better balance of performance vs visual fidelity. But it took a long time for them to reach that point from launch.
 
I’d have to say most demanding game currently is Alan Wake 2. It even brings 4090s to its knees when you max out the visual settings. The fact that the game mandates some sort of upsampling should tell you have heavy it is. The game is really amazing to behold when you crank all the dials.
 
Alan Wake 2 kinda is, but you have to keep in mind how small the environments are. They look absolutely amazing, but you're exploring areas that make up like 3 city blocks. For something bigger, I'll toss out a recommendation for Hogwarts Legacy. When you crank the details on that game, the lighting and reflection effects look phenomenal. It's also gigantic, so it has a different vibe.
 
Domingo said:
Alan Wake 2 kinda is, but you have to keep in mind how small the environments are. They look absolutely amazing, but you're exploring areas that make up like 3 city blocks. For something bigger, I'll toss out a recommendation for Hogwarts Legacy. When you crank the details on that game, the lighting and reflection effects look phenomenal. It's also gigantic, so it has a different vibe.
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I’m sure they probably wanted to make them bigger but couldn’t because today’s highest end hardware can barely keep up with even the smaller environments. They are so richly detailed it’s ridiculous. The lightning and models used in the game are just insane. They are without question the new gold standard. Everything is cranked to 11.

I have all the latest games and while yes Hogwarts does look good it’s not even close to the level of detail AW2 went to. The lights, reflections, shadows, transparencies and model detail is just incredible.
 
Definitely Alan Wake 2 at the moment. I'm getting 37-40 fps on a 13900KS and 4090 with max settings no DLSS. With DLSS it jumps up to 60-70 fps at 4K. This at the beginning of the game in the forest area.
 
Kerby1280 said:
Definitely Alan Wake 2 at the moment. I'm getting 37-40 fps on a 13900KS and 4090 with max settings no DLSS.
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Just curious, but how do you counter that? Like what hardware would net you 70fps on ultra without hassle and no questions asked? Or we waiting for 5000series?
 
😏 Op, i think you already know the answer to that question. Unless you've been hibernating the last 8 weeks or so.
 
Alan Wake 2? I thought it was Cyberpunk? Wow, I'm way out of the loop...lol
 
Furious_Styles said:
Cyberpunk is several years old now. Amazing looking game for sure, but AW2 is UE5 and just released.
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AW2 is not a UE5 game. It's using a heavily modified North Light engine. North Light is Remedy's own in house engine and was used to similarly stunning effect with Control in 2019 pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible then too. Up till Control released, we were only seeing games use RT for either just reflections, shadows or global illumination. Control launched and combined all of them together and even added more RT effects on top of it.
Westwood said:
Just curious, but how do you counter that? Like what hardware would net you 70fps on ultra without hassle and no questions asked? Or we waiting for 5000series?
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We are definitely waiting for RTX 5000 series. I really think Nvidia needs to just pump up the RT core counts and truly embrace it. The RTX 4090 only has 128 RT cores, they need to really double or even triple that amount.
 
CraptacularOne said:
AW2 is not a UE5 game. It's using a heavily modified North Light engine. North Light is Remedy's own in house engine and was used to similarly stunning effect with Control in 2019 pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible then too. Up till Control released, we were only seeing games use RT for either just reflections, shadows or global illumination. Control launched and combined all of them together and even added more RT effects on top of it.

We are definitely waiting for RTX 5000 series. I really think Nvidia needs to just pump up the RT core counts and truly embrace it. The RTX 4090 only has 128 RT cores, they need to really double or even triple that amount.
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Man I read that last week but for some reason I still said it was UE5, no idea why. Probably because a bunch of recent releases are UE5.
 
Furious_Styles said:
Man I read that last week but for some reason I still said it was UE5, no idea why. Probably because a bunch of recent releases are UE5.
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Robocop Rogue City is a UE5 game and looks pretty good but only using software Lumen for some reason. The best looking game currently out using UE5 is probably Immortals of Aveum or honestly Fortnite if you crank up all the visuals. The problem with most currently released UE5 games is they either don't use any of the Lumen effects or use the software version of it and most don't use Nanite which is UE5's method similar to Mesh Shaders allowing for insane geometric detail.
 
CraptacularOne said:
Robocop Rogue City is a UE5 game and looks pretty good but only using software Lumen for some reason. The best looking game currently out using UE5 is probably Immortals of Aveum or honestly Fortnite if you crank up all the visuals. The problem with most currently released UE5 games is they either don't use any of the Lumen effects or use the software version of it and most don't use Nanite which is UE5's method similar to Mesh Shaders allowing for insane geometric detail.
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Yeah I played the robocop demo, didn't seem amazing or anything. Lords of the Fallen seemed to impress some.
 
Phantom Liberty at launch average under 20 fps with a 13900k/4090 with pathtracing on at 4k, while being a 3 years old launch that was working on a lot that can reach 90% cpu usage on 8 core...

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Unlike some other very hard to run title a la Starfield, this is one that it is impressive that it achieve to run as fast as 20 fps, that was deemed impossible to do and not for a long time not so long ago.

I can imagine City Skyline 2 having little limit how much it can demand of a system, specially over time with patch.
 
Westwood said:
Just curious, but how do you counter that? Like what hardware would net you 70fps on ultra without hassle and no questions asked? Or we waiting for 5000series?
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Set dlss quality and/or frame generation. Or turn down a few settings not even visible while playing for a huge boost with no real visual quality loss. I'd recommend dlss quality.
 
You can still bring anything out there to it's knees with KSP ;) 10+ yrs on and still making everything it's bitch
 
I dunno about Alan Wake 2 - but the new Ark release on unreal engine 5 is not only gorgeous, but is extremely taxing to run on even the best machines. My 7900xt is really putting up a fight to keep above 70 frames at 3440x1440p UWS on a custom high(not ultra) setting. That's after I had to turn the sky quality down a bit and some lighting. Game really hits hard with everything cranked. I was barely above 30 frames with all at max settings.

ARK: Survival Ascended Recommended Requirements
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X / Intel Core i5-10600K.
  • RAM: 32 GB.
  • VIDEO CARD: AMD Radeon RX 6800, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080.
  • DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 10240 MB.
  • PIXEL SHADER: 5.0.
  • VERTEX SHADER: 5.0.
  • OS: Windows 10/11 with updates.
  • FREE DISK SPACE: 70 GB.
 
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Alan Wake 2 seems like it doesn't scale down very well- ie you need a pretty decent rig to run it at all. And it can thrash a 4090.

And ofc Cyberpunk 2077 as mentioned. Cyb can actually run on a potato, but with Pathtracing enabled it'll demolish any GPU. Add in some high-rez textures and a traffic density mod and it's hands-down the most demanding game all-around. Modded Cyb will max out my OC 5950X such that I often get CPU-limited to <60fps with all 16 cores loaded up, and my 3090Ti can't even think about running Pathtracing at a decent resolution.
 
I don't know what it is with a lot of the current games coming out, but they really don't look good enough to justify the hardware or the performance.

Starfield, Robocop Rogue City, look good, but no where near good enough to where it should be making my PC sweat at 1440.

I'm loving Robocop, its a great game. But aside from a couple effects or reflections, you can't tell me it looks better than LA Noir.
 
rgMekanic said:
I don't know what it is with a lot of the current games coming out, but they really don't look good enough to justify the hardware or the performance.

Starfield, Robocop Rogue City, look good, but no where near good enough to where it should be making my PC sweat at 1440.

I'm loving Robocop, its a great game. But aside from a couple effects or reflections, you can't tell me it looks better than LA Noir.
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I've been feeling very similar lately. All these great games coming out, and while they do look good in their own right, they in no way shape or form look leaps and bounds better than titles released within the last 5 years. And I know it's become somewhat of a meme, but it really does point to developers not optimizing games worth a fuck.
 
ZeroBarrier said:
I've been feeling very similar lately. All these great games coming out, and while they do look good in their own right, they in no way shape or form look leaps and bounds better than titles released within the last 5 years. And I know it's become somewhat of a meme, but it really does point to developers not optimizing games worth a fuck.
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Yeah dude these latest UE5 games deliver extremely unimpressive visuals in exchange for how difficult they are to run. I trashed Remnant 2 for only running at 40fps on a 4090 at native 4K when the game doesn't even include Lumen and people came out defending saying shit like wHo CaReS hOw It RuNs As LoNg As ThE gAmE iS fUn!
 
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rgMekanic said:
I don't know what it is with a lot of the current games coming out, but they really don't look good enough to justify the hardware or the performance.

Starfield, Robocop Rogue City, look good, but no where near good enough to where it should be making my PC sweat at 1440.

I'm loving Robocop, its a great game. But aside from a couple effects or reflections, you can't tell me it looks better than LA Noir.
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Part of that is cost of using modern techniques, and part of it is whether you notice certain things or not.
A lot of previous rendering techniques were designed to "cheat" how light works, whereas path-tracing is now doing those effects in real time.
There can be some debate on whether or not the cost is worth these new technologies or not, but personally I can see a huge amount of difference between modern titles and what has come before.

I saw some comments on a recent Daniel Owen's video saying that Alan Wake 2 looks the same as RE4, and I just shook my head. I guess people can't see GI, or real dynamic shadows, high poly counts, real reflections, etc. I suppose if you can't see any of these things, then you also can't appreciate them. We are for sure at a place where there is diminishing returns visually, as in, significantly higher cost to get gains. But theoretically in the future RT lighting will be the only thing we need and visual fidelity will look incredible for it. Might take 10-15 years or so to get the hardware/software there to do that though.

Anyway, I felt like this DF video was fairly helpful in terms of UE5, the improvement in it's visuals vs UE4, Lumen, path tracing, etc. As well as just getting to see a lot of the updated fidelity in newer titles (or even perhaps lack there-of).


View: https://youtu.be/SxpSCr8wPbc?si=IJd1PPvjVGokVQBF
 
The most demanding game is the one for which you do not have the appropriate hardware to run, and therefore could not possibly imaging how horribly impotent and awful your machine is :D /s
 
best looking games are the ones with the best RT implementations- Cyberpunk path tracing, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Dying Light 2, Spider-Man Remastered, Ratchet and Clank- Rift Apart...even Witcher 3 RTX and Portal RTX as far as older games

don't sleep on Ratchet and Clank on PC as far as eye candy
 
polonyc2 said:
best looking games are the ones with the best RT implementations- Cyberpunk path tracing, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Dying Light 2, Spider-Man Remastered, Ratchet and Clank- Rift Apart...even Witcher 3 RTX and Portal RTX as far as older games

don't sleep on Ratchet and Clank on PC as far as eye candy
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I really haven't seen a game that outlooks the candy yet.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Part of that is cost of using modern techniques, and part of it is whether you notice certain things or not.
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I am not sure if Starfield count here, Robocop could be small dev team doing something quite ambitious made possible because of Unreal 5 modern technique (which come with tradeoff on the performance side of things currently)
 
IceDigger said:
Why don't people program games in assembly anymore?

Are programmers just not smart anymore?
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There's definitely performance issues with a lot of modern games, but coding a AAA game in assembly isn't gonna happen. Modern games have millions and millions of lines of code and there's often a ton of scripting too (for example, Cyberpunk 2077 has IIRC over 300,000 lines of Redscript in addition to the millions of lines of C++ for the engine). Writing that in assembly would be a massive undertaking to begin with- and then what do you do when bugs need to get patched, or features added, or gameplay rebalanced?

Coding the engine in C/C++ and then relying heavily on scripting may not be the most performant way but it's what makes fully-featured modern AAA games possible. Nobody is gonna make a Cyberpunk or Starfield in Assembly in any reasonable amount of time. Hell, even Doom and Quake were largely coded in C and that's going on 30 years ago.
 
NattyKathy said:
Coding the engine in C/C++ and then relying heavily on scripting may not be the most performant way but it's what makes fully-featured modern AAA games possible. Nobody is gonna make a Cyberpunk or Starfield in Assembly in any reasonable amount of time. Hell, even Doom and Quake were largely coded in C and that's going on 30 years ago.
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Quake's game logic even ran in an interpreted virtual machine.
 
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