New games are exciting for owners of gaming PCs. Especially fresh productions running in Unreal Engine 5 can bring even more powerful hardware to the ground floor. Here is a list of games that require the most expensive components to play at high resolutions.
As you can easily notice, the list does not include only the biggest new releases. You will also find older productions here – mainly aviation titles, but also games with poor optimization, such as Star Citizen.
It’s safe to say at this stage that games running on Unreal Engine 5 have one common denominator: they have really high technical requirements. We can only hope that the necessary optimizations will be introduced in new versions of this engine.
Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 looks beautiful on adequately powerful hardware, but – yes – it requires expensive components to achieve the best graphical effects. At least the publisher was honest about this by not artificially lowering the minimum hardware requirements for PC.
Cyberpunk 2077 (with ray tracing)
It must be said right away that over the years, CDP RED has made great progress in optimizing Cyberpunk for PS5, XSX and PC. It’s basically a different game than at the time of release. With ray tracing turned on and in 4K with DLSS, the game can still bring down even the most powerful computers to the ground… while looking phenomenally good. Without ray tracing, you can count on a high framerate, even in 4K with DLSS.
ARK: Survival Ascended
The first ARK was known for massacring gaming PCs. Mainly due to poor optimization, because the game has never been impressive. We have a similar situation with the remaster of this network production. ARK: Survival Ascended can put even powerful gaming PCs to shame at higher resolutions. We’ll soon find out how the title works on XSX and PS5.
Starfield
Starfield could probably be dropped from this list in just a few days, because there is an update on the horizon that will significantly improve the game’s performance on PC. Currently, however, Bethesda’s RPG is one of the titles that puts a heavy load on even the best processors on the market (and a good GPU will also be useful). Several urban areas such as Akila and New Atlantis are particularly problematic.
A Plague Tale Requiem
Asobo is known for its amazing graphical quality (Microsoft Flight Simulator is truly next-gen in terms of visuals). This, of course, comes with high hardware requirements. In the case of the PC edition of A Plague Tale Requiem, it is extremely difficult for many PC configurations. The game loads the GPU very heavily. For example, the 3060 has trouble breaking through 60 frames per second in 1080p at max settings.
Immortals of Aveum
Unreal Engine 5 technology has not shown its best side so far. Games running on this engine have significant performance problems even on the most powerful PCs. Immortals of Aveum belongs to this group, bringing, for example, the GTX1060 to its knees at a resolution as low as 1080p. This GPU has trouble generating 30 fps. In turn, monsters such as the RTX 4060 in Ultra quality have trouble maintaining a stable 60 fps at 1080p resolution. The game is simply poorly optimized.
DCS World
DCS is already a few years old, but at maximum details and high resolution this production can still bring even more powerful PCs to their knees. The extremely realistic Eagle Dynamics game, like other flight simulators, is very memory-hungry, placing a very high load on the processor.
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Microsoft Flight Simulator underwent huge optimizations around the release of the title on XSX/XSS (mainly related to cloud rendering). Still, MSFS is a very demanding software, in which most people have to forget about 60 fps animation, using the highest details. As with most flight simulators, the game is processor intensive (but also requires an expensive GPU) and RAM/VRAM greedy (though not to the same extent as Star Citizen).
Cities: Skylines 2
I’m starting to have serious doubts about the state in which Cities: Skylines 2 will launch on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 in Q2 2024. The game has shockingly high hardware requirements on PC even at a resolution as low as 1080p. Nowadays, even owners of the most expensive graphics cards and processors can dream of stable animation at 60 fps in 1440p resolution.
StarCitizen
The minimum hardware requirements listed on the official Star Citizen website recently seemed like a joke. This MMO space simulation requires a much more powerful processor than the official specifications. The game has slightly lower requirements for the graphics card, but it’s not easy here either. For relatively enjoyable fun, the minimum level is a GeForce GTX 1660 GPU. Even the biggest fans of this online space game admit that the title is poorly optimized. It is also important to get 32GB RAM – Star Citizen is one of the few games that actually uses such memory resources (especially when flying over cities).
