Hello,

I just got Skyrim and am having what I see are similar problems with very slow performance. Here is some information on my system:

AMD Athlon II X2 260 Processor 3.2 GHz
4 GB RAM
64 - bit operating system
Windows 7
Display Adapter is: Radeon X1300/X1550 Series - Dedicated Video memory is 256MB, Total Available Graphics Memory is 2047MB

Is my display adapter the reason for my slow performance?

Also I see a lot of people stating their fps rates. How do I check this? (I assume it can be done during gameplay?).

I am not super computer literate (I know enough to get around). So I may need further explanation.

If I need to upgrade my display adapter, I'm open for suggestions.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Well, i think thats the biggest problem...

try http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/intro.aspx

IGNORE THE BAD ADVICE that got sneaked in while I was typing. The SR Labs are inaccurate and a laughing stock. Do not waste a moment on them.

You just don't have a snowball's chance in he|| of playing anything new with that 6 1/2 year old dinosaur of a graphics card. How did you end up with something that old in your PC?

The game's official requirements are essentially meaningless, since VRAM isn't a measure of graphical performance. However, we do know what will work, and what will not. Only the highest of high end cards from 5 1/2 years ago are still usable, and the X1300 wasn't the very lowest of low end, that was the poor X1050 for that, but it was quite slow at the time.

The oldest of Medium cards still usable are now about 3 1/2 years old. You can't go out and BUY any of those any more, so from among what you can buy, there is the Radeon HD 5570, HD 6570, HD 5670, and the HD 6670. Of those, the best bargains in terms of frame rates per dollar are the HD 6670s, for right at 70 to 80 dollars.

Refer to this article for some advice, although I cannot confirm enough HD 5670s still widely available at prices any better than for the HD 6670, and I've found dozens of those with $85 list prices and $10 MIR rebates, net $75.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fastest-graphics-card-radeon-geforce,3085-2.html

Thanks for the info.

It was an off the shelf unit I bought from local computer company a little more than a year ago. Maybe I'll have to go back and ask them why they slipped me an old card. Probably what they had on hand.

Is going with a newer Radeon card my best option (just double checking) or could I go with a GeForce card as well?

Also could I updgrade to a higher end card say like a Radeon HD 5870 X2 4GB or will that have problems with my current system?

Thanks again.

Radeon tends to be a bit better bang for your buck. The GeForce 9800 GT is a great choice if you can find it for a similiar price.

Regarding upgrading to something new like the Radeon HD 5870 X2 4GB... That's a hell of a card, and it should work, but it's overkill unless you are planning on gaming over 3 or more monitors. Even then something like a HD 6970 or GTX 580 would probably be a better choice. The HD 6950 can be flashed to a 6970, comes in 1 and 2gbs and is pretty cheap right now.

If you want the fastest, highest performance possible, you have to pay for it, but Geforces tend to sit up on the sharp pointed end of the performance ladder. The most useful cards are the ones in the middle, where Radeons hold all the price points. Next month, until whatever nVIDIA answers with, AMD will hold the very top for a change.

"Can you run it?" is completely inaccurate. For example..
http://oi44.tinypic.com/2n07uc9.jpg
There are so many inaccurate things in that screenshot.

CPU - "Info" It's lacking info.
CPU Speed - It passed me when it should have failed me.
Ram - I have 6gb of ram, not 7.
Video Card - That's my "power saving" alternate GPU, not the one I use on a daily basis. Also, I don't have 2.9gb of vram.
Sound Card - That's my webcam, not my sound card.

I wouldn't pair a super card with this cpu: it would be pointless as the cpu would then be the bottleneck. Get a midrange card. Anything more will be a total waste of money...and it might also need extra power.

Ditto to what has been stated by others here, a mid-higher range card and a new processor would be your best bet at this point. I would recommend at least a Quad-Core processor. And as these are getting a bit dated you should find some at reasonable prices. Check with your motherboards manufacturer to see which processors are compatible with your board.

I thought this was fixed so that it cant happen anymore? Thought it was only able to be done in some of the 1st bunch of 6950's produced?
IF you were lucky

No, get a new PC or parts.

You can end up with a complete new decent mid-range gaming PC including gfx card.Research everything and watch for deals , don't get impatient and just buy something becuse it's new or someone you never met said it's awesome.Rule #1 do not ever be a loyal really devoted fan of anything made by a corporation , they're trying to survive and make money.Watch and research products you're interested in then make an informed decision.It's you money after all.

The problem with any technology purchase is being in the best spot of that products' life-cycel.For instance you'll see companies come out with a V.2 of a motherboard etc. This usually means they fixed things after using the real world as guinnea pigs and came up lacking.A good PC build (especially AMD) is based around balance.No AMD cpu right now is going to compliment the highest-end gfx cards as much as an intel cpu can , at stock settings.You need to educate yourself and get your hands dirty in the overclock area.the key is educating yourself to make the most of your had-earned money.

There are many sites to read articles from.Frozencpu.com , hardocp , tomshardware.Never just rely on one source of information ,even these guys have to pay the bills , so get second/third/eigth opinions..That "company" you bought that hardware from did you a geat disservice by pawning their old overstock on you.I get the impression they didn't even ask you what you wanted to do.A reputable salesperson in a mortar and brick shop , the first things you want to hear from them is ,"What are you going to do with your PC?" and, "What's your budget?" Anything else walk away and spend your money somewhere else or ask for a diferent person to speak to. remember , in a free market companies WILL throw old unwanted things on the shelf and not say a word , it's still buyer beware , especially where tech is concerned.

That athlon 2 by itself may be capable of a great overclock , most athlons have shown pretty good potential.But the dual-core is simply outclassed in terms of gaming performance.And since it's an athlon , it's a dedicated die and has no latent cores that "might" be unlockable on certain motherboards.To show you what I mean:

AMD Phenomii x2 unlocked to 4 cores running@ 3.7 ghz - $69.00 (on sale)
8 GB DDR3 1600 G-skill sniper running @240 mhz FSB - $32.00 (manufacturer instant rebate)
AMD HD5850 OC - $230.00 (3 years ago on special)
Antec 750 watt power supply - $89.00 ( 2 years ago instant rebate)
Asrock 890 extreme 3 motherboard - $90.00 ( special no shipping)

This is by no means a super computer , nor would it have been capable of decent gaming performance without tweaking.The motherboard does not support full crossfire potential but has 2 PCI-e slots.But I never advise people to go straight for a dual-graphics setup unless you like being frustrated even more and invest heavily in an aspirin company.But yes , having dual gfx cards gives you "mucho [censored]" to swagger about with.I do recommend using Newegg.com if you decide this route , but I wouldn't recommend just reading the user reviews and following them blindly.Also they're not always gonna be the cheapest , but usually damn competitive if not.I've used them since 2006 and have zero shipping issues with them.

My skyrim experience is just fine without any mods.I'm tempted to try the SKSE mod , but my gut tells me to wait for an official patch.The only place I experience what I would consider "bad lag" is in Markarth , but i hate that city anyway so I can wait for them to patch up their compiling error.the best service you can do yourself is educate yourself as much as possible about anything that interests you , the investment in time learning is well-paid for when you get what you wanted and it was all you.ANy questions feel free to ask , I've been building my own PC's since 2001 , and I'm sure there's others here that are just as well or more versed than I.

Wow... Jerk.
its not bad advice... the site is not set up to actually "test" your PC configurations performance. It simply checks what is being reported as your hardware and compares it to the min/rec requirements. I know its not a "benchmark" and i didn't send him there for one.

Ok , back to keeping this thread useful.Use an app. called CPU-Z , just google it and download it. It will tell you more about your system that you can communicate to others.Such as chipset and socket version.You can go buy any gfx card you want waste all the money you want to , and stick it in one the worst motherboards available , or go out in the yard and burn money in a campfire.Those people sold you "dinosaurs" I would be inspecting the motherboard as well.

It's still inaccurate. It thought my Web Cam was my sound card

It may not be bad advice but that site is poor. It did say that I couldn't run deus ex human revolution. And I can run it very well.

You should upgrade that video card - but nothing more expensive than a midrange card. I'm running E8400, which is a bit more powerful than the AMD Athlon II X2 260 you have, with a Radeon HD6870. The 6870 is about the most powerful card I'd pair with a E8400 CPU, otherwise the CPU will be a bottleneck.

Another option is to upgrade both the CPU and video card, if the socket/chipset of the motherboard allows that. That way you'd get more options on which parts to get.

Oh, and one more thing to check is the power supply, it usually says on the video card packaging/manual about what kind of power supply you'll need.

This...with the ancient graphics card in your system for this "off the shelf" unit I suspect they also put a crappy, split-rail PSU in there too. There's no piece of software you can use to check your PSU, you just have to hope it at least displays its wattage. If the new video card says it needs "400W minimum" I would add 50W-100W to that just to be sure.

And if you need to get a new PSU I recommend a single-rail design, and using a PSU calculator like this: http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html (isn't entirely accurate but good enough for budget builds)

Yeah, I am sure the PSU won't measure up. I would recommend the 6670 with that setup, no extra power required, it draws power from the PCI interface. My wife has a similar setup to the above. Athlon II x2 and 6670. It runs really smooth at 1440x900. 45-60 indoors and around 30-40 outside. Decent performance for a decent price.

PSU is 500W. I pulled my paperwork from computer. This was a new build last year when the motherboard on my Dell failed. Done by a local computer group. They were supposed to put my GeForce 6150SE back into the new build but as I am now recalling something didn't work out with the setup (maybe since it was a TV card as well? can't recall). Anyways the current card appears to be PCI-E card. Looks like one PCI-E slot on motherboard. Two smaller slots below it (PCI?). Now that I have everything open and pulled card I may just run to bestbuy and pickup 6570 card which they have in stock (plus I have a number of gift cards there). If I can get by with it for now it should suffice since this is the most demanding game I have currently (I was still playing Oblivion until last week). If anyone has any other thoughts let me know. I'll check in later.

Thanks for all the advice. You guys are extremely helpfull.

Not possible, since a 6150 SE is built into the motherboard's chipset, which cannot be moved from one system to another.


Please go anywhere other than there for the purchase. Instead of a proper $60 to $70, they will want more than an HD 6670 should be priced at. They hugely inflate graphics card prices there.

I'll look online. The reason I picked Bestbuy was (A): They have the 6570 in stock (don't have 6670) and (: I could easily return if it didn't work. Plus I could pick up and install today. But I will look around online and see what I can find at bette price.

Thanks for the info on the old GeForce card. Guess that is how Dell gets you.

Also - Is it true that the Saffire is the best of the Radeon Cards? (Versus the XFX and the HIS Radeon cards?).

It is usually the one on sale most often, but XFX has a better warranty and better service support. HIS cards are quieter, with a superior cooling solution. When all three are the same price, I like HIS best, XFX second, although I'm not saying to anticipate any trouble from Sapphire, the way that PowerColor's reputation makes them a doubtful choice.

Looks like I can get either one with DDR5 for same price (actualy looks like HIS has $10 rebate on top of price - so that will cover shipping). Probably pull the trigger today and get this in the works. Put the old card in for this week and play Oblivion for one more week.