What first game for a new PC?

For those who aren’t aware, I had been waiting on an RTX 3080 ever since November to complete my parts list for a new PC build and finally lucked into one at my local Microcenter. So now, aside from an absolute rats’ nest of wiring, my build is just about complete and I was wondering what game everyone would choose to play first after upgrading from a 7 year-old GPU (GTX 970) to the 3080 and a 10 year-old CPU (2500k) to the 5900x?

Dwarf Fortress.

Minecraft with RTX on. ;)

Star Fleet II, duh.

Is it released yet?

Not on Steam, at least, LOL

Ashes of the Singularity, just to see how it chews through all of those cores.

Microsoft Flight Sim…Horizon Zero Dawn… Really depends on what you like, and what you’ve played already :P

Great idea for a thread, since I just upgraded too. Not as big as yours. I got a 3060Ti and a 5600X. From a 12 year old CPU (i5-750) and a 6 year old GPU (GTX 980 Ti).

My GPU was still doing pretty well actually, I didn’t feel any real need to upgrade it. But my CPU was getting it’s ass kicked recently by games that came out in the last couple of years:

Microsoft Flight Simulator (this was the main reason for upgrading)
Star Wars Squadron (this was unplayably slow on my PC, even slower than MSFS)
DiRT Rally 2.0 (if I turned on the crowds)
Forza Horizon 4

Heck, I was going to buy Kojima’s Walking Simulator (Death Stranding) in the last sale on EGS with a $10 coupon, but I was informed in the thread (and confirmed in the fine print) that it wouldn’t even run on my CPU.

I just recently got this and a new computer, great game. Easily the best racing game you can actually play pretty well with a controller to boot. Looks great, and a lot of fun if you’re into the genre.

Ooooooh, I bought this on Humble last year, and forgot all about it. I should try it out.

Btw, I’m completely obsessed with Microsoft Flight Simulator currently. I’m not a Flight Sim guy previously, but I’m loving exploring the planet Earth. If you have Game Pass for PC or GP Ultimate you should definitely check it out. And install it to your SSD if you have one.

I have a gen 4 (because I’m foolish) NVMe for my C: drive, quite different from the spin drive on the old PC as I understand it, lol.

My recommendation would be to choose your favourite game, This gives you a guaranteed positive experience. Push all the graphics sliders to the right, apply some AA and see what happens. Of course you could stop after a couple of hours, but I bet you won’t. ;)
I have been doing this with Max Payne 1 and 2 for a long time.

Another idea would be to go for a newish game you are pretty sure you’re going to like. Even better if it can put your graphics card under stress. Control would come to mind. Or Cyberpunk.

Beyond Cyberpunk, Control, MSFS… AC Valhalla? Or your Ubigame of choice - all the recent ones are lookers. Metro Exodus if you liked those maybe. Some people liked Gears 5… Doom Eternal is impressive but it already ran on potatoes. RDR2? The ever-popular Anthem? A recent Dirt/Dirt Rally/Forza Horizon?

Among older stuff that could use power - Arma 3, State of Decay 2? If you’ve never seen GTAV run smoothly, it’s nice at 60 fps…

On the strategy side, The Total Warhammers?

The world is your smoothly rendered oyster. Of course I understand VR is the real workout :-)

To test out Ray Tracing on my new card, I’ve tried so far:

Quake 2 RTX demo - I was disappointed. It looked great to me in videos, but when I was actually playing, all the colored lighting and reflections and shadows didn’t matter.

Control (Game Pass) - I haven’t made it too far yet, I’m still early on, and RT reflections and stuff aren’t all that impressive yet.

Battlefield V (Game Pass) - I am enjoying the gameplay that I’ve played early on, but the actual RT, as far as I can tell, doesn’t add too much (or maybe it does?)

Watch Dog Legions (Free Weekend on Ubi) - So far, to me this was the most impressive use of RT reflections. The City of London seems tailor made to impress with RT reflections. There’s so much glass everywhere, and even dull surfaces like black trash cans reflect the environment in dull muted way. Windows reflect not just the pedestrians walking around, but also other glass buildings.

I fully expect that in the year 2032 when RTX cards are finally available this will be the first game I boot up, modded with all the ray tracing bells and whistles.

And it will be glorious.

Whatever you really think you’d like. You can play anything with those specs.

I’d probably blast through a few levels of Doom or Doom Eternal with the settings (and music) cranked way up. Or maybe load some late game Civ file…

Nope, but we do still need playtesters if you’re interested.

Dan as for you that’s tough. In my last new rig, the first game I ran was Assassin’s Creed Origins because it’s just so damned pretty.

Quantum Break probably still runs like ass.

Actually, Control and Quantum Break are probably two of the worst-performing games I can think of. Both by Remedy.