I remember when Oblivion was nearing release there was major push on the net to gear up for the occasion. It was a true next gen title, cutting edge everything, pushing the envelope of gaming hardware, etc. I remember how good it felt knowing I had one of the top of the line systems running at the time. Having a decent job back then, I replaced just about everything in my system. New processor, new X-fi card, new speakers, motherboard with crossfire capability for future proofing my Radeon x1900...

Of course there was the added bonus of the "chuck patch" for the ATI cards that were the only ones at release able to handle HDR + AA. Yeah, I was sitting pretty!

This time around I'm a bit more modest in my gear-ups, being between jobs, but still, a 4.1ghz dual core and gtx480 aren't TOO shabby. I am however very seriously considering picking up one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236103

Back when I was tweaking my modified DarkUI it really bothered me I didn't have access to a widescreen format monitor to test and verify compatibility with 16:9 resolutions, but I just couldn't justify spending the insane amount of money (close to $800 bucks for the Sony 17") LCD panels that were just starting to emerge around that time.

Now, years later, the technology has radically improved and the prices are almost too hard to pass up. I know I could wait even more for an IPS with 120Hz for 3D, but to me the 2ms refresh seems more important than industry grade color representation for gaming, plus I'm amblyopic, and so sadly cannot see 3D anyway. (Damn government implant!)

I used to be able to see 3D when I was young, before that side of my visual cortex atrophied or something. I know because I remember Captain Eo at Disney Land was the bomb!

Anyway, I am curious to know who else plans at least some major upgrade for the occasion, and if so, what most are going for.

Major upgrade? Oh, I'm a console player, this is aimed towards the PC users I presume?

yes lol... i built a computer solely for skyrim a few months back... fortunately it was custom build so i saved a bunch of money.

I just recently (like 5-6 days ago) ordered a 64GB crucial SSD to play skyrim on to cut out cell transition lag.

Already did mine a few weeks ago. Upgraded the GPU and PSU and bought a new case. Little under $300.00. Last major upgrade was when Oblivion came out, I went with a 7900GT that went close to 300.00 when they first came out. I bought that from compusa.

Luckily for me I don't need to upgrade anything to play Skyrim on max. Go go custom made computers (which bring in a nice amount of money if you can do them btw)

Spec's are in my sig and I take solace in how Skyrim isn't as graphically intensive as Battlefield 3 which I can run on half high and half ultra.

Built my first PC specifically for Skyrim a month back.

Spent about $3k au which is a lot for me but i had been saving up.

Everything working great so far though Witcher II has strange lag in cut scenes and menus (which goes away if i alt tab then go back)) but im guessing this is not at my end. Provided Nvidia drivers and things are ready for SKyrim i should be fine.




- Evan -

Your only problem was that you got speakers instead of some professional headphones. Unless you paid $6,000 for your speakers, you'd be better off by far with $150 headphones, especially as you've said you bought a soundcard (ie; you will hear the difference between good headphones and bad if you bought them).

But anyway, I just bought a whole new PC, pretty much because of Skyrim. It's a beast. hexcore i7 3.33gHz (yes, hexcore. With threading that 12 cpu's), a $150 sound card, a GTX570 factory overclocked (gainward phantom) and 16gb of RAM (Yes, 16gb is overkill). I think it's a little late to ask people about planned upgrades, as most of us already did them.


I don't regret it in the slightest, I know I'm going to clock 1000+ hours on Skyrim.

Cannot wait. Only problem is I have to wait like, an extra week, as I live in Aus and my CE is coming from America (was too slow to get one here).

Already bought(and built) i5 2500k, nice p67 mobo, radeon 6950 2gb, 8gb DDR3 1600 ram, 24" 1920x1200 IPS monitor, etc. etc. so yeah I've geared up quite a bit. Spent $1,300 altogether.
Only thing that hasn't arrived yet is my monitor, hoping it gets here before the 11th.

Indeed, just installed Skyrim's dedicated 120gig SSD last night (I forsee many mods...)

I got myself a pretty decent laptop after my old desktop died. I'm hoping I can run it at, the very least, Xbox graphics until I can get myself a new beefy desktop when I start working.

Just built this for Skyrim and future games. System is future proof, as in Z68 chipset will be the same and LGA 1155 will be the same for Intels next generation of Ivy Bridge. I also have the option of Crossfire and SLI, so I can switch to Nvidia if I choose. As far as i6 vs i5, in games it make almost no difference, as games do not take advantage of Hyperthreading. Save the money and just OC the i5-2500k to 4.5Ghz - 4.8Ghz no problem. Also the ASUS P8Z68 is amazing with it's new UEFI Bios for OC'n. The 2x 6950 uncloked to 6970's is optional, bu t it saved me a lot of extra money. Do not expect to be able to do this for long if you can even find a refrence model 6950 at all very soon. Always build your own PC! Do NOT spend extra cash on paying for labor and useless warrenties to people like Dell, HP, iBuypower and CyberpowerPC.

Edit: Side note on your Data Storage HDD - Do not get a large SATA III HDD, as they can not reach the speeds shown. Save the SATA III Slots for furture upgrades, or new SSD's.

Everything can be found on Newegg - System cost: Around $1800 (Including shipping and before any rebates and not including my TV)

CPU: Intel i5-2500k OC 4.8GHz
Fan & Heatsink: Cool Master V6GT ( Used Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound )
Mobo: ASUS P8Z68-V Pro LGA 1155 Intel Z68 Chipset
GPU: 2x SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6970 2GB (4GB) OC 940/1450 (Actually 2x 6950 unlcoked to 6970 and OC)
HD: 64GB M4 Crucial SSD SATA III and 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA II
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengance DDR3/1600MHz
Power Supply: OCZ ZX Series 850W Fully-Modular 80PLUS Gold
Case: AZZA Hurrican 2000 - Full ATX tower with 8 Fans. Front: 2x120mm Blue LED Silent Fans Rear: 1x120mm Fan in Rear - Right Side: 1x120mm super slim fan for CPU - FansTop: 2x 230mm Silent Fans - Left Side: 2x 230mm Blue LED Silent Fans
Screen: My 50" 1080p Plasma TV

Too true! I actually bought this gimick Creative 5.1 set for like $200 bucks at the time, and ended up taking it back, and getting these instead:

http://www.amazon.com/AKG-K702-Headphones/dp/B001RCD2DW

One of the best technology/multimedia purchases I have ever made. I literally couldn't function without these headphones! XD

Definitely drooling over some of these setups...

Good advice, and nice setup! 4.8ghz seems pretty Godlike.

GET the Asus. I got that same monitor in September for Skyrim through amazon. Zero problems, using it with my xbox so I'm sure you'd put it to it's full potential with a power rig behind it.

Nope. I'm stuck with my old G73jh. That is, if it ever gets back from repairs.

Building one next year. The cost of the one I want to build myself (building it myself) I have pegged at $2200 now. I can see that coming down drastically within 5-6 months so i'm waiting.

Getting Skyrim on 360 and PS3. Splurged on a HD PRV Recorder to record every minute of Skyrim. Never recorded games before so i'm excited to get going.

Will likely get GOTY edition eventually for PC.

I have a ASUS G73JH also. It has beeen good to me, but I will say it had TONS of issues when they first came out. RMA'd my first one within a week and finally got one that was stable. So I thought anyways.. Had to upgrade the BIOS once ASUS got off their asses and fixed the issue with the 5870M crashing. Hated the GSOD and the VLOD (Grey Screns of Death and Verticale Lines of death). Once that was out of the way though, it's great still use every once in awhile.

Yeh, AKG are a good brand. Glad to see someone realises the truth of it

For the rest of you, its true that most headphones sound much better than most speakers for the same price (I'm not counting all your sony and panasonic crap that you think counts as audio hardware) because they have a much easier job to do, so it's easier to reproduce good sound.

At the moment unfortunately I only have Sennheiser HD215's I want some AKG Q701's, but I can't justify $400 at the moment.

A few good brands in case anyone wants to buy some good headphones: Alessandro, Beyerdynamic, Shure, Sennheiser, Audio-Technica, AKG...
You wouldn't have heard of most of these, because they don't market to us. They market to studio's and so on, they don't need to bother advertising to us. Your Sony or whatever headphones you buy from the local chain store aren't any good at all. Neither are Razer or Steelseries or other "gaming" headphones. And I'm an ex competition Quake and Counter Strike player saying that.

Yeah, I have a pair of Sennheisers, not sure of the model, with the adjustable high quality mic for online gaming and they are actually pretty decent sounding for the $99 bucks I paid for them.

If you get the AKG's I'd HIGHLY recommend you go K702 instead of K701. Amazon has 'em now at the above link for $266.50. They are EXACTLY the same as the K701's except they come in black, and use a detachable cord, which is a MAJOR necessity, as the K701's had a problem where the non-detachable cord would rub on the casing and eventually split.

I was able to manually re-splice my old K701's when it happened after like three years of use every day, and now my dad uses 'em for his music studio.

I ordered some decent PS3 headphones...does that count? Lol.

I said Q701.. these: http://headphones.com.au/psingle?productID=563
They have detachable cord and all.

Also Sennheiser are a great brand, its just my particular model isn't that great. They're closed headphones worth about $130.



I'm afraid they might be decent compared to cheap PS3 headphones but they're not decent in the scheme of things. I'd call "decent" headphones $150 brand name ones, and that's conservative.

That looks nice. I might think about getting a bigger monitor (mine's a 23" 1920x1080). I can never decide what to get tho;I'm so picky about color/contrast.

Was using the GTX-275 GPU for a while. I didn't need a new video card just for Skyrim, but I wanted one anyway...so I bought the evga GTX 590. For it's price, that was definitely splurging, for me. Probably won't ever do that again - usually I buy a 2 or 3 "rungs" down the ladder instead - but don't regret it either. It's been fun using it for some other games.

Hmm. I actually prefer my speakers.

Then again, I have my sound hooked up to a home theater receiver via HDMI, which is hooked to a $300 Polk sub and 5 main channels. Battlefield 3 really knows me down each time.

Most of the time I'm just not in the mood to have big foam cups over my ears/on my head.

You can/do hear more "detail" with headphones (unless you have very good speakers and put them on very loud) and great headphones are awesome, but I'd disagree that they always sound better. Different people have different ears....I've yet to listen to any headphones that produce the kind of bass I truly desire. You just can't get that in headphone-size. We used to have these 16" subwoofer (or maybe a little bigger, I can't remember now) speakers on the TV, and movies/games would shake the floor with the bass. That's what I prefer. ... alas, I don't have that kind of gear hooked up to my PC these days.

People do have different ears, yes. But a better sound system will always sound better. The differences in people's hearing only applies to high end audio equipment. People who don't know too much about audio like to use that argument, but if you become an audiophile (yes, its a real thing), you'll learn why its a complete fallacy unless applied to top end stuff. The only time different personal preference begins to apply to headphones, for example, is at about the $400 mark. Before that the better ones just are better.
As for bass, yes, you can. With a good soundcard that has an amplifier (mine does), and good mixer software. You can't shake the floor, obviously, but the thing is - the frequencies that are causing that you can't actually hear anyway. The human ear doesn't hear all the range of most subwoofers. There's a reason they're called subwoofers, a true subwoofer is actually silent (because they produce ultra-low frequencies designed to shake the room, and they're very, very uncommon). You can only hear a frequency that is so low, getting the floor shaking will seem bigger but it's not actually going any lower. Headphone drivers can easily manage those frequencies. And you can make good headphones go plenty loud to cause serious hearing damage without damaging them. So volume and frequency are both covered. Shaking a room however, obviously you can't do that, and its completely unnecessary.

As for talking about them being uncomfortable, that's way too much of a generalisation. It entirely depends on the individual model. Quality headphones can be extremely comfortable. Some block out all outside noise, some you can hear everything as if you're not wearing anything.
I always have my headphones on when at my computer, it never bothers me because they're good quality. They are sooooo much more precise than most speakers. ie; when I played competitive FPS, you have to use headphones, because then you can hear exactly where someone is when they're running, to a degree of accuracy that isn't possible with headphones.

You may not have heard what you like from headphones, but I doubt you've heard many quality headphones.
Point being, I don't think you've heard all they have to give, and you shouldn't assume they can't do it... because they certainly can.

I know what you mean. I used to love going to gigs with my dad when I was little. He'd sit me up on one of the amps and I'd be boppin' up and down... It was awesome!

If I really feel the urge for that sort of experience I have the sound studio in the other room. Two 16" studio monitors and a couple gargantuan "gig boxes" that will definitely shake the place... probably to the ground given the age of this cabin! XD