i plan to make an rp charactor, so il like to find a sword as early as i can thats still good atround high lv

If you use Smithing, almost every sword in the game can be used from the starter dungeon to the end of the game.

Like bradleyh said: iron, steel, etc., it's all good with smithing.

Um smithed stuff is better then anything you'll be rewarded with or loot as all loot is just random generic weapon, even a lot of the named supposedly special stuff is merely a generic weapon + generic enchantment + unique name, no different then anything the player can make better.

Out of the few legit unique swords you're choices are between Chillrend (thieves guild) and Dawnbreaker (reward for Break of Dawn). Otherwise pick a sword you like and level smithing as you go to continuously upgrade it.

I use the skyforge stuff the entire game and don't have a problem. Add the right enchantments and as you skill up it does plenty of damage. You only have to do a couple of quests before it's available.

Skyforge steel is second only to Deadric (by endgame). It levels with you!

Edit: Also, you don't have to quest too much to buy it. Just join the Companions and it's available. Quest negligibly further and a free Skyforge steel weapon of your choice will be given to you.

I'm rocking dual-wielded Skyforge Waraxes at the moment. Feels good man.

Like others said, Skyforged Steel . If you don't plan to raise smithing to 80+ and buy the Ebony perk, it is simply the best there is. Even if you do, early game its very hard to beat, late game it keeps a close pace with the best and is arguably easier to enhance (steel ingot vs ebony) meaning you are more likely to do so as soon as you can add even a point or two of damage.
Enchanted weapons look good at first glance, but when you factor in the multiplier to base damage you get from power attacks etc, a weapon with a higher base damage often does better than one with a bit less base plus a (fixed damage) enchantment.

Without using smithing, there are several option available to low level players. Granted, no one will be as good as something out of the forge, but they will still give some nice advantage to beginners.

Dawnbreaker is a good (glass level) 1H sword with a nice enchantment. The associated daedric quest is rather straightforward

Early in the game, if you don't mind violence, you can grab a scimitair from the A'lik redguard warriors (elven level).

Another interesting sword is the Ghostblade (8 base + 3 ignoring armor) but the final fight might be a little too difficult for low level characters.

If you do the mainquest early, help yourself with the Akavairi Katana in Delphine hideout (base damage same as elven 1H)

Another Katana, Bolar's oathblade (with an enchantment, too) may be found in the save cave of Hircine quest BEFORE the quest starts. This sword, however, is leveled so in the beginning is not so good.

Glass, Ebony, Daedric are all better, provided you have the perks. And every weapon gets stronger with you, so that's not really a selling point.

Dawnbreaker. Looks good, kicks ass.

Those options you list require the OP to dump many perks into smithing, and would not be available early game as he requests.

Again, Skyforge is a great early game weapon, and is viable the whole way. They are in easy supply and cheap, so you can enchant them for situations, or leave them blank for elemental fury.

Being a mage as am chillrend does just the job for me...i dont have to withdraw a lot but when i do its a pretty good weapon...ive had it for almost 20 lvls now

As a mage, you should be using a Bound Sword. It's so much cooler summoning a spectral sword than drawing one from its sheath.

Though most good swords have already been mentioned. I say go for Skyforge, as it has that 'humble' look of a steel weapon, but having some of the best stats you can get early on. My first character was using skyforge all the way up until level 40-ish, when I started finding ebony.

Horrible thing about ebony is they made it look so different. Don't really like it this time around, but steel is always a classic look. Bolar's Oathblade in Bloated Man's Grotto is a good one, too, so long as you can beat a couple bears and spriggans. Chillrend through the Thieve's Guild is good, as well.

It's stupid that pretty much all the named items that you find are leveled and always have base damage of something like 10-15 if they're one-handed and something like 20-30 if they're two-handed. No matter how God-Almighty they're supposed to be or if they are ordinary, just dropping from your everyday bandit. Smithing easily takes you over those numbers. Top it with a bit of Enchantment, and, well, you've broken the game. Congratulations. Actually, you've broken it only with decent smithing, so no need to enchant if you do not wish it to look cooler or something.

The intention of my post was only to debunk the misinformation given by the guy I quoted.

I understand that they are very good; I use them on almost all my melee characters.

I've been neglecting advancing my smithing, cause I didnt want super powerful weapons early on. So I'm in Solitude, and seeing as I'm level 22, decided to finally do some real work on it. Visit the Blacksmith and bought enough supplies to make about 20 iron daggers, which gave me 7 levels, taking me up to 30. Problem is I have been using weapons on both sides of the smithing tree. So I have to decide if I want to improve my glass and elven stuff, or the dwarven and ebony. Using heavy armor, I'll probably concentrate on the latter, at least at first.

I'm currently playing a Nord with a high smithing skill. The point is too see how far I can get using only Iron Armour and Weapons. Hopefully there is some hope...

Iron.

Honestly perked smithing makes the game too easy. You can just improve stuff too much. The most balanced smithing approached is to level the skill and just take the two perks to get arcane smithing so you can improve anything. This will slow down the rate your equipment improves and keep the game balances better, plus will make loot actually worth more then vendor trash.

I wind up NOT crafting much simply because it adds levels too fast. What's the point at that point? I make enough leather gear to get by for a while, with a few basic "newbie" enchants. I don't replace it very soon either. (I won't use the other light armors, they're all just butt-ugly - and leather is only bearable with the mod that makes it look similar to TG armor....)

Smithing my own gear made dungeon diving trivial for me. I honestly think that smithing took a lot of fun out of the game for me. Luckily I have the option not to use it though.

That's why I refuse to perk smithing and just improve looted gear. Makes dungeons much more exciting

I should clarify my above post, I was level 22 at the time, and all those iron daggers took my smithing skill to 30, not my character. I'm not gonna sit there and gain 7 character levels purely on smithing. the whole reason I havent done a lot of smithing was so i wouldnt gain a ton of levels. With 30 or so skill, one smithing added on like 4-6 points of damage. Not overpowering, but not too shabby. With ~20 smithing skill I only added on one point to my orcish sword earlier. Probably should have held off on that.

2 problems with Bound swords -
1) only last a short time
20 takes too much time to re-cast the spell

take the 2 together and it's a MAJOR pain in long fights with multiple opponents

so it looks like skyforge then as i dont plan on smithing