Patient Gamers

What’s your threshold for “old”?

Couple more demanding games / difficult to run at launch that come to mind for me:

Cyberpunk 2077 is about to be 5 years old (2020)

Red Dead Redemption 2’s PC Port is about to be 6 years old (late 2019)

Metro Exodus is coming up on 7 (early 2019)

If this is your first foray into Ray Tracing capable cards, Control makes good use if that feature (Mid 2019)

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider was used as a benchmark for years (2018)

As you start going older than that, even the Steam Deck ends up being very capable.

People had a rough time with Batman Arkham Knight, still looks pretty IMO (2015)

If you’re looking for games that are coming up on 15-20 years old, like Crysis:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R (2007)

Metro 2033 (2010)

Rage (2011)

Doom 3 (2005)

Elder Scrolls Oblivion (2006)

Minecraft with rtx + texture pack + shaders

Maybe Uncharted 4?

Age of Empires, Definitive Edition is honestly amazing to look at. Cities Skylines with mods and all DLC. Fallout NV with mods can get insanely good looking. Just cause 2 and Just Cause 3 are both beautiful at ultra settings. Star Wars The Old Republic gets fairly pretty for an MMO. Obligatory EvE Online, just don't try to play the game. Took me 16 years to win EvE.

How about Skyrim with a bunch of heavyweight ENB effects?

not that old (2019) but Control with RT and Ultra quality will probably stress it some, looks really nice too!

I had the bright idea to run Carmageddon many, many years after I got a "proper" video card!

...It was still just 256 colours VGA pixelation central. Didn't use the video card at all. 😂 Still fun though!

Total War games, like Shogun 2, Rome 2, Three Kingdoms or any of the newer Warhammer TW. It sucks that blood is a fucking dlc on those games

Titanfall 2

Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal

Monster Hunter World (currently on sale, too)

Max Payne 3

Metal Gear Solid 5

In addition to all the suggestions - check out modding databases like nexusmods or whatever. Many older games that would not fit your definition have graphical mods that will make your GPU work.

Personally I've played modded stalker, fallout, elder scrolls. Hell, you can make Minecraft look absolutely amazing, but it's a pain to set up properly. You've mentioned you're not into horror games, some games also have total conversions available that do a some genre bending too.

Cyberpunk is not that old, but it's one of the best looking games ever made IMHO.

Witcher 3, also potentially with mods.

Morrowind with ALL the good mods. So many.

Mechwarrior 2 had a Titanium Edition that really stepped up the gfx.

Any of the Battlefield titles look pretty great.

The Division is almost 10 years old and the environment is one of the best ever created.

Cities in Motion 1 with the free look and largest size maps mods. Even at 1440p (not to mention 4K) it will bring a modern CPU to its knees in the mid to late game if you completely disable fog.

Witcher 2 had the "Uber-sampling" setting.

I know you said Crysis (1?), but I think Crysis 3 still looks great

Battlefield 5 is quite good.

I'd say BF2042 but its a glitchy mess

Friendly reminder for those looking here about !videogamesuggestions@lemmy.zip. (Stuck this question on the thread of links to video game suggestion threads started outside the community, so no need to repost at my community.) Wish I could answer your question but I always just happily played on whatever graphics my laptop would run and paid high-end graphics zero attention, so no idea. Fun question though!

Unreal.

Call of Duty till mw3/bo2