Best Games With Benchmark Tools 2023

There’s something so satisfying about using the best games with benchmark tools to run your own stress tests.

After all, benchmarking is a great tool for gaining insight into which games your machine can handle. 

While there are plenty of websites and software dedicated to benchmarking, most require you to spend money that’s best saved for actual video games.

To save you the trouble of searching, here we’re showcasing the best games with benchmark tools, including both free and paid alternatives.

By the end, you should have more than enough games to pick from!

Related:Websites That Every Gamer Should BookmarkMost Graphically Demanding PC Games 2023Best Looking PC Games 2023

Free Benchmark Games

If you’re looking to benchmark your PC but don’t want to shell out any cash, then the best free games with benchmark tools should do you just fine.

Titles are listed in order of release year with links to their Steam store page or website where you can download their benchmark tool.

Keep in mind, some games will require you to install the full game before accessing benchmarking options via a launcher or menu.

Game	Release Year	Category
Bright Memory: Infinite	2020	FPS
Wiggly Boy	2020	Experimental
Star Control Origins	2019	RPG
Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers	2019	MMORPG
World of Tanks enCore	2018	MMO
Final Fantasy XV	2018	RPG
Star Swarm	2014	Simulation
War Thunder	2013	MMO
Resident Evil 6	2013	TPS

Premium Benchmark Games

The rest of this list is dedicated to paid games with benchmark tools with a focus on recent releases, games that go on sale often, or are included in gaming subscriptions.

Remember, while there’s no right or wrong game to use for benchmarking, some offer better tools to do so.

Finally, before purchasing any of the following games, make sure your PC meets the minimum specs requirements.

Switching over to paid games with benchmark tools, we have Cyberpunk 2077, both a controversial and technically taxing entry that most will already know.

Set in the futuristic open world of Night City, it sees you navigating the city’s seedy underbelly and waging war with rival gangs and corporate overlords.

The game’s ambitious design makes it one of the best contenders for benchmarking, which can be initiated by going to Settings < B “Run Benchmark.”

Designed for three-player co-op, Rainbox Six Extraction is a tactical FPS about fighting alien monsters and infiltrating their hideouts.

Like most PC shooters, it includes a built-in benchmarking tool that can be accessed by navigating to the Main Menu < Cog Icon < Options < Video < Benchmark.

From here, players can mess around with their video settings to improve performance and compare results from each test.

Next on our list of games with benchmark tools is Chernobylite, a survival horror RPG set in the 3D-scanned wasteland of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone.

Ripe with overgrown foliage, this setting ends up being a great canvas for all your benchmarking needs.

To access the game’s benchmarking tool, navigate to Main menu < Options < Video < Settings < Run Benchmark.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy offers a fresh take on the now-iconic band of misfit heroes as they travel across the cosmos stirring up trouble.

The game does a fine job balancing its story and gameplay while also offering one of the best built-in benchmarking tools in recent memory.

Once initiated, it will record one minute of gameplay in a market setting and record data regarding min/avg/max FPS and VRAM to share with you at the end.

Fans of open-world games are likely to have played through at least one Far Cry game in their lifetime, including the most recent Far Cry 6.

Yara’s world is massive, ecologically diverse, and downright gorgeous to look at while traveling by boat, car, and helicopter as you wreak havoc on Castillo’s soldiers.

This makes it a great contender for PC benchmarking using a built-in tool in the game menu by navigating to System < Options < Benchmark.

Forza Horizon 5 continues to be one of the best additions to the Xbox Game Pass library and serves as a reliable case study for conducting stress tests.

Building off of its predecessors, the game features a fully explorable sandbox filled with stunning Mexican vistas, complex weather, and sleek vehicles.

These provide the perfect opportunity to see what your gaming PC can do using the benchmark at Main menu < Options < Graphics < Start Benchmark Mode.

Hitman 3’s benchmarking tool is a lot more user-friendly compared to previous installments and sees you loading into the second mission of the level Dartmoor.

Here, you can wreak havoc on the environment using weapons with infinite ammo as well as spawn in waves of guards by pressing an enticing big red button.

It’s an excellent showcase for Hitman 3’s engaging sandbox designs and gets at the heart of the fun of interacting with benchmarking tools.

Ubisoft is known to include benchmarking options in the majority of their games, including the open-world RPG Immortals Fenyx Rising.

While its stylized cartoony visuals may not seem technically demanding, the game’s graphics become increasingly taxing on Very High and Ultra presets.

Additionally, it features a ton of settings to experiment with during stress tests, including depth of field, motion blur, and ambient occlusion.

Assassin’s Creed games can always be relied on for performance testing, mainly because they’re usually very poorly optimized for PC, especially at launch.

Simultaneously, the series has offered consistently photorealistic graphics that continue to improve with each new installment, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Combine these two factors, and you have yourself the recipe for a handy benchmarking game that will look good and put your PC through the wringer.

Although Borderlands 3’s unfriendly DRM can make it a pain to play casually, it’s beneficial for benchmarking.

The game is set seven years after BL2 on the planet Pandora, a barren wasteland rumored to contain hidden vaults filled with treasure and advanced technology.

It includes several graphics presets tailored for low to high-end machines in addition to various sliders that allow you to optimize performance on your machine.

If Immortals’ hyper-stylized vistas aren’t cutting it, you may want to boot up another Ubisoft game, Watch Dogs: Legion.

The studio really went out of its way to produce a detailed recreation of modern-day London, complete with all of the wet surfaces you’d expect to find in Big Ben’s home.

As a result, it ends up being the perfect showcase for RTX-enabled graphics cards that can squeeze out extra details from light and water reflections.

It should be no surprise that racing games are actually great for benchmarking since they’re typically used for graphical showcases.

If you’re looking for a recent racing sim to run performance tests, F1 2021 is a good choice as it requires a reasonably powerful PC to run smoothly.

This mainly comes down to the game’s notoriously detailed physics engine and a wide selection of real-world tracks that have been masterfully recreated.

Dirt 5 is another racing sim with a built-in benchmarking tool that provides a detailed breakdown of the game’s performance based on three-minute blocks of gameplay.

Once the benchmarking test is complete, the evaluation summary gets saved as a separate file on your PC, allowing you to run multiple tests and compare each one.

While Dirt 5’s graphics may not be as visually-striking as F1 2021’s, the render quality of vehicles is relatively high compared to other games in the genre.

Third-person zombie shooter World War Z is yet another great choice for games with built-in benchmarking tools.

Developed by Saber Interactive, it introduces the proprietary Swarm engine to power the game and render huge zombie hordes.

To access WWZ’s in-game benchmarking tool, make your way to the Main menu < Settings < Video < F8 “Run Benchmark”

Considering Sony doesn’t have the most stellar track record with PC ports, it wasn’t too surprising to see Horizon Zero Dawn launch in a messy state.

However, this has the double-edged sword effect of making it a suitable candidate for benchmarking.

While Sony continues to push out updates to get the game running better, Horizon will always be demanding, especially on older graphics cards.

Rockstar games don’t fare as well when it comes to their PC versions, with Red Dead Redemption 2 being the worst offender to date.

Despite offering hitchless performance on consoles, the PC port was ridden with bugs and plagued by performance issues that persisted even on high-end graphics cards.  

Related:Best Settings For Red Dead Redemption 2 – Boost Performance

While Rockstar has stepped things up in this regard, you’ll want to make sure your rig is up to snuff before venturing into Red Dead 2’s lovingly detailed map.

Leading up to its release, Metro Exodus was touted as one of the true next-gen experiences, a testament to the game’s technical prowess.

Considering you’ll need a reasonably beefy machine to get consistent fps, it’s also an ideal pick for benchmark testing.

Related:Best Settings For Metro: Exodus – Increase FPS, Boost Performance

In the graphics settings, you can find options for DirectX, gamma, motion blur, tessellation, texture filtering, and V-Sync, to name a few.

If you’re running an RTX-enabled GPU, this is the first game you should benchmark since it does a great job of showcasing the technology.

In addition to Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has become the preferred option for games with benchmarking, primarily because of its beautiful surroundings.

It also happens to include more comprehensive graphics options than previous games in the series, including a built-in benchmarking tool.

Related:Best Settings For Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Optimize FPS, Boost Performance

While three-minute intervals are a bit overkill for benchmarking, the amount of info you get is worth the trouble of sitting through that much time.

Unlike many other built-in benchmarks, Shadow’s offers various cameras and environment types to compare results.

Since many Ubisoft games use the same engine and include benchmarking tools, we thought we’d highlight one that often goes on sale.

For Honor is an arena fighter in which you play as a Knight, Viking, or Samurai, and face off against other players and AI enemies online.

The PC port is surprisingly optimized and includes plenty of settings to mess around with, including texture filtering, dynamic reflections, and ambient occlusion.

Another benchmarking game that can be picked up for dirt cheap is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which sometimes goes on sale for as low as five bucks.

Aside from being well optimized for PC, it includes several graphical presets you can swap between and stress test using the game’s built-in benchmark tool.

The tool is hidden in the game’s Extras menu and records 90-second chunks of gameplay before analyzing the footage and presenting a detailed summary.

Grand Theft Auto V’s benchmarking tool can be a bit of a hassle to use since it requires you complete Franklin’s first story mission beforehand.

However, once you’re able to access it, you’ll find there are a decent amount of graphics options you can tweak prior to initiating a stress test.

The benchmark offers five unique scenes throughout Los Santos’ open world that reflect actual gameplay scenarios.

Considering GTA games are very dynamic in weather, NPC behavior, traffic, etc., you’ll want to run several tests and calculate an average for the best results.

There’s a possibility you already own a copy of Shadow of Mordor either through a Humble Bundle or a random Steam sale bundle.

Even though it was released in 2014, the game is still one of the preferred titles for benchmarking and even comes with its own tool.

And since it’s a slightly older video game, your GPU stands a better chance of being able to run it on the highest settings.

Remember to manually download and install the texture pack from Steam before toggling the Ultra preset, otherwise, you risk running into image errors.