How a game runs depends primarily on two things:

1) Your system.
2) The game. If it's programmed badly, it's going to run badly. (E.g. Skyrim pre-1.4 patch.)

i'd go for a cube case with wheels, htpc case or some other small form...

I don't need a laptop per say, and actually I have a decent amount of experience with comp hardware. I just never really used my PC's for games, more for work. So i'm a noob on what is needed for gaming itself not on computers in general

most games should run well....start with making sure graphics card driver is updated, maybe check your cpu load to make sure some pesky program isnt useing all your cpu resources

There are lots of different computers out there that can handle it and you could even get a desktop hooking up the video card to your projector.

Laptop wise I would think any current generation gaming laptop can handle skyrim as it isn't resource intensive as other games. The biggest problem would be putting the computer together yourself or having someone do it for you which can mean a big difference. ibuypower.com was one place I was thinking about going to until I got the parts myself having some local people put the rig together for me. They had fairly decent prices and only charged about $200 for putting the stuff together. This opposed to Dell who would charge you $600 to $900 for the brand name.

Ignore this post.
Thanks!

Why does it need to be the ti? I happen to have the non-ti GTX 560 2gb and I don'notice anything terrible.

OP, get whatever fits in your budget. With the Intel i5, or i7 series of procs plan on adding a few hundred to your budget. They are expensive. You can get an AMD Phenom 4 core 3.0ghz for around $100. I paid around $300 for my eVGA GTX 560 OC'd 2gb gpu and then I spent around $130 for a WD 7200 hdd and another $80 for memory and another $100 for a power supply. I already had an operating system and I recycled two other hdds.

You are definitely doing something very wrong if your build is running you $1300 and you don't even have a copy of Windows and your CPU is an i3.

Whats wrong with it? I picked a $330 6970 and $130 of ram, cut the ram out and a smaller card and there you go.
2 750G hdds $279.
Thats $739 up front.
You want something that is going to last, I spent $1,600 on mine two years ago when the AMD 1055T and 5870 was new.

If you are going to build it, build it right, what I have there is a pretty snazzy build, only thing it lacks is a 7970 but its still $550 so I went with a 6970.
You could go even lower with a 5870, cut the $130 of ram (16 gigs) down to 8 ($50) and only one HDD and save a lot of money off the top.

That build has 16 gigs of ram, a I3 with a good cooler along with two 750 Gig HDDS and a 6970.

I'm saying your spending is wrong, your CPU is quite an important part and you are skimping on it. You should up the CPU and cut back elsewhere for a much better rig (2 HDDs? What are you doing, running them in RAID 0? Have fun when all your data is destroyed. If it's for backups, it shouldn't be factored into costs or be in the same case, as then you run the risk of localized failure taking them both out making the backup worthless)

The I3 is the best bang for the buck you can get, it OC's nicely and does the job.
Yes two HDDs, one for backup. Yes factor it in the cost because if you are building it from nothing you have to pay for it.
I have never had a WD HDD fail on me, or a local failure. I have built three pcs and been pc gaming since 1993's wingcommander privateer.

I am running the AMD 1055T at stock clocks and there is nothing it can't handle at stock clocks (2.8ghz). The I3 with sandy bridge clocks faster out of the box.

I was trying to stay under $1,500.

http://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCart.aspx?Submit=view
How about that then?

Should answer some questions to prevent this from crapshoot of suggestions:


1.) your budget in your country's currency
2.) what country you reside if not listed in your avatar area
3.) pre-assembled PC? ...or can you build your own?
4.) what is needed other than the PC tower? Monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard, Windows OS disc? All these can jack up the price.

His forum profile says PA.
Pennsylvania?
USD then.

build your PC and never buy pre-assembled .
intel processors , Gigabyte Motherboards , AMD graphics cards

Skyrim is fortunately not a demanding PC game. You can buy a desktop computer that run Skyrim very well for less than $600, a bit more if you intend to buy a laptop, like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230185, which seem to offer a fair amount of power for it's price and will run Skyrim more than DECENT.

People who suggested more expensive solutions are just wasteful spenders, and those who suggested anything but laptops are just poor listeners. There is certainly no need whatsoever to buy the latest and greatest graphic card for Skyrim, even the midrange Radeon 6670 is more than enough for a highly enjoyable experience at a 1920x1080 resolution.

acer moniters are fantastic
and just get cheapo keyboard and mouse picked mine up for 5 bucks for both and they work well

Wasteful? Its not wasteful, its buying something one time and not upgrading every year, I spent $1,600 over two years ago and I had the top of the line video card and the (at that time) new amd 6 core (1055T).
I spent exactly $0 for over two years and enjoyed every game I wanted to play with no issues.
Its not wasteful, its preparing for the future, I have no need for the 7970 I bought. I did have the money and went on and upgraded, I could have finished almost three years with not a single upgrade if I had wanted to.
When you spend the monies to build a pc you might as well do it right or don't do it at all. That way you don't nickle and dime all the time or have to upgrade 6-12 months later.

I am not a poor listener, if you can get a desktop over a laptop do it, every time. Cost less, more power.


Implying the Op only wants to ever play skyrim, and not Metro 2033 or cysis or any other games that could take advantage of the new 7XXX series. BF3?

Also, 6770? Skyrim? Pc? mods? What about mods that can take advantage of more than 1 gig of V-ram? No reason not to buy at least a 6970. None at all unless your budget is so tight you can't afford it.
The 6770 is just about $30 more than the 6670, and its a well spent $30.


No please don't, get something nice.
A G-500 mouse and a back lit keyboard are awesome.

Either spend the money and get something nice or don't buy a pc.
You will pay a premium for anything assembled, building one is not hard.

The one main of piece of advice I can give you is get a desktop and NOT a laptop.

As for price depends on where you get the parts and if you are willing to build it yourself, if you did you would save at least 10-15% by not paying the markup.

In my PC I have an intel i5 2500k which I can fully recommend, you won't need anything more unless you are doing things like 3d modelling etc. I use a GTX570 but that is more than required for many games. A GTX460 will be more than sufficient if you need to keep the price down.

If you are having more than 2GB of RAM make sure your OS is the 64 bit version

And just use the mouse and keyboard from an old computer, they are just as good as the so called "gaming" M+K's which are in my opinion worse than the more simple ones

It's weird how overconfident you are in your very unbalanced build. A 6950 and 2500K with 8GB of RAM should be running around $800. Nothing you've added to get it up to $1300 adds anything to the performance of the build.

Tell me, if 8GB of RAM can be found under $50 easily, why would you pay $130 for 16GB, which is equivalent to buying 8GB of RAM twice. Which gives no benefit to 8GB unless you're running multiple VMs or some other RAM intensive task.

And i3 with a good cooler? Why? This makes no sense. The i3 has a locked multiplier. A good cooler does no good, since you wont be overclocking it. That money should be spent on a better CPU.

The PSU costs about 2x as much as it should. Sure, modular is nice, and efficient is nice, but an AX? Serious overkill.

Your method of choosing parts is not very good, and you probably shouldn't be trying to pass it off as "good advice" to people who don't know any better.

My laptop can handle pretty much any game on max just fine. The advantages of laptops is their small screen - playing at 1366 x 768 is a lot less strenuous on your GPU than playing at 1920 x 1080.

You do realize that you are also talking to a beginner who may or may not be into overclocking? I agree with Defron, the build you put together is not good, at all. And what do you mean you get more "bang for your buck", that's just dead wrong. Also you should not even consider recommending going with 16 GB for a beginner. Even 8 GB is a bit overkill 16 GB is only going to matter if you use a RAMDISK (which he wouldn't be). You also don't need a 750 Watt PSU, did you do any math for that? I'd be interested to see under what assumptions you didn't have 200 Watts extra.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

Your link doesn't work, you have to export it as a public list.

It's not about how many cores you have, but what you do with them. There's no comparison between a 1035T and and a 3960X, you're pretty much comparing a budget processor and the fastest processor in the world.

Yes, both would probably offer comparable gaming performance, but that has nothing to do with their relative strength. The CPU takes a major backseat to GPU in gaming, but that doesn't change the fact that the Intel chip is in a whole different league and the two simply cannot be compared based on cores per dollar.

That's not an advantage. You could easily run at a lower resolution on a higher resolution screen. I'd say 1366x768 is one of the biggest disadvantages of laptops, since at 15" the pixel density looks utterly awful. It's just very odd to call it an advantage, when it's a limitation.

This is true. You can't even compare processors of different generations based on clock-speeds anymore. The architecture of the two chips is different enough that aside from current gen comparisons clock speed has no bearing on performance.

Ideally just look at benchmarks to gauge how good or bad a processor is and how it compares to other offerings of the same price.

Fine, fine.
Here I am at home now and built this.
The op has no price point in mind.
I wanted to stay under $1,300.

Case.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119196
Its a handy case, I like the handle. Never had a problem with it until I tired to fit my 7970.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284
A single 1Tb HDD. More than enough.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150521
I picked the 6970 because I was trying to stay under $1,300. Comes with Dirt 3 to.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139021
I picked the 750W PSU becuase there is ABSOULTY no reason not to leave some head room for dual cards or a single biger card later.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100007
Thermal paste.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314
8 gigs of DDR3 ram.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121533
Not a intell guy, but this combo looked good.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
I5.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986
Windoze 7

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103091
two fans, one for the side of the case and one for the other side of the CPU cooler.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065
Nice hyper 212. With the push/pull (like I have) it will keep things nice and cool.
$1,170.87 before shipping.
I could go a lot lower, but I would not spend anything less if I was going to build a new pc. Personally I would be in the $2,000 range if I wanted a new build.

The setup should give some nice rates in any game, good case airflow and a srong PSU and CPU to tie it all up.

Edit, yes I left out a DVD reader. $30 at most?