[Jessica Stokes]

You need a pretty low powered Graphics Card. Ideally one which doesn't need an additional power connector. The best current ten card you can get with no additional power requirement is a HD 6670. I picked one up for my cheap office PC for this exact reason - it's a cheap dell with a 300w power supply and runs it fine.

5670 is a pretty similar card but from the previous generation. There are DDR3 and GDDR5 versions. GDDR5 gives a reasonable improvement but will cost $10-20 more.

Thank You for the answer!!!

[Connie Thomas]

You need a pretty low powered Graphics Card. Ideally one which doesn't need an additional power connector. The best current ten card you can get with no additional power requirement is a HD 6670. I picked one up for my cheap office PC for this exact reason - it's a cheap dell with a 300w power supply and runs it fine.

5670 is a pretty similar card but from the previous generation. There are DDR3 and GDDR5 versions. GDDR5 gives a reasonable improvement but will cost $10-20 more.


After looking those cards up they require 400W power. Are there cards that can run on 300W?

[jasminε]

Because 95% of the brands of power supply brands are mostly junk, a 500 watt crap PSU is about equal to a quality 275 watt power supply. What brand is yours? The brand is more importan than the watts.

[Leticia Hernandez]

Open your case and look on the side of the PSU and see how many amps it lists on the +12v rail. My Dell 300watt PSU lists 18amps which equates to 216watts on the 12v rail. This is what powers the CPU and GPU and is plenty.

The reality is that a decent 300watt power supply should be fine for a card like that. They draw something like 75 watts which can all be supplied via the PCI-E slot.

The 400 watts listed as recommended are just to leave some extra headroom to account for properly crap power supplies and make life easier for the graphics cards manufacturers as it removes any ambiguity.

[brandon frier]

Because 95% of the brands of power supply brands are mostly junk, a 500 watt crap PSU is about equal to a quality 275 watt power supply. What brand is yours? The brand is more importan than the watts.

Liteon

[chloe hampson]

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730
Win 7
Intel® Core™ i7 CPU
Q720 @1.60 GHz
8 GB of RAM
64 bit operating system

Little concerned about my 1.60 GHz and my graphics card...it is a laptop. Id Skyrim supports multi-threading on multiple cores should I be able to go higher, It is a quad core with 8 threads? Don't know if that makes any difference.

I think I will be at about medium settings. Not sure, It can handle The Witcher 2 with no noticeably problems on highest settings if that means anything. At this point should I just get it on my Xbox 360 though. I am quite torn.

??

[LijLuva]

I am not a fan of any laptops as game platforms, and don't try very hard to keep up, but I think you will need to take into account an automatic Turbo mode for the CPU. Grep49 prepared the second GPU list, the mobility types. Find your Radeon there.

For the 300 watt Liteon brand power supply (previous question), that isn't a known quality brand on my list of good ones. I don't know whether it's even average, sorry.

[Shannon Marie Jones]

I know I have a pretty low-end rig compared to the hardware lists, I just wanted to gauge the community to give me an idea of how this rig should theoretically do if I decided to pick up Skyrim anytime soon. These are my LAPTOP specs:

WIndows 7 Professional 64-bit Service Pack 1
Intel Core 2 Duo T5900 @ 2.20 GHz
4GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 9500M GS

Thanks for any feedback, guys.

[Sweet Blighty]

Anyone with the game unlocked yet using a GeForce 285M? If so, can I get a rough idea of the graphics level I could run at 25-35 FPS?

CPU: Intel Core i7 960 (4 hyper-threaded cores @ 3.2 GHz)
RAM: 12 GB

[N3T4]

Intel Core i5 CPU M450 @ 2.40 GHz
4.00 GB of ram
Intel HD Graphics Card

I want to at least run it fairly well on lowest settings, I can run Deus Ex: HR on lowest settings almost no problem. On all source games I can run them medium/high.

[kiss my weasel]

So, it appears that I will not be able to buy a new computer soon after all (hoping for a miracle), but is it even worth upgrading this one or should I just forget it?
Here's what I've got so far, it will not be able to run Skyrim:

Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual core 4000+ 2.1GHz
1GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2400 series

Windows XP SP3 Professional
And, since my monitor broke down as well, my resolution is 1024x768.

Anyone?

[SamanthaLove]

These are my specs for my Gateway Laptop (NV5909H) :

Approximate Battery Life Up To 2.5 Hours
Hard Drive Speed/Capacity 640GB 5400RPM
LED Backlit Display No
Optical Drive 8x DVD+/-R/RW DL
Processor Speed 2.13GHz
Processor Type Intel Core i3-330M
RAM 4GB DDR3 RAM
Screen Size 15.6 Inches
Graphics
Discrete Video Memory Yes
Expandable Video Memory Yes - Up To 4091MB
Graphics Chipset ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
Integrated Video Memory No
Native Screen Resolution 1600 x 900
Upgradable Video System No
Video Memory 1024MB

How well will this run Skyrim? Would it be even worth it to get it on PC?

[Erika Ellsworth]

So, it appears that I will not be able to buy a new computer soon after all (hoping for a miracle), but is it even worth upgrading this one or should I just forget it?
Here's what I've got so far, it will not be able to run Skyrim:

Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual core 4000+ 2.1GHz
1GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2400 series

Windows XP SP3 Professional
And, since my monitor broke down as well, my resolution is 1024x768.

Anyone?

Most likely not. Just to play the game you'll need more RAM (4 gigs total would be best)and most likely a new card, even more likely you may have to upgrade your PSU along with all that just to get in the Low-Med area of grafics quality. Thats money better spent on a newer system. As is there isn't much of a chance to get the game running on those specs, you'd need to overhaul the entire thing just to make a "passable" PC.

CPU = Decent (2 cores @ 2.1 ghz should be fine)
RAM = Bad (1gig, you should have min of 2 with just Win7 or Skyrim, 4gigs is best)
GPU = Poor (It possible could run on low settings if you added a total of 4 gigs RAM)

[Bad News Rogers]

These are my specs for my Gateway Laptop (NV5909H) :

Approximate Battery Life Up To 2.5 Hours
Hard Drive Speed/Capacity 640GB 5400RPM
LED Backlit Display No
Optical Drive 8x DVD+/-R/RW DL
Processor Speed 2.13GHz
Processor Type Intel Core i3-330M
RAM 4GB DDR3 RAM
Screen Size 15.6 Inches
Graphics
Discrete Video Memory Yes
Expandable Video Memory Yes - Up To 4091MB
Graphics Chipset ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
Integrated Video Memory No
Native Screen Resolution 1600 x 900
Upgradable Video System No
Video Memory 1024MB

How well will this run Skyrim? Would it be even worth it to get it on PC?

It would be most likely in the Low to medium range, it would look just as good on that PC as any other console. But, the PC version of Skyrim can be moded easier.
CPU = Good (Core i3 isn't bad)
RAM = Best (for a Laptop and its DDR3)
GPU = Poor (should be within min recomended to run Skyrim)

[xx_Jess_xx]

Anyone?

So, it appears that I will not be able to buy a new computer soon after all (hoping for a miracle), but is it even worth upgrading this one or should I just forget it? Here's what I've got so far, it will not be able to run Skyrim:

Gigabyte GA-MA69VM-S2
AMD Athlon? 64 X2 dual core 4000+ 2.1GHz
1GB DDR2 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2400 series

Windows XP SP3 Professional
And, since my monitor broke down as well, my resolution is 1024x768.

You left off the VRAM amount, however, you are quite correct that an HD 2400 is way below the minimum, roughly on a par with the onboard chipset chip, HD 4200.

Both that GPU and the X2 4000 were available with some now-obsolete hardware, such as the old AGP video bus, and the S939 processor socket.

We need to know that you have AM2+ and PCIe16.

These are my specs for my Gateway Laptop (NV5909H) :

Approximate Battery Life Up To 2.5 Hours
Hard Drive Speed/Capacity 640GB 5400RPM
LED Backlit Display No
Optical Drive 8x DVD+/-R/RW DL
Processor Speed 2.13GHz
Processor Type Intel Core i3-330M
RAM 4GB DDR3 RAM
Screen Size 15.6 Inches
Graphics
Discrete Video Memory Yes
Expandable Video Memory Yes - Up To 4091MB
Graphics Chipset ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
Integrated Video Memory No
Native Screen Resolution 1600 x 900
Upgradable Video System No
Video Memory 1024MB

How well will this run Skyrim? Would it be even worth it to get it on PC?

Your results will exceed what you would get from a console, in the Medium quality range.

It would be most likely in the Low to medium range, it would look just as good on that PC as any other console. But, the PC version of Skyrim can be moded easier.

GPU = Poor (should be within min recomended to run Skyrim)

Be advised that Bethesda's official minimum is total nonsense, and meaningless. It cannot be relied upon to make any judgments from.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1246287-pc-specs-released/page__st__60__gopid__19146324#entry19146324

[Joe Bonney]

The guy (forgot his name) over at TweakGuides made a YouTube video demonstrating what the game is like at full, ultra settings (maxed).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtjWMN3RlnA&feature=youtu.be

http://www.tweakguides.com/Hardcon09_2.html#System

Just thought I would share so people that are expecting a maxed out game know what to expect...

[Richard]

Be advised that Bethesda's official minimum is total nonsense, and meaningless. It cannot be relied upon to make any judgments from.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1246287-pc-specs-released/page__st__60__gopid__19146324#entry19146324

I completely understand that, but they do give you a general idea of of the specifics the game is going to require. While, the game will run nice on some mobility cards, others just don't have the capibility or they just have low specs. His card is a DX10 card, it just has low specs and very little main hardware (due to being a laptop) to cover a weak GPU.

[Samantha Wood]

Thanks for the replies. I suppose I had already known this, I just thought....

Absolutely gutted. Ah well.

[Miss K]

Thanks for the replies. I suppose I had already known this, I just thought....

It's old, as PCs go, really. You got your value out of it by now; if it isn't a suitable upgrade start, stick it out in the garage for the next time you want to play Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights (the original).

[Euan]

Win 7 x64
4GB RAM
Phenom II B55 3.2GHZ Quad Core
Radeon HD 5670 512MB
Resolution is 1600x900

and also

Win 7 x64
8GB RAM
GeForce GTX 275 896MB
playing also at 1600x900

also thank you for your trouble in advance!

[A Lo RIkIton'ton]

Win 7 x64
4GB RAM
Phenom II B55 3.2GHZ Quad Core
Radeon HD 5670 512MB
Resolution is 1600x900

Medium Settings.

and also

Win 7 x64
8GB RAM
GeForce GTX 275 896MB
playing also at 1600x900

Without a CPU, can't say. What rank was it (GTX 275) in the thread's opening message?

[Marilú]

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730
Win 7
Intel? Core? i7 CPU
Q720 @1.60 GHz
8 GB of RAM
64 bit operating system

Little concerned about my 1.60 GHz and my graphics card...it is a laptop. Idk but if Skyrim supports multi-threading on multiple cores should I be able to go higher, It is a quad core with 8 threads? Don't know if that makes any difference.

I think I will be at about medium settings. Not sure, It can handle The Witcher 2 with no noticeably problems on highest settings if that means anything. At this point should I just get it on my Xbox 360 though? I am quite torn. Especially with all the news about how the PC version is rife with errors. I need some recommendations here people. Seriously...Help??

Three times posted...three times ignored.

[Strawberry]

Intel HD Graphics (Core i5)
4GB RAM
Intel Core i5 CPU

Any chance at all on the minest of specs?

[Elena Alina]

Intel HD Graphics (Core i5)
4GB RAM
Intel Core i5 CPU

Any chance at all on the minest of specs?

IMO, rather doubtful.

[Bitter End]

Medium Settings.


Without a CPU, can't say. What rank was it (GTX 275) in the thread's opening message?

oops. sorry. a Phenom II B55 3.2GHz Quad Core. the GTX 275 is in the high ranking. but i was wondering if its possible i could get ultra with 1600x900 resolution.