Crysis and Metro 2033 are supposed to be among the most demanding on your GPU. I haven't tried either but I'm able to get at least 40-60 fps for most recent games (including New Vegas, Civ5, DAO, ME2, RE5, Arcania, The Witcher) at 1920x1080, all detail settings maxed, on my laptop which has a much lower class graphics card (the mobility HD 5830, based on the desktop 5770) than the desktop 6850 or 4870 cards. I get constant 60fps on vanilla Oblivion if vsync is enabled, a bit lower with OBGEv2, ENBSeries, QTP3 and lots of other mods installed.

I would be surprised if anyone has difficulty getting decent frame rates on Skyrim at 1080p resolution with any of the first or second-tier AMD or nVidia gaming-oriented desktop graphics cards, especially those of you who are running dual cards. In any case, if Skyrim is the primary reason you are considering an upgrade it would be best to wait until a bit closer to the release date.

I have a Geforce 9800GT and I'm sure it'll run it, my logic is that if it needs to look good on a 360 or a PS3, then it should look good on my PC.

I've got a Nvidia GT320 which can run Crysis on high comfortably so I don't see the ATI 6850 having to much trouble with Skyrim.

And they wonder why the PC market is seen as elitist and complicated. These card makers who deliberately try and gull people into buying their substandard cards with ambiguous nomenclature or flashy but misleading stats are doing themselves no favours.

My mate was buying a new PC and he was talking about all the games he wanted to play. When i asked him what type of card it was he said it had a gigabyte of memory (as if that was the sole important part of graphics processing). I checked the card and it was a peice of rubbish with just enough power to run solitaire and maybe aero but it had a fancy name that lumped it in with the latest cards and a big flashy amount of RAM. What utterly stupid short termism from these card makers. What would have happened when he bought this card and found the computer couldn't run anything? What would his opinion of PC gaming be? Millions must be conned like this every year and turn back to their consoles.

/rant

Well before I bought my card, even though I'm not that knowledgeable into hardware, I checked on the internet and asked on the forums. I do research before paying money....so it's really his fault.

Newer doesn't necessarily mean better. As long as you have a dual card ATI 5850 (which is Direct X11), it should be more than capable of running Skyrim. You will likely see little to no improvement with the 6850 to be honest. It's just a way for AMD to make easy money. Most games still aren't Direct X11 capable.

You don't need a dev telling you. A near top of the line card is going to run a game flawlessly that is designed to run on consoles.

I imagine it'll run better than you fear, worse than you expect. Meaning you may be able to run it on high, but FPS will dip below 30-25 at times.

As for upgrading to the 7000 series, if they're anything like the 6000 series in price per performance, I'd say skip them all together and wait for the GTX 600 series from NVIDIA. With how it is right now (a 6970 costs $20 more than a GTX 570, yet the GTX 570 matches or beats the 6970 performance wise and an OC'd GTX 570 outperforms an OC'd 6970 by far), it would be silly to not invest in an NVIDIA card.

I will give the AMD cards this though. They are very good at handling higher resolutions (higher than 1920x1200), and they're good if you plan on using more than one (as in Crossfire). But at this rate, if you only want a single card, it would be silly to not invest in NVIDIA.

I suspect that CPU-power is more crucial than GPU as it were in Oblivion. The AI seems advanced so CPU power is needed. Of course you need decent GPU aswell but I think good CPU does wonders in Skyrim. It's coming for current generation consoles aswell so I think the requirements aren't that steep.

would a 5870 beat a gtx470?

also, how much do either of those go for?

ALSO..right now i have a quad core @ 3.2ghz, is it worth investing into a hex or possibly more?

1: no

2: lots of money

3: no

It would be very back and forth between them with maybe the 5870 being the overall winner by just a little bit.

The GTX 470s are running for about $260, while the 5870s are going for about $300.

Though, in all honestly, I would stay away from the GTX 400s. They were basically flops and very soon replaced by the GTX 500s. So if you're wanting to go for a 5870, I would actually save an extra $50 and get a GTX 570, as the performance of that card beats the highest GTX 400 GPU, meaning it will easily outperform the 5870 without any problem whatsoever. And, as stated, it easily matches and even out performs AMD's latest and greatest offerings with the 6900 series, for less.

For your CPU, if you REALLY want an extra bit of performance, try learning how to overclock.

truly insightful


the 570 sells for $700 NZD, where as i could pick up a 5870 for $400-$600
also, will the 570 beat the 5970?

Concerning GPU:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/162?vs=160

I would get a HD6950, currently as low as $285 with rebate... by late spring they'll be close to $200 most likely. They have a dual-BIOS feature and most of them have proven to be unlockable to a HD6970. The HD7xxx series should also be out and it will be made using a 28nm process. As current AMD enthusiast and performance GPUs have been OC'd to over the 1GHz mark on the 40nm process, the Overclocking potential of the HD7000 series could be tremendous.

The GTX570 is also something to look at and there should be new offerings from Nvidia before the Skyrim release as well.


Concerning CPU:
I wouldn't waste any money or time on upgrading your CPU.

Ah. I see. US prices differ very much from NZD it seems.

As for your question, HELL NAW!!! The 5970 is a dual GPU card, so not even the most powerful single GPU card (GTX 580) will be able to touch it. The 5970 and the upcoming 6990 are in completely different leagues of their own and won't be bested by the competition until they make dual GPU cards as well. And, of course, investing in the 5970 or the 6990 will basically require a hefty amount of money from your wallet, as the 5970 still sells for around $600 US, I think.

Actually, the GTX 580 can hold it's own against a HD5970.

If anyone doesn't feel they need a card now, but is considering needing a card for Skyrim, time is on your side. I wouldn't even be window shopping at this point.

Well you could get GTX480 for less than $500NZD or GTX470 for $369 on tm, either way the gpu price in NZ is at least 25% more expensive than US
5970 is faster than GTX 570 from the benchmarks

The won't cause they CAN'T discuss REQUIREMENTS YET.

btw, i already answered you, or exactly the same question by another person

This game is a multiplat... Most cards on the market today will probably be able to run it.

I wish they could tell us what they are running it on. If they could do that and give their general FPS it should tell a lot.

True in some cases, but not in all. In a lot of benchmarks I've seen, the 5970 has at least a leading margin of 15-25 FPS. But yes, in some cases, it can hold its own.

I'm sure it will be fine. Thats a pretty beastly card for its market segment and I dont see how it couldn't run with at least medium settings in HD. It has good DX11 performance too so if the game has DX11 You''ll be getting that too. I dont see any mid range DX11 card not being able to run Skyrim. unless you must max everything lol. Even then you still might be able to who knows.

is that including currency rate?

on topic - i dont think they can give us an exact system req, because they are probably implementing new features and new effects etc, due to the generally negative response to the GI

Hey, I have an ultra powerful graphics card that can run pretty much every game on the market with max settings and 16x AA. Will this game run too?