Thanks for the edited info :thumbsup:

Overkill on gfx, Also the majority of people are switching over to 64 bit and if there not they are silly pants. 64 bit is STANDARD for desktops at best buy.

Same thing with XP users not getting onboard with win7; luckily BF3 will force them to upgrade.

This, I assume they will be similar. And just like the Fallouts ran better than OB even though they had better graphics, I think SR due to optimization(and taking advantage of DX11 optimize specifically) will run even better than the Fallouts.

Not sure what kind of resopnces you have gotten But I have built a gaming system or two in my time. In my opinion if you have the skills ( at last build it was not that hard to do) build your own system it is cheeper and you get to choose what you want. I would go with an ASUS mother board right now I am I'ing the Rampage III Black Edition but I am sure the Rampage III will be just as good. One thing to keep in mind and this seems to work well never max out your mother board if it can take an i7 quad use a low speed Quad or a hi speed i7 duel. I prefer to match the mother board with the graphics card ASUS with ASUS but I have not yet researched the latest ASUS graphis cards. I am sure an Nvidia geforce GTX 460 ( I have) or better will work just fine. I am no expert this just seems to work well. New Egg seams to be a good buying source but shop around combos are all over the net. But as stated earlier the game is still 6 months out who knows for sure what the specs. will be for sure. Hope this was of help. buy the way alienware is a good choice if you want to spend the money.

doesn't sound like the poster you replied to is in the US so i'm not sure how helpful this would be but you can always try sites like cyberpowerpc.com and use their configurator. It will let you configure a system which you can order, or just print the configuration and go price the parts and order it yourself.

edit - and to that poster i'd say stay away from alienware. while they are decent machines you are paying a very high overhead just for the name.

My current PC:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz
RAM: 4 GB DDR2
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
OS: Windows 7 64 Bit

So by this guide, I should be able to run Skyrim on medium graphics, which is fine for me. Only thing I'm having some difficulty understanding is your advice on mods.



Now Oblivion is an older game and so I suspect it mods for Skyrim to be somewhat more taxing, but with my current setup I run Oblivion well enough on high with around 230 mods, plus extra uncounted mods that are merged with the Bashed Patch function of Wrye Bash. So I'm wondering how 20 mods for Skyrim could be considered a lot and and demanding a quad core cpu to run normally. I do suppose some mods can be more intensive then others, like Better Cities is a pretty substantially performance lowering mod (I still run it without lag though), so maybe you mean 20 big, intense mods like it or FCOM (I have this too).

I can't be sure until I get the game, but I'll probably get more than 20 mods eventually with Skyrim. Should I be looking to upgrade my processor? I'm a bit leery about cracking open my case and adding things, I've never done it before and I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to make it a quad core since I bought it premade from Cyberpower about a year and a half ago.

Thanks for any help you can provide, I understand hardware a bit but not really well and could certainly use some advice.

i would imagine by 20 mods he means major mods. there are many OB mods that are relatively insignificant but there are some that are pretty major, OOO & MMM, not to mention some of the better quest mods.

If you can already run Oblivion on High settings with your rig, you will probably be able to do the same with Skyrim, with framerate to spare. Since it's being designed for the same console architecture as Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, the requirements will be roughly the same as all of those games. But the engine will be optimized better than the one used for Oblivion, making it more efficient overall.



It's not even known yet that Skyrim will even be able to make use of a quad-core, that ability has to be written into the base code. I don't see it happening really as the Xbox is only a tri-core, so the PC version will probably only be making use of dual-cores like their previous games. Not to mention that dual-cores are currently the most common processor being used on home computers at this point in time. It would make sense that they cater to the widest possible market that they can by focusing on the dual-core systems out there. So I wouldn't worry about upgrading your processor at this point. Just wait until the game comes out and make your decision then.

Yeah, I would guess he means the big overhauls in enemies and equipment, but most of the mods I have control various smaller things I think, or are various just various plugins patching or associated with OOO, MMM, Frans, or FCOM.



Alright, well that's takes a load off my mind, thank you. As long as I can run the game fairly well even with a good amount of smaller mods and a few good overhauls, I can still have my perfect Skyrim!

Speaking from personal experience, I can get constant 60 fps with Oblivion when using v-sync, but nowhere near that with FO3 or FNV.

I hope Bethesda will release some sort of official Skyrim hi res texture pack that might result in less of a hit on fps and load times compared with an "unofficial" texture pack.

Thank you very much for all the info, it is really helping me to make my mind up whether to upgrade my PC instead of just buying it on console. Last time I planned something like this was when Oblivion was coming out.

So two GTX 470's will kill it?

Apparently even a AMD 6870 would be overkill for Skyrim :whistling:

It is around ￡150 currently (￡200 on release). I wonder what it will be around November...Hmm.

Put it like this, a 6850 is slightly better than a GTX 460, the 6870 is up the the GTX 470. So yeah I could see it being a good buy in November.
Also don't forget that the GTX 480 is getting older but its still a very quick card, could see the prices of that being pretty low, its currently around the 200 quid mark.

While I'm not getting anywhere near 60 FPS in Oblivion, my experience has been the opposite. I can have my settings in Fallout 3 a little bit higher than Oblivion and still end up with better framerate.

I have a question.

I'm not computer expert, but surely, if Skyrim is designed to play on the 360, which hasn't improved in spec since it was released, then any PC that can play Oblivion or Fallout3 on max should be able to play Skyrim on max???????

The OP has low specs with a Geforce 8800! I play Oblivion on full graphics (without the AA etc which the Xbox version doesn't have anyway, I believe) and I also play Fallout 3 on full graphics.

I understand, that if you want super graphics with all the bumped up features provided by a good graphics card (like extra AA and such) then yes a good GFX card is required, but for Xbox 360 level graphics, wouldn't an 8800 offer that?

If you're running Oblivion and FO3 with everything maxed except AA, you'll be good to go with Skyrim. You might even get better performance this time around depending on how well their new engine is optimized.

Just a general question, what sort of specs am I looking at for ￡650?

That's pretty much the size of it. The system requirements haven't changed all that much for their last 3 games, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. There's only been minor changes in each of them, with Fallout 3 and New Vegas being pretty much identical. So if you can already max out those games, you should be able to do the same with Skyrim. The only change this time that I foresee is them listing a DX11 card as recommended, since the game will use some of those features apparently.

this is a bit vague. do you have a platform that you could start with and upgrade as necessary? if so, please provide specs. if not, where exactly are you from?

If you're in UK and you want a whole system and don't want to build it yourself, go to PCSpecialist.co.uk

I got my PC from them about 3 years ago and it's still running with no issues and they are good to deal with.

They've updated their site a lot now and they have a system validator, when you put a custom build together, it tells you of any issues you might experience, if your build is not very good (Like not enough power or whatever).

You could get a good build for that much, which would be a lot better than my PC and mine plays Oblivion, COD4 and Fallout3 on max.

I thought that would be the case, thank you. I’m running New Vegas at max on everything, and other than the usual micro-stutter and tiny bits of lag when you cross from one exterior cell to another it runs fine on my rig. I get the usual drop in FPS when there are a lot of NPC’s in a cell, but otherwise I’m usually a steady 40 to 60 fps. (usually pegged at 60)

Based on that, I don’t think I’ll see enough performance increase to justify shelling out nearly $1000 for a new build right now, do you?

Here’s the main stuff I’m running:

E8500 Wolfdale
8 gig DDR2 at 1366
GTX 470
Vista Home Basic 64

Do you believe Skyrim will adequately utilize 4 cores and that much memory? I seem to remember there being considerable debate about actually how much memory that Fallout 3 & New Vegas utilized. So if I’m running 8 gigs and it’s only using 2 then the other is wasted overkill, right?

Google exchanged that at a little over $1000 US dollars? I could build a pretty pimp rig for $1000. Not sure what that'll get you in your currency though.

??? the Xbox GPU does have AA but it's the PS3 that doesn't have it.^^

Interesting! What video card do you have?

I play on a laptop with 1GB AMD 5830M (basically a gimped version of the desktop AMD 5770 card).

I always get much better frame rate at 1920x1080, all detail settings maxed, with vanilla Oblivion vs vanilla FO3 or FNV. I believe if I were to remove vsync the frame rate for Oblivion would be higher than 60 fps, but the fps is nowhere near that for FO3 or FNV, which both fluctuate around 35 - 45, depending on the location.

(FO3 and FNV are about the same for me, slightly better frame rates with FNV, especially with water refracting setting reduced)