OK, so I have just installed Skyrim and when I tried to play it, it was not a really nice experience. I can barely play it on all low and 800x680 resolution.
I noticed that my graphics card doesn't show here in launcher, so maybe that's the reason for bad performance and can it be fixed? I uploaded a screenshot.

http://i372.photobucket.com/albums/oo165/BlackSon1c/skyrim.jpg

I'm playing on laptop HP ProBook 4730s, Intel i5 processor, graphics card Radeon HD 6490m and 4GB RAM.

I think I should be able to play it on atleast medium settings, right?

Thanks.

The game's confused by the toy level GPU integrated to the Intel i5 processor. Can you disable it somewhere or make the system favor the Radeon HD 6490m?

Mind you, the 6490m isn't exactly a gamer chip either.

Yeah I know it isn't really some strong graph. card but it should run the game on some higher settings than Intel card.
Do you know where I could set that priority then?

the game is not meant to be played on laptops/mobile workstations likes this, the card is too weak

edit: friend of mine also has a laptop, pretty new one, same thing there. i dont want to disappoint you but if you want to play games like this buy a console or a "real" pc with more horsepower

I have an Nvidia card, so my menus are probably a little different, but hopefully this should point you in at least the right direction.

Navigate to whereever you installed Steam, then \steamapps\common\skyrim and find TESV.exe. There should be something like "run with graphics card->(Set default...)" under the right-click menu, select that. In the screen that comes up, there should be a dropbox somewhere with [intel graphics whatever] - select "Radeon HD 6490m" instead. You may have to go through the dropbox for the program to select TESV.exe again.

Then, do the same thing to SkyrimLauncher.exe. This isn't necessary for the game itself, but it is if you want it to auto-set the graphics options properly.

If nothing else helping: The best way is you are deactivating your intel hd graphics. Go to the bios and search this option somewhere. After a reboot maybe you have to install a the newest ati mobility driver and it should run, thats the way how it run. Because sometimes its not possible to deactivate the hd graphics on desktop and/or there is a bug between the hd graphics/amd graphics. Thats why if you are deactivating in in the bios it should be fine.

You can play it on a laptop. You can play it on a Radeon HD 6490m. I saw it, people did play the game well on laptops like the on of BlackSonic, stop confusing people. Thank you.

Maybe he cant play because he asked you and you have no idea. He should post here and maybe we can help him to run the game.

Thanks guys for help, I'll try to find those options.

Hi everybody,
i 've the same problem, i assigned high performance videocard to both TESV.exe and skyrim launcher, but when i run them, i cannot select the radeon hd in the dropdown list. Can someone give me a hint.
Thanks