[Abi Emily]

thanks, I didn't actually purchase the card. it was a hand me down from a friend after my other pc was lost in a fire so I had to make due with what I could.

[I love YOu]

The next step up from a gt 520 for ready comparison is a GT 545, which for any other game is going to be running in the lower half of Medium. The 530 and 540 aren't included as selections for comparison at GPU Review, but the first one basically is still just the GT 430, anyway.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=650&card2=666

I was correct about the 64 bit memory system, I see. The GT 445 will do a lot better than Medium in Skyrim because of the rather low demand graphics available.

[Sylvia Luciani]

thanks, I'm going to save up a bit and probably get an Nvidia GTX 550 or a radeon HD 6850. I'll just deal with the low graphic until then

[sara OMAR]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm about ready to order the PC now.

My final specs are:
CPU: AMD FX 4100 Black Edition (4x3.60GHz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte M68MT-S2P
Memory: 4.0GB Corsair DDR3 1600mhz Vengeance (1x 4GB)
Hard Drive: 500GB S-ATAII 3.0Gb/s
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 1GB
Sound Card: Onboard 7.1 Audio
Power Supply: 500W Xigmatek

I've bumped down the GPU from GTX 560ti to a simple GTX 560 to save a bit of money, and left the RAM at 4GB. I've also upgraded to a slightly better CPU cooler.
As for the monitor, I've been considering using my TV, seeing as it's 21.5", LCD and full 1080p HD. I wonder, though, would I need a DVI to HDMI cable? I've tested it with my laptop, and used the cable I use to connect my Xbox 360 to the TV. However, I'm not sure if it's different for PCs.

Again, thanks for all your help and patience, it's much appreciated

[Jamie Moysey]

Hey guys, just wondering how well and what resolution would be best for me to run Skyrim at:
Screen size: 13.3"
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6630M
Processor: i7-2640M @2.80GHz (3.50GHz with Turbo Boost)(whatever the hell turbo boost means lol)
Running Windows 7 64-bit professional
4GB of RAM
Thanks.
BTW: I have the game on PS3 and am buying it for PC because I was blown away by the mods!

[Charity Hughes]

This topic fails quite a lot, I get no, or next to no fps difference on ultra to low, so long as I don't touch AA, AF, FXAA (which is laggier than AA for some reason...) and keep shadows on low.

So a good fps setting is:
8x AF
2x AA
Shadows low
Everything else, ultra.

[Teghan Harris]

Hi guys,

I'm going to buy a laptop very soon and I want to know what i can expect from this laptop when running Skyrim... if its better than my xbox, i would be pleased...

processor model: i5-2430M
processor speed: 2.40Ghz
processor core: dual core (2 core)
cache: 3MB
RAM: 8GB
DDR3 SDRAM
14''
Graphic Card: GT 540M 1GB
OS: 64-bit

Thanks for the replies guys!

[Kathryn Medows]

Hey guys, just wondering how well and what resolution would be best for me to run Skyrim at:
Screen size: 13.3"
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6630M
Processor: i7-2640M @2.80GHz (3.50GHz with Turbo Boost)(whatever the hell turbo boost means lol)
Running Windows 7 64-bit professional
4GB of RAM
Thanks.
BTW: I have the game on PS3 and am buying it for PC because I was blown away by the mods!

Hi guys,

I'm going to buy a laptop very soon and I want to know what i can expect from this laptop when running Skyrim... if its better than my xbox, i would be pleased...

processor model: i5-2430M
processor speed: 2.40Ghz
processor core: dual core (2 core)
cache: 3MB
RAM: 8GB
DDR3 SDRAM
14''
Graphic Card: GT 540M 1GB
OS: 64-bit

Thanks for the replies guys!

You two are looking at around medium settings, I believe, maybe a tad higher depending on what setting you don't mind turning down.

[Charlie Ramsden]

As far as modding goes, how much can i squeeze out of a card with 1gb of vmem when it comes to hd textures and what not? is 1gb enough to make skyrim look awesome in hd?

[Marie]

The VRAM is incidental to performance. It is Core Speed, RAM speed, memory bandwidth, and shader processor count that makes the real difference.

Compare those factors on these two examples:

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=585&card2=654

The HD 4350 could have four GBs of VRAM attached, and be a worse choice than an HD 6670 with "only" 512 MBs.

[Michelle Chau]

Perhaps the Radeon vs Radeon comparison isn't convincing enough for the nVIDIA fans, so look at these two, and the same thing applies. No matter what amount of VRAM a 210 / 310 may have attached makes no difference. It's still junk, and a GTX 550 with only 512 MBs would be better in every way, if there was such a card.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=621&card2=647

[MatthewJontully]

They're right, a 6850 or a 560 card are your starting points when it comes to powering skyrim with hi res mods,go up from there and it only gets better.

[quinnnn]

I'm putting a PC together for Skyrim and I have most of the components already. I need to get a PSU with at least 550W. I know that in many things it's a matter of "you get what you pay for." Does the same apply to power supplies?

I'm browsing http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007657%20600014021%20600014072&IsNodeId=1&name=550W.

I'm shocked to find that the 550 watts range from $19.99 to over $80. I assume these are all compatible with my ATX board and the mid-sized case I want to get???

What do you guys say? Should I just go for the cheapo LOGISYS and free up my money for some extra RAM, or will I be sorry when six months later smoke starts rising from the back of my case?

EDIT: One reason for my confusion is I had already budgeted for http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371004: a $54, 500W Antec, and then at the last minute I thought it might be better to go with a little more power so I sorted by price and found there are higher power devices going for less money. So now I have no idea what to do. Why on earth would anyone spend $50 for 500 watts when they can pay $20 for 550, unless quality is a real issue with these?

[Janette Segura]

I'm putting a PC together for Skyrim and I have most of the components already. I need to get a PSU with at least 550W. I know that in many things it's a matter of "you get what you pay for." Does the same apply to power supplies?

I'm browsing http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007657%20600014021%20600014072&IsNodeId=1&name=550W.

I'm shocked to find that the 550 watts range from $19.99 to over $80. I assume these are all compatible with my ATX board and the mid-sized case I want to get???

What do you guys say? Should I just go for the cheapo LOGISYS and free up my money for some extra RAM, or will I be sorry when six months later smoke starts rising from the back of my case?

EDIT: One reason for my confusion is I had already budgeted for http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371004: a $54, 500W Antec, and then at the last minute I thought it might be better to go with a little more power so I sorted by price and found there are higher power devices going for less money. So now I have no idea what to do. Why on earth would anyone spend $50 for 500 watts when they can pay $20 for 550, unless quality is a real issue with these?

quality is a real issue... ya dont put a lawnmower engine in a ferrari, and ya dont try to push a 4-500$ rig with twenty bux. you will at the very least end up buying a new psu... at worst end up trying to get reimbursed by the company for damages.

Power is very important in a pc, love your machine and only feed her the best. You wont regret a penny you spend on a quality psu, but you will probably regret the 50 bux you save by being cheap.

EDIT: of anything on that page the 69.00 rosewill is the only one i'd get... its modular too which is a big bonus for a diy builder. (to be honest IMO a 750 is a low wattage psu for gaming rig, sli/crossfire is the easiest/safest way to up your gpu viability and you couldnt tandem a very big card with 550 watts)

also: newegg has a rating system, USE THE FILTER! it can save you alot of headaches. "featured" items are ones they want to move, for whatever reason. Set the filter to best rated and see what comes up, (and what disapears off the page)

[Umpyre Records]

Wonderful. Thank you ?ther Seraph.

Do you approve of the $54 Antec linked in my post? It about taps out my budget. Of course I'd like to have that extra 50 watts. This is to power a GTX 550 TI (already purchased), some ASUS i7 board (already purchased) and 4 gigs of DDR3.

[Mackenzie]

Wonderful. Thank you ?ther Seraph.

Do you approve of the $54 Antec linked in my post? It about taps out my budget. Of course I'd like to have that extra 50 watts. This is to power a GTX 550 TI (already purchased), some ASUS i7 board (already purchased) and 4 gigs of DDR3.

Im wary about approving anything on the page honestly... read the reviews and you can easily find out that a dead psu will cost ya at least 20 bux to RMA, which wont help your budget.

You should post your build, without it there really isnt anyway for me to endorse anything with any confidence.

[Shae Munro]

Pretend that the computer is a human being. The CPU is its brain, the GPU is its heart, the motherboard is its skeleton, and the PSU is its digestive system. For gaming, you need a LOT of heart, normally, with Skyrim being deficient in graphic quality, it runs with less power for that organ than a normal gaming PC. A cheap PSU will starve the system to death or poison it. The brands I think you can trust all models from are Corsair, Enermax, Fortron, Seasonic, and (well, memory freak-out time -- OK, got it) "Sparkle".

Most of the Antec models have been great, but in the past they had at least one bad line, so I don't feel I can trust them quite as much.

The biggest problem with the greatest majority of PSUs, and I don't trust Rosewill myself, is that they are entirely likely to destroy the rest of a computer when they fail.

P. S. Because the majority of the PSU brands are not to be trusted, most of the component producers have chosen to greatly overstate the current requirements in watts, to encourage people to pick the highest rated among the cheap generic stuff. A quality Corsair power supply rated at 450 watts is very likely to provide MUCH more current than a Coolmax or Raidmax 1000 watt rated cheapie.

Many of the power supply makers include a simple calculating function on their sites adding up advertised wattage requirements for various components to allow a shopper to obtain a maximum wattage requirement (which usually will equate more to the low quality PSU brands' claims of watts than to higher quality brands' more accurate numbers, no matter that the calculator is hosted on a quality brand web site). Since a 30%, minimum, usability count should always be added, it will cover that and then some.

Even the best brands will deteriorate with use, about 10% loss per year.

[Taylrea Teodor]

I took a closer look at the antec you referred to, and i wouldnt recommend it. That model is a replacement psu for a retail pc, like a dell or someother such thing. DONT get it. it only has x2 12v rails w/only a measly 16amps each.

Its really hard to say whats going to meet your needs without an idea of what your going to be powering. (to reflect Gorath, i dont know what calorie intake your computer's body will require)

Flat out though? the best 5-600watt gaming psu on newegg would be the cougar 560. It isnt modular but it has two rails that boast 48 amps between them. (one is 28 amps with another @20 amps) This is a 70 dollar psu which is low budget for sure, The comparative rosewill is the same price but is a single 12v rail with 38 amps.

But like i told you already 750 watts is low for a gaming rig... with 560 watts you definitely run the risk of installing a new device in the future (optical drive. case-fans w.e.) and having your psu give out as a result. A tandem gpu setup is even more unlikely. (i would imagine it could push 2 of the nvidia 550's that have 192 cores)

when i say give out i mean that the psu will sense the overcurrent and trip for safety. You would still be able to use it just not with all the devices connected. Cougar make enthusiast quality products and the 560 is the lowest wattage they have on newegg.

A good way to find decent low wattage psu's is to look for brand's that have limited product count and mainly produce higher wattage psu's. Just search for 700-1200 watt psu's, find a brand that offers them, look at all the products they offer and grade down from there, when you find a brand that has a dozen or less psu's on newegg with most of them at 600w or more you might have a winner. Look at some reviews and go from there. (think quality over quantity in terms of product count) A large company that offers a crapload of products can afford to RMA by sheer volume, but a smaller company maintain's it's profit margin by ensuring quality. There will always be a few doa's so dont let that discourage you while looking at the reviews.

[chirsty aggas]

Gorath and Seraph, thank you for your help!

Here's what I have purchased already, sitting in their boxes on my table ready for assembly:

Asus P8P67 LE Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2500K Processor
GeForce GTX550Ti - 1024MB GDDR5
4GB DDR3
Windows 7 Home Premium

Now that I've posted what I have, I guess I can ask a few more questions.

1) Should I rip the Creative SB X-Fi from my current rig and install it on that, or does that board have a decent enough onboard sound card?

2) I know I still need to buy a case, a hard disk, a PSU and a DVD drive to install the OS. Is there anything else I need to get this rig up and running?

3) A friend of mine told me I need a 6GB/Sec SATA drive. He and I tried to put this together using my old chassis and slower hard drive and encountered all sorts of trouble getting the OS to install. It wouldn't recognize that a HD even existed, even though we had reformatted it. Can anyone concur that an older, slower HD can cause OS installation/recognition problems?

4) I have $200 to play with. Maybe a little more if my beloved girlfriend agrees to dip into the savings, but I'm only counting on 200 at this point. I can skimp on a new HD because I don't need that much space. I have my old 250GB and 1TB drives I can use for storage. So I'm planning on buying the best quality but smallest HD I can get. Does anyone see a problem with this strategy?

5) Does anyone care to play a game and suggest the PSU and HD (EDIT: and case!) you might buy if you had the components listed above in yellow with $200 to spend? Can anyone save me enough money to afford 4 more gigs of RAM (a longshot and I know I'll have to wait for that but just throwing it out there)

Thanks much.

[Syaza Ramali]

Some of what you are working with goes beyond the scope of this particular message thread. Most of my own builds the past few years have started out with a prior system being salvaged for optical drives, speakers, keyboard, mouse, whatever is peripheral to the project. Only occasionally will I save an older system as last configured, in case I want to have a platform for older era games.

Our major thrust with this thread is what to expect in the game from a given set of components, not the process of selecting or assembling components. The correct place for such wide-ranging discussions is here:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1328500-the-community-tech-thread-no-111/

[Kim Kay]

Gorath, I knew such a thread existed and failed to find it. Thank you. I've reposted my question there.

[GabiiE Liiziiouz]

Hi, I already own the game on Xbox 360 but the mods and the CK coming out are really incentives for me to buy the game on PC. I'm wondering if my laptop could handle Skyrim (the idea is to plug it on the TV) or if I should just forget it:

Samsung R780
Windows 7
Intel Core i5 M450 2.40 ghz
4 gig ram
Card: Nvidia GeForce GT 330M ( 1 gig of dedicated ram, if that makes sense - English is not my first language)


Also, do mods affect performance a lot in general? I wouldn't want to find out I can run the game vanilla but not with mods, since I already have the vanilla on Xbox.

Thank you.

[sarah taylor]

As you could have seen, I believe, from Greg49's ranking of mobile cards in the OP (first post), a 330 is comparatively low on the scale (it is a modified 240), so it will run the game, although not above the lower end of the Medium Class, and adding mods that may enhance the ordinary appearance of the game will have more chance go beyond the limits that the 330 affords than would be true of a more up to date (and / or higher spec'd) design.

[Jessica White]

As you could have seen, I believe, from Greg49's ranking of mobile cards in the OP (first post), a 330 is comparatively low on the scale (it is a modified 240), so it will run the game, although not above the lower end of the Medium Class, and adding mods that may enhance the ordinary appearance of the game will have more chance go beyond the limits that the 330 affords than would be true of a more up to date (and / or higher spec'd) design.

Thanks for the input. I guess sticking with content mods as opposed to graphic mods would be better. Will probably try, if only for the CK and some personal fine tuning. Not a big fan of Steam, but that's a whole other issue.

[LuBiE LoU]

The VRAM is incidental to performance. It is Core Speed, RAM speed, memory bandwidth, and shader processor count that makes the real difference.

This seems to be the technical consensus so far (speed > size). With that in mind I'm looking to upgrade to the following. My goal would be running Skyrim on high settings without FPS issues.

GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) FPB 1GB
I've already got this.

Intel Pentium E5700 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core
(This would be an upgrade from my 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo. Also, it's the same CPU slot - LGA 775. I like the specs and price of the AMD Phenom II, but it's for slot AM3. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm guessing that means that it won't fit into my motherboard.)

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

Also, what is the aesthetic difference between Oblivion high settings and Skyrim high settings? I love quality environments, but FPS and stability are more important to me.

What do y'all think?