The best 6 games to show off your new graphics card
By Kirk McKeand
I recently got my hands on the OcUK Gaming Inspire rig with an RTX 5070Ti GPU, and I’ve been blown away by how much nicer games look than on console. With all the extras turned on and graphics set to Ultra, I’m getting full path tracing with high, stable frame rates thanks to DLSS technology.
It reminds me of the first time I played an Xbox 360 and loaded up games just to look at them for a bit, or show my pals. It feels like a real generational leap.
Whether you’re on Nvidia’s latest or the 40-series cards, these are the games to show off your new super rig.
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle
Indy looks excellent on Xbox Series X and PS5 Pro, but neither console gets near how impressive it is on PC. With full path tracing, every interior reflects light naturally around the room, creating reflections and proper sun shadows. Comparably, the Xbox Series X version of the game is less visually impressive than PC’s low settings, with missing vegetation and less expensive filtering techniques, resulting in lower quality textures.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 feels like an entirely different game on PC, thanks to its high-tech city lending itself to being a proper showcase of ray-traced reflections. Every window, sign, and puddle turns into a mirror, reflecting the neon metropolis of Night City. The quickest way to see the differences is to start a game as a Corpo, where you begin in an office space with various glass surfaces and polished floors. It’s impressive, chooms.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Like Indy, here’s another first-party console release that just looks better on PC. Every single New York skyscraper becomes a polished mirror, reflecting the world around you even as you swing by at 100mph. But even outside of the reflections, you can see every little detail on PC in the opening, as Sandman covers the city in sand, throwing up dust particles and covering your suit as the battle rages on.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Stop waiting for that 60fps console patch and load Red Dead Redemption 2 up on PC instead. The image is sharper than ever, the draw distance has no limits, and the gunplay feels ultra smooth with a stable and high fps.
Alan Wake 2
Annoyingly tied to the Epic Games Store, Alan Wake 2 is a real graphical showcase for natural ray-traced lighting. It’s a fairly dark game anyway, but real indirect lightning from the sun makes an already atmospheric game even better. The high, stable frame rate doesn’t hurt either, considering how jumpy Quality Mode is on console.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
One of the best showcases of ray-traced global illumination, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has an impressive, sprawling open world that shines on PC with its natural lighting solution perfectly fitting its natural environments. Ubisoft’s latest has some of the best-looking wilderness in games, and this lighting technology enhances everything with proper shadows and illumination, down to the individual leaves on a tree. Turn on the hair strands tech for some of the best barnets in video games, too.