What is currently THE most demanding game on a system?

[wez]

i remember when guild wars came out we would use it to check for stabilty. Is GW2 as demanding?

Most MMO's are usually pretty good at testing CPU game stability. The bigger groups of players and NPCs the better, obviously.

GW2 is very easy going on the GPU side, doesn't take much to run it smoothly. But its utilizing the CPU wonderfully. Its nice to finally see good load on a 8 thread chip in a game

[heman]

Already mentioned but I would agree with :

BF3 - mainly GPU intensive, add MSAA and things slow down.
Metro - crank everything on max, so many settings.
Shogun 2 - both CPU and GPU intensive, a whole system hog.
Crysis (original) - the original system tester.
Crysis 2 - with hi-res textures and DX11 enabled.

[[XC] Oj101]

I wouldn't say either of the Crysis games are particularly heavy by today's standards, although I won't disagree that the original was incredibly heavy at its time of release. Shogun 2 is brutal on the CPU, it brings my 2600K at 4.5 GHz to its knees. BF3 takes some money to max out but it is possible, Metro on the other hand... Neither love nor money can help you play the game maxed out

[gazza30]

The witcher 2 (Uber sampling)
ARMA II

[Spectrobozo]

The witcher 2 (Uber sampling)
ARMA II

one is really hard for the GPU, and the other for CPUs

[Chickenfeed]

Supersampling is brutal in general. Quake with surround 30" displays with 8xSS would even bring the hurt Its great for older games though and engines that used deferred renders. I use a compatibility bit for Payday the Heist and it looks substantially cleaner. Out of the box post process AA is better than none at all but nothing beats the real thing. I tried 4xSS in Guild Wars 2 and it was pretty brutal ( I believe the in game option is only 2xSS ) I also noticed this when I was still playing Diablo 3. After a patch, the in game post AA was reset to off. I started playing and noticed, "Why the hell are things so much clearer?" The game looks a lot sharper without the post AA and with supersampling.

Its kind of funny how things have gone full circle with this. We went from the old days of supersampling or nothing, to traditional AA, to deferred rendering with post processing and back to supersamlping

Metro at full tilt is still likely the most demanding title out of the box though. Now I'd be more interested in the opinion of the best presented game all around. Interestingly enough I found some of the most visually appealing games aren't even the most demanding. Solid art direction can go a *long* way and there are many factors that enhance immersion ( if that is what you are after ) I want great animation and sound design to ( and it doesn't hurt if the game is actually *fun* ; that is the point at the end of the day, isn't it ?)

Sadly a lot of the minor nuances that make current games demanding go unnoticed unless they are carefully scrutinized ( which while actually playing a game would be subliminal in most cases ). We are at a point of diminishing returns in relation to the increase in computational power respective to the increase in fidelity. Developers can continue to beat the graphics drum but they should step back a take a look at the big picture every now and then.

[yaddam205]

Thread Cleaned. Let's stay on topic.
Everyone who posted here should know the forum rules regarding attacks.

[LedHed]

Does anyone here play IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover? I have a hell of a time playing it at any settings really, especially the MP.

I would definitely put Cliffs of Dover towards the top of the list for either the most demanding or worst optimized lol.

[Chickenfeed]

I haven't played Cliffs of Dover but simulators in general can be quite brutal. To this day FSX maxed out is rough. I bought X plane 10 a while back and honestly I find FSX to look better given the performance cost. Sure you can make Xplane shine but it takes a ridiculous amount of power. Its a bummer most of these sims don't support multi gpu setups properly as to get the most out of them surround is an attractive option.

Pretty much any engine attempting large environments with long view distances, full scene dynamic lightning, heavy AI and frequent asset loading will be a beast.