Hmm, okay. Thanks for the answers Gorath and Kalniel.
I'm considering to get a new computer now. My budget would be less than $1000-$1500 or so.
I may have to find individual parts and ask a shopkeeper to help me fix because I noticed most brands online shop PCs' graphic cards are not listed for the max setting.
I'm considering to get this parts:
- Processor: Intercore i5 processor
- Memory: 8GB ram (just to be safe..)
- Graphic Card: Sapphire HD 6950
- 500GB space
I've little knowledge so I want to know the difference between:
- i5, i7, amd and quad-duo. Which one is better for skyrim and any other games? How are they ranked?
- Sapphire HD 6950. I saw Radeon 6950 in the list but not Sapphire. Are the both the same card or different?
Can this pc be played on max setting + mods without lags in maps and towns?
To answer the ultimate question: No. Or at least, not really.
Unfortunately Skyrim is very dependant on CPU power, in particular single-threaded performance. That means the number of cores (above 2) is largely irrelevant, but clockspeed (and how much each chip can do per clock tick) are important. That last bit (how much they can do per tick) is a bit of a gotcha for AMD CPUs at the moment - they have focused on multi-threaded performance, which is what other games and applications are beginning to use, but it's come at the expense of power per tick in single-threaded performance. So as much as AMD are excellent CPUs, for Skyrim the best performance can be found with Intel chips.
Once you've gone for Intel there are several series' of chips to consider, and Intel don't help with their numbering! At the moment the chips that perform best for the money in Intel are the Core i3, i5 and i7 Sandybridge chips (socket 1155). Intel calls these 2nd Generation Core i3/i5/7 Processors. i7 processors are a little more expensive, have a little more cache, have a bit higher clockspeed and either have more cores or enable hyperthreading compared to i5 chips.
In short for the normal (excluding low power variants) desktop chips:
i3 = 2 cores + 2 hyperthreaded cores
i5 = 4 cores, no hyperthreading
i7 = 4 cores + 4 hyperthreaded cores
We've already said cores (and thus hyperthreaded cores) aren't important to Skyrim, but the cache and slight clockspeed improvements could be useful, however IMHO it's not worth the increase in premium over an i5, especially if you consider overclocking. So I'll concentrate on the i5 family.
Which intel describe here:
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/59134/2nd-Generation-Intel-Core-i5-Processors/desktop
As you can see there's still quite a lot of choice. In general, the higher the number, the better the performance. The letters after the name represent special features relevant to a particular target audience - T is ultra low power, S is low power, K is enthusiast. And no letter is the normal version. It's unlikely you are interested in low-power versions so the choice is between the normal and the K version. Put simply: the K version allows very simple overclocking - really it's a breeze! Underneath the model names you can see the base clockspeed.. but one of the neat tricks of the core i5 chip (and i7) is that this is only a base speed - when there is spare headroom in the chip (when you aren't maxing out all the cores for eg.) the chip turbos up to much faster frequencies - these are the frequencies that are going to be used when playing Skyrim, so the base speeds are kind of useless and should be ignored, you have to click on the chip to see the max turbo frequency. Core i3 chips are great value for money, and work great for games as well, but can't turbo - but they might be running faster than a low end i5 can turbo to! See the ranking below for example.
So that's a long winded way of saying ideally go for an i5 2500K processor, along with a motherboard that allows easy overclocking (p67 or z68 based), and adding a nicer cooler for the CPU will also help. If you don't want to overclock then look for the chip that has the highest turbo frequency that you can afford.
So an effective ranking for Skyrim would be
(happy to overclock, best first):
i7-2700k
i7-2600k
i5-2500k (turbo speed 3.7ghz, but can overclock to 4+ghz easily)
i7-2600
i5-2500 (turbo speed 3.7ghz)
i5-2400
i3-2130 (clock speed 3.4ghz)
i3-2125
i5-2320
i3-2120
i5-2310
i5-2300
i3-2100
If you're not happy to overclock then the i5-2500k is in the same place as the non-K version. I've highlighted 3 value for money ones. Even the i3 chips have dual core + hyperthreading, so they're great for games as they are rarely very well threaded. If you have other applications that are very threaded though (like video encoding etc.) the i5s that have four real cores like the 2500 will be faster.
Graphics!
The 6950 is a great card.. though in a month new cards from AMD are coming out that might lower the price. All 6950s are the same chip, but different end manufacturers might use different coolers and include extras in the package. Check which one provides the best warranty where you are for example. Sapphire are a fine make, so are just about all of them to be honest - I have a powercolor and it's been fantastic, I've had sapphire, Asus, MSI, leadtek in the past. The only make I would personally be cautious with is XFX, but I'm sure others would recommend them.
But back to that question - with an i5 2500 or better you'll have a great experience at max settings, but it'll still lag occasionally in cities. Overclocking will help a bit, but I don't think there's any setup out at the moment that can truly do 60fps everywhere in this game. Of course, you might not notice lag even if it drops below 60fps, and with an RPG like Skyrim FPS isn't all that important anyway.
» Mon May 28, 2012 1:25 pm 
