Three Hardware-Intensive Games for the PC

Most geeks consider the PC as the ultimate gaming platform. It’s easy to see why, with its endless upgradability, vast modding community, and accessible developer support. What’s more is that devs also love making games for the PC for plenty of reasons.

One reason is that they can push current-gen hardware (relative to the year) beyond its capabilities. You can even say that video games spur progress in computer engineering, bumping up benchmarks like a bully brandishing their brawns.

Why else would manufacturers invent 32-core CPUs if not to enable the wildest imaginations of game devs? In fact, there have been several games that are notoriously taxing on most PC builds.

If you have a pretty-good gaming PC, you may want to try out these titles. Besides, what’s the point of having a high-end gaming PC if you haven’t even tried playing any of these on their highest graphical settings?

So prime your KRIPP machine ready, and check out these PC games that’ll push your hardware to its limits.

Grand Theft Auto V

The latest GTA title was originally released for the consoles in 2013 then got ported to the PC in 2015.

As you may know, GTA is an open-world game, meaning your PC has to render a whole lot of objects and assets simultaneously. As you may also know, any game’s “view distance” and “grass rendering” settings (or options with similar names and functions) can take a toll on your frame rate per second (FPS).

Only a decent gaming rig can run an open world game like GTA V with just the two of those settings maxed out. If you want to know how your setup will fare, here’s Rockstar’s minimum and recommended specs for GTA V.

Minimum Specifications

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1, Windows Vista 64-bit Service Pack 2 (NVIDIA video card recommended if running Vista OS)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 at 2.40 GHz or AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Processor @ 2.5 GHz
• Memory: 4 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA 9800 GT 1 GB or AMD HD 4870 1 GB (DX 10, 10.1, 11)
• HDD Space: 72 GB

Recommended Specifications

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1
• Processor: Intel Core i5 3470 at 3.2 GHz (4 CPUs) or AMD X8 FX-8350 at 4 GHz (8 CPUs)
• Memory: 8 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 660 2 GB or AMD HD7870 2 GB
• HDD Space: 72 GB

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The world of The Witcher 3 is beautiful. Even at the lowest settings, the amount of foliage present is impressive enough, but when you shift the graphics to maximum, every tree, bush, and blade of grass will be exquisitely rendered and will sway independently from a simulated wind.

When you think you’ve had enough of the green fields and forests of White Orchard, the game takes you to the marshes of Velen and the free city of Novigrad, where it flexes its graphical muscles by showcasing its water physics and a huge city sprawls, teeming with life. And those are just the starting three areas out of a dozen more, if you don’t count the outskirts connecting most of them.

The Witcher 3’s breathtaking world can be heavy on your computer. The developer, CD Projekt Red, states that these are the minimum and recommended system requirements.

Minimum Requirements

• OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1). DirectX 11 is necessary to run the game.
• Processor: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3 GHz or AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
• Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660 or AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
• RAM: 6 GB
• Disk space: 40 GB

Recommended Requirements

• OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1). DirectX 11 is necessary to run the game.
• Processor: Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz or AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4 GHz
• Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 770 or AMD GPU Radeon R9 290
• RAM: 6 GB (Other third-party sites suggest at least 8 GB RAM.)
• Disk space: 40 GB

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Ah, the beautiful Lara Croft returns in the second installation of her reboot series. Rise of the Tomb Raider may just be quasi-open world, but like its protagonist, it certainly does look gorgeous.

The game uses a lot of simulated weather to fully immerse its players, and that alone can eat up much of your CPU. Plus, Rise of the Tomb Raider creates plenty of cinematic moments that, even at medium settings, display exquisite facial details that’ll have you falling in love with Lara. Now, imagine how realistic she’ll appear with maxed-out graphics.

For comparison, here are the minimum and recommended system specs.

Minimum

• OS: Windows 7 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 or AMD equivalent
• Memory: 6 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 650 2GB or AMD HD7770 2GB
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 25 GB available space

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 980Ti 2560 × 1440 or NVIDIA GTX 970 1920 × 1080
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 25 GB available space

Honorable Mention: Crysis

The Crysis series is a relatively old game. However, mention any Crysis game to a PC builder, and they may reminisce about their first heartbreak, specifically when their most-cherished setup (relative to Crysis’s release) struggled to run the game even on its medium settings.

When the first Crysis was released back in 2007, it was an extremely hardware-intensive game that, even today, over ten years after its debut, the game is still brutal on current-gen gaming PC setups.

In fact, “Can it run Crysis?” is a meme that gamers ask PC builders after creating their latest high-end rigs.

Can It Run Crysis?

Really, if you’ve recently built or bought a gaming PC, it’s a tradition that you should run (or at least try to run) Crysis with the graphics set to maximum.

If it runs sixty frames per second consistently, then congratulations. Your machine stands among the elite of gaming computers, and you have the right to boast about how you can run it smoothly at the maximum settings.

Even if it doesn’t, you can always content yourself with the other entries on this list. They’re truly magnificent games on their own.