You really have given us little to work with. Is that ￡650 with a monitor, with a mouse, with a keyboard, with a computer case, with a power supply? Do you already have an operating system? A hard drive disk?

I will assume you have all input/output devices (monitor, mouse, keyboard and sound output, CD and DVD disk drives) and OS. Then with ￡650 you can get yourself a future proof top of the range PC.

Let me give you an example. You can go with AMD and get cheaper (lets be honest, slightly less performance which isn't really noticeable to the average gamer) parts, or go with Intel and have top quality products that will come at a considerably higher price compared to AMD's same product range but at cheaper prices.

I am going to roughly say what ￡650 could get you in terms of Motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, PSU and perhaps a HDD/SSD. Oh and a nice case to put it all in:

Motherboard: Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 880G Socket AM3 ATX Form Factor ￡76.22
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz Socket AM3 ￡131.78
GPU: Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E ￡163.58
RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.65V ￡97.77
PSU: Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 700W Modular ￡99.99
HDD: Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache ￡37.98
SSD: OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s 50,000 IOPS ￡92.82
Case: Antec One Hundred 100 Case ￡41.34

All that is ￡741.48. Take away the SSD and it comes to ￡642.66.

But personally I would get something that costs less but would probably achieve the same goal. High quality game play for years to come:

Motherboard: Asus M4A87TD/USB3 870 Socket AM3 8 Channel Audio ATX Form Factor ￡68.25
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz Socket AM3 ￡118.65
GPU: Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E ￡163.58
RAM: G-Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz Ripjaws Memory Kit CL7(7-8-7-24) 1.6V ￡45.27
HDD: Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache ￡37.98
SSD: OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s 50,000 IOPS ￡92.82
Case + PSU: CM Storm Scout + Coolermaster Silent Pro 700W Modular ￡129.99

Bugger...That actually comes to more at ￡656.54. Take away the SSD and HDD however and it comes to ￡519.74.
A good system nonetheless.

Anyway, I would still wait until November, possibly even after next console cycle till I fully upgrade. I might get a 6870 for my current system, but that would be about it. Still on a Athlon II and DDR2 RAM and still going strong.

It will almost certainly be a 32 bit program, since that's what the consoles use, so it will only use 2 gig RAM by default. And while it may make use of 4 cores, I suspect it will only use 2. That's the norm right now as far as today's computer systems are concerned, so they'll no doubt be aiming for that segment. Not to mention that the Xbox is only a tri-core.

A GeForce 8800GT, running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200. I can run Oblivion at 30-40 FPS on average out doors whereas I get 40-60 with Fallout 3. And with Oblivion I had to turn off Transparency Anti-aliasing. Other than that the settings are pretty much the same for both. I'm not using vsync with either game. I don't have NV yet so I can't comment on that one.

I'm HOPING that when Todd was talking about increased performance with DX11 he was talking about the multi-threaded resource handling so SR can take advantage of multi-core machines.

Yes, I suppose that's possible. I'm a bit vague on how that works myself, but I suppose it will be of some benefit for multi-core machines. The base game though will almost certainly be designed with only 2 cores in mind. At least that's my guess, since it's impossible to be certain at this point.

So you think there has been no optimization and graphical advances for the past 5 years? do you live under a rock?
An 8800 doesn't match up to a 360. Its not ages away, but still it doesn't match up. Bear in mind that the PC will have higher texture res and maybe some DX11 features too.

@Thumbtake I expect skyrim to support at least 4 cores, its a modern game that has had a long time in development, not a half-ass port of a 1 year in development game like EA's fifa games etc.

@Gnome Off PCspecialist, get something with a phenom ii 555 dual core processor, GTS 450 graphics card, and a 19 inch monitor and it should come to around 650 pounds. Although as I said in the original post, wait a bit for the skyrim release to get closer and prices will have come down, because of newer parts.

What on earth are you babbling about here? The Xbox 360 only uses the equivalent of an ATI Radeon X1900. The GeForce 8800GT will blow that out of the water. In the video benchmark list I just looked up, the 8800GT had a rating almost 50% higher than the X1900.

I don't mean in terms of graphical power, I mean in terms of the graphics you are going to get. The consoles get tons of optimization. I guess I'm not a huge expert on consoles but I think I'm right.

You're also not a huge expert on the game either. It will be using a brand new engine, which nobody has been able to take a look at except for the devs and a handful of reviewers. So we have absolutely no idea yet how well the PC version will be optimized. For all we know, it could be far superior to the consoles. They did after all design the game on a PC in the first place, with far superior hardware to the consoles. And by the sounds of it, using DX11 performance features is going to make a big difference in itself, something that the consoles won't benefit from. Granted that the 8800GT is only DX10, but it will no doubt still be able to take advantage of some of those optimizations at least. I hate to say it, but you are way off base in this thread. You've been passing along information that would seem to indicate that it's fact, but it's only conjecture at this point. The bottom line is that we have absolutely no idea what the requirements will be at this point in time and anything we suggest is nothing more than an educated guess.

Yes, I make everything seem like its fact, even though I have huge red text at the start of the original post saying and I'm just trying to give people a rough idea if they should think about an upgrade, or if they are way off and they are better off getting it for the console or whatever. I'm not telling people that these are official specs or anything...

Fair enough. I see that you've made a number of changes in your original post, my comment was based on what I originally read there. As far as the 8800GT is concerned though, if the poster can already run the previous games at max with it, then it's a pretty good bet that Skyrim will come very close as well. The basic requirements for Bethesda's games haven't really changed all that much since Oblivion, simply because they've been focusing development so strongly on consoles. The same should hold true for Skyrim as well. The 8800GT is still a pretty good card. It's getting a bit old by now, but it's still powerful enough to play most games these days at reasonable, if not good, settings.

I'm constantly trying to improve the thread and make it better based on feedback Sometimes what I say and what I mean is a little different.
You have a point on the graphics though. I think i'll turn up the guidance resolution I put from 1400x900 to 1600x1200 and that would help.
Or do you think I should put it up to 1920x1080?

Definitely not 1920 x 1080, that's way too high. Based on this site, I'd put the benchmark at 1280x1024 myself:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

That's the most used resolution in their Higher category which makes up 85% of computer users according to them, followed by 1280x800. That's no doubt just the difference between PAL and NTSC.

Not many people with a gaming computer game at 1280x1024 though, from what I've seen, most gamers with a 22 inch+ Monitor run 1600+ resolutions... anyway going to bed i'll continue the debate tomorrow :]

But gamers aren't necessarily the ones who will be playing the game, at least not the hard core variety. Casual gamers make up the largest share of the gaming market. And I doubt someone using a 22" monitor will even be capable of bumping it to 1600 whatever. Monitors these days are built with a specific native resolution in mind and generally can't be set any higher than that. And that means 1280x1024 for a 22" IIRC. I'm using a 24"wide screen and I can't even select another wide screen resolution other than 1920 x 1200, other than the PAL version of that. My only options are standard 4:3 resolutions, none of which exceed the native version.

I have a 24" @ 1920 x 1200.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_resolution_higher.asp, a few of the more commonly used resolutions on recent desktops and laptops, together make up a total of 32% of the "higher resolution" category, compared to only 14.8% of this same category for displays at 1280x1024 resolution

1440x900 9.9 %
1680x1050 9.2 %
1920x1080 6.2 %
1920x1200 4.5 %
1600x900 2.5

In fact, the popularity of the 1280x1024 display seems to be rapidly dropping, as it has decreased from 18.2% to 14.8% (a 20% decrease) during the 12-month period from Jan 2010 to Jan 2011

anyways this whole study is limited to people who use http://www.w3schools.com/, so that could be including schools or libraries, who knows.

If you were to limit this sample to "people who game on their PC" - I suspect the results would be significantly different

Yes that's true, which is why I'd say it would make a good minimum benchmark. The problem with trying to come with a value here is that there is such a huge variety of resolutions being used today that's next to impossible to come up with any sort of norm. But you can at least define a minimum.

That's why I decided to use a slightly higher resolution rather than change the graphics cards. Well, I stand by what I said before, although the Xbox 360 has a much lower power graphics card, it gets a lot of optimization that the PC wont get, and I've changed the resolution again (and hopefully for the last time) to 1680x1050 and I think that's about right, because booty said 9.2% of laptops use it so I suppose its common. I get in a lot of laptops too from 1280x768 with the little laptops and 1920x1080 with the HDMI Sony vaio's so I placed it in the middle.

hey now if you live in the uk and are on a budget, but still want to play skyrim at very high/ max settings i suggest this pc.
i bought this pc about a month ago and it runs all of my games on max and some of them with grapgich enhancer without the slightest bit of lag.
it's very cheap ￡499.
i would suggest keeping your moniter unless you want a new one.
i know this is a good pc because it can crysis ( first 1 ) at max settings with 8AA at 1280 x 1024 resolution here is the link

http://www.ginger6.com/crysis-gaming-p-36139.html

ofcourse you could always upgrade for better performance

Its not bad but the processor has very low cache (only 2MB)

yeah i do aggre but you cold get the next version up

I will be saving up the next 2 months to buy my new lush PC

Intel i5 2500k (Quad-core 3.3Ghz)
Nvidia GTX550
8GB RAM
1TB HDD

Windows 7