What Games Can I Run?

Most hardware tools answer the question "will this one game run on my PC?" This page asks the better question: given the machine you already own, what is the entire library it can play? Enter your processor and graphics card in the sidebar and the tool scans our full benchmark database, 53 tested games, more than 190,000 measured hardware combinations, over two million recorded frame rate results, and returns every title your build handles, organized by how well it runs them. No sign-up, no estimated specs typed in by hand; the answer is computed from measured performance on machines like yours.

The most underrated way to use a PC you already have

Hardware marketing pushes everyone toward the newest releases and the newest parts, but the economics of a game library work the other way. A machine that is three or four years old, the kind most people actually own, is often dramatically better than its owner believes, because its limitations apply mainly to this year's flagship titles. Our data shows this clearly: mid-range hardware from 2021 or 2022 still runs the large majority of tested games above 60 FPS at 1080p with sensible settings. The titles it struggles with are a handful of demanding new releases, not the medium. That means the highest-value move for many players is not an upgrade; it is discovering that the backlog of well-reviewed games from the last several years runs beautifully on hardware they already have. This page exists to make that discovery automatic.

Second lives for second machines

The reverse lookup is at its best with hardware that was never bought for games. A student laptop with a modern Core Ultra or Ryzen AI processor now runs popular esports titles at 1080p on its integrated graphics, Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, Minecraft, and League of Legends are all within reach of current silicon with no discrete GPU, and the tool shows exactly which settings make it work. An office desktop with a modest older card has a library of hundreds of excellent games available to it, from indie masterpieces to AAA titles from a few years back that were designed for the hardware of their era. Even a hand-me-down build with a legacy processor can find real value: lower the resolution target, pick the right genres, and the list of playable titles stays surprisingly long. The popular hardware combinations below let you check any of these common builds with one click.

How the compatibility list is built

Every game on your results page carries a predicted frame rate for your specific pairing, and the prediction method is stated honestly on the page. Where your exact CPU and GPU combination has been measured in that game, the figure shown is the real recorded average, not a model, an actual test result. Where the exact pairing has not been tested, the estimate scales the game's measured performance across other systems by your graphics card's benchmark percentile, so a card at the 80th percentile sees proportionally higher frame rates than one at the 40th. Ratings follow a simple reading: above 100 FPS means the game exceeds typical monitor refresh rates, 60 to 99 is smooth territory for any genre, 30 to 59 is playable with settings adjustments, and below 30 the title will feel choppy at any preset. The bottleneck indicator beside each result names the component responsible, which turns the list into an upgrade guide as well.

From library to decision

The natural workflow after scanning your results is to drill into the ones that matter. Any game in your list links to its full FPS dashboard, where the same pairing is broken down by resolution and preset, useful when a title sits near the playable boundary and you want to know exactly which settings cross it. If the list comes back shorter than you hoped, the bottleneck column tells you why, and the Rate My PC tool scores both components to show how much a specific upgrade would change the picture. And if the list comes back long, that is the point: your machine is better than you thought, and the next several months of gaming are already paid for. The hardware stays in the sidebar while you browse, so every page you open from here keeps your build in context.

What the FPS numbers actually mean

Frame rate is the single most useful number in PC gaming, and it is worth knowing how to read it before you scan your list. A game running at 60 FPS feels smooth on any display, and 60 is the threshold our compatibility ratings use for a clean pass. Between 30 and 59 FPS a game remains playable, but fast-paced titles will show it: aiming feels slightly heavy, camera pans smear a little, and competitive players will notice the difference immediately. Below 30 FPS, most modern games stop being enjoyable regardless of genre. Above 100 FPS, the game exceeds what most monitors can even display, which is where high refresh rate panels come in. A 144 Hz or 165 Hz monitor only pays off if your hardware can push past 100 FPS, and the list tells you exactly which of your games get there.

One caution learned from real benchmark data: minimum frame rates matter as much as averages. A title that averages 70 FPS but dips to 25 during explosions feels worse than one holding a flat 55. Where our database records minimum frame rates for your exact pairing, the game pages show them, and they are the honest number to check when a title sits near the boundary of playable.

The two parts that decide your library

Every result on this site comes from a simple reality: your game library is decided by two components working together, and they matter for different games. Graphically demanding singleplayer titles, open worlds, ray traced games, and anything targeting 4K, lean almost entirely on the graphics card. The processor instead sets the ceiling for high frame rate gaming: competitive shooters, MOBAs, simulation and strategy games with large unit counts, and any game you want to run past 100 FPS. This is why two PCs with similar total scores can have completely different libraries. A build with a strong GPU and a modest CPU runs Cyberpunk 2077 beautifully but stutters in heavy strategy sessions; the reverse build sweeps every esports title at high refresh rates yet needs compromises in the newest blockbusters.

The tool accounts for this directly. Each pairing is scored by component, the gap between the two scores is computed, and results carry a bottleneck label naming the component holding the library back. When you see GPU Bottleneck beside a long list of struggling games, the fix is specific: the graphics card. When the list is short but frame rates cap out in the 60s across everything, including titles that should fly, the processor is the suspect. It is a diagnostic, not a verdict, and it turns what used to be guesswork into a two-minute check.

Esports titles are a different sport

Competitive games deserve their own mention because they break the usual hardware expectations. Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, and Overwatch 2 are engineered to run at high frame rates on modest machines, because their audiences play them on everything from tournament rigs to school laptops. The practical consequence shows up constantly in our data: a graphics card from several generations ago, one that has no business touching a modern blockbuster, can still push these games past 144 FPS at 1080p with competitive settings. Integrated graphics have closed much of the gap too, with current AMD Radeon and Intel Arc silicon running lighter titles without any discrete card at all.

If your library is esports-heavy, read your results with that in mind. The tool will happily confirm that a pairing labeled modest overall is in fact excellent for exactly the games you play, and the settings column shows the competitive preset that maximizes frame rate. High, very high, and ultra settings exist for screenshots; most professional players run low settings on purpose, because visual clutter costs more than it gives and every frame of input latency counts.

Settings that buy performance back

The gap between can run it and cannot is usually two settings wide, and knowing which ones to move is free performance. Resolution is the biggest lever: dropping from 4K to 1440p cuts the number of pixels the GPU must draw by 44 percent, and 1440p to 1080p cuts it again by 31 percent, which is why the same hardware that struggles at 4K is often smooth two steps down. On a 27 inch or smaller screen viewed at a desk, 1440p remains the sweet spot for most people. After resolution, the heavy settings are predictable: ray tracing can halve frame rates on cards without dedicated RT hardware, volumetric fog and screen space reflections tax older architectures disproportionately, and crowd density in sports and open world games stresses the processor rather than the GPU, so no amount of settings tuning fixes a CPU limit.

Each game page in your results breaks performance down by resolution and by preset, so the honest answer to can I run it is almost never yes or no. It is yes at 1080p high, or yes at 1440p with shadows one notch down, and the exact combination is one click from every row in your list.

When an upgrade is actually worth it

Scanning an older machine often ends with the question: what should I replace? The data gives a cleaner answer than forum advice, because it shows which component your library is actually waiting on. The pattern to look for is one-sided struggle. When most games on your list land in the playable or struggling tier and the bottleneck column reads GPU across the board, a graphics card upgrade lifts nearly the whole library at once, and the list becomes a before picture you can recheck after the swap. When the list is long but frame rates cluster just above 60 with no title reaching high refresh territory, the processor is capping everything, and no GPU, however expensive, will fix it.

The upgrade question also has a third answer that budget guides rarely say out loud: nothing, for now. A build whose list shows twenty-plus smooth titles and a handful of compromised ones is not a machine that needs replacing. It is a machine with a known, documented ceiling, and the list tells you which side of that ceiling each purchase lands on before you buy it.

System requirements pages versus measured data

Every game sells with a requirements list: a minimum and recommended CPU and GPU, published by the developer. Those lists are useful, and they are also vague, outdated within a year, and silent on the only question anyone actually asks, which is how well the game will run. A requirements page says a graphics card meets the minimum. It does not say whether that means 40 FPS on low or 70 on high, whether the CPU requirement scales with resolution, or how a card two generations newer than the recommended one performs. Measured data answers all three, per game, per resolution, per preset, on hardware combinations spanning fifteen years of releases. That is the difference this tool is built on: where a requirements page gives a pass or fail, two million recorded frame rate results give a curve, and your machine sits at a known point on it.

Frequently asked questions

How accurate are the predicted frame rates? Where your exact CPU and GPU combination has been benchmarked in a game, the number shown is the recorded average from that test, not a model. Where the exact pairing has not been tested, the figure scales measured results from similar hardware by your GPU's benchmark percentile and is labeled as an estimate. Both cases state which they are.

Does the tool check my whole PC? The compatibility calculation uses your processor and graphics card, because those two components determine game performance almost entirely. RAM capacity, storage speed, and thermals affect comfort and load times rather than the frame rate ceiling, so they sit outside the model.

Why does a game show as playable but feel worse on my machine? Recorded averages come from controlled test scenes. Your experience adds background software, driver versions, thermal throttling in thin laptops, and multiplayer load that benchmarks do not reproduce. Treat a near-boundary result as a signal to check the game's page for minimum frame rates and the next preset down.

Can I use this for a PC I am thinking of buying? Yes, and it is one of the better uses. Select the processor and graphics card from the build you are considering and the list becomes a preview of that machine's library, which is usually more informative than any single game benchmark in a review.