Seeing alot of PPL post about what should I buy or get for TES5, I see Alot of bad info in these replys so here is my thoughts and hope this helps.

First off We have too keep in Mind what we know and dont know about TES 5.
1) It will be A new game and Bethesda Loves too give us Eyecandy with every new game.
2) It is A open world / sandbox game. Way Lower FPS vs Noraml games. ( Games that are outside and you can travel & see very far in the distance Are Extreamly Harsh on your GPU / FPS )
3) Too Dx11 or Not too Dx11. I would ASSume TES5 will not be Dx11/ tessellation. Dx11+ Sandbox Game = Godly Computer Needed for max
4) You. What Do you want out of the Game. Do you want 1920 x 1080/1200 Max, 45+ FPS @ all times. or are you ok with <30 FPS @ 1680 X 1050.

Too give you A example. (my comp stats are at the bottom of all my post)
UNiGiNe Heaven Dx11 Benchmark is one of the only Dx11 hardcoe benchmark tools. When I run this benchmark with these settings {{ Dx11 With Tessellation 1920x1200 Fullscreen, Shaders = high, Textures = High, Filler = Trilinear, Anisotropy = 4x, Oclusion/refraction and Volumetic (all = enabled), Tessellation = Normal }}
I get An Avg FPS of 40.5 (score 1019), Min FPS was 19.9 Max FPS 90.1. While running this I took note, when the camera angle Faces out too the great beyond my FPS would Max at 31FPS AVG of 25 or so, In the hallways or Up close (no beyond) i would get 60+FPS. All that being said .. imagine all the great beyond fill with TES 5, Trees apon trees.. mountains.. snow falling ... buildings ...flowers/grass ....Dragons.

Here is Dx10 NO Tessellation Benchmark With Same Settings. AVG 49.5 (Score 1250), Min 25.9, Max 113.4 And same as before the Grate beyond Kills your FPS ... expect TES 5 to be A GPU destroyer even if it is only Dx10.


When building or Buying A comp. If you are buying Do research on what your are buying. What can you add too this in the Future. That starts with the Motherboard, Does it have A onboard GPU, Dose have A PCI-E 16x Slot (more then one would be better) Can It run Crossfire or SLI (more then one vidoe card at same time).. More on this in later part of my post. But my comp is the PERFECT example of this.

I bought my Motherboard & Ram in 2008 and it is still up too snuff.. because I picked what could be upgraded as time needed. When I first Built this comp I was Phenom 1 X4 9950 and I used 2x ATI HD2900Pros As Video Cards, As time went on I needed better so I droped the 2900s and got A 4850. Later I added another 4850. After that I got Phenom II X4 965 (have too update bios).. as time went on I need more power so I bouhgt A new PSU.. 1000w this time for future proofing and A 3rd 4850.
(note: I did buy A 4th 4850 but 4x CF dose not Scale vs Power/preformance) Should Note it took A delta (chop your fingers off fan ) too cool 3x 4850s (up too 105c Ea @ max Load) And Last week I traded my 3x 4850s for A 6970s .. when TES5 comes out I will have A 2nd 6970. Anyhow it All starts with A good Motherboard. The best part of all of this is .. YOU SALE your old Stuff on Ebay and get some of the money back (or save it and build a spare comp for your mom ) <---- I have done both.

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m148/Neko77025/TEACH.jpg




This Next part I have taken from A post I made before, on one of the What should I buys, has some of the same info and More.




It is 100% pointless to buy PC for (only) TES 5 right now, June of this year the New AMD Bulldozer CPUs and More Intel Sandy Bridge CPU (motherboards and chipset too boot) That being said, you can take that Info 2x Ways. 1) Wait and buy one of them two and get the best. Or 2) Wait till they come out and drop the prices of Now-Tech will drop in price. Also the new AMD (ATI ) 7000 series is due for stores this Nov.

Here are A few thing I always Ask PPL when they said what Kind of comp should I buy.

1) How much do you want too spend. Cheap and Gameing comps dont go well. Video cards Alone can be 500.00 ( and u can have up too 4x)
2) What do you plan on doing with the Comp. (Games and future games need better tech)
3) Do you Just want the Computer or Do you have Keyboard, Mice, monitor
4) What are your standards .. can you live with low res .. not max .. or 30 FPS or Less.
5) Would you build one / Try or Have someone help your. ( you can get a Better Med - Higer in comp this way, However Low-end comps tend too be cheaper store/web bought )

A few Notes about gaming Comps.
As of right now the big new thing is DX11 .. with DX11 you get tessellation (makes things look OMG)
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m148/Neko77025/1NoTess.jpg NO tessellation
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m148/Neko77025/1WTess.jpg With tessellation

However their are VERY Few games that use DX11 or any that have tessellation. I can only think of AVP and Metro 2033. More games Late 2011 and mostly 2012 will use Dx11. They have not said anything about TES5 useing DX11 & with how big TES games are, It would kill the FPS. But you Must think in terms of the future. ATI/AMD 5000 & Nvida 400 series will run Dx11 but it would be better to go with ATI/AMD 6000 or Nvida 500 series As then run DX 11 way bette. Also to run DX10 & or DX11 you must use Windows Vista or 7.

Few other thigns too keep in mind.
Build / Get a computer that has room too Expand, this will start with the Motherboard. By picking out A good motherboard that can SLI (Nvida) or CF (ATI/AMD) { SLI & CF = run more then one video card @ same time for more preformance ) more then likely this motherboard will beable too overclock your CPU later if you need more power.

64bit 64bit 64bit .. OS. Windows Vista or 7 64 Bit. This will allow for use of more then 4Gb of Ram and if you are paying Dx10 /11 Games your should have more then 4Gb of Ram.

Power Supply Unit, too future proof your comp you should aways get a good PSU, should get A Silver or Gold rated, 1x rail with A min of 2x 6pin PCI-E & 2x 8pin PCI-E

CPUs Come down too how much you want too spend VS what you want out of it. {THE BEST.} CPU now will cost you $1,000.00 (Intel), The best Value(preformance VS cost) would be $230.00 (AMD)


I would say wait till Oct or Nov if you only want it TES5 and dont need new one right now, Also I would say if you Spend under $1500.00 you are not going too have much lead way for future games. If you want Hi Res, Hi Quailty & 45+ FPS

I recently upgraded my PC for Starcraft 2, can run it with everything maxed out. If this isn't good enough for Skyrim I'll be shocked :shocking:

we can guess since the game is multiplatform and meant to look about the same on all platforms, so it's not going to be the most CPU intensive game out.

SCII Maxed and And Sandbox Game rendering everything in they back ground are not the same. I am 100% sure I will NOT be able too run Skyrim Max 1920x1200 +45 FSP with my comp.

True, but still, the fact that I can play 4v4 with 1600 supply worth of units moving around on the map without any framerate stutter makes me feel pretty confident for my chances

Skyrim will be a DX9 game. It will support DX11 but will use DX9 shaders and features. If you can run Oblivion on max with QT3 and REVWD you can run vanilla Skyrim on mid-high at least if not maxed. Mark my words.

This, your current build could run it like butter Father Jacob. You are making it seem like this game is much more graphically intensive than most, it is not. It is more CPU intensive and RAM intensive, neither of which most system builders will have to worry about if they have a inkling of what they are doing.

How many topics on this are there going to be?

I can only hope they fix water reflections when distant objects are loaded... I can have REVWD and get 45+ fps, but if I turn on water reflections, it goes down to 15-20 lol. I'm sure anyone who has struggled with this has also tried in vain to set the ugridstoload variable higher only to find that you can fix every bug this causes except the water reflections get all glitched and don't represent the world anymore. If they fix the stupid reflections issue, I'm sure I'll be able to run the game just fine on max. I'm hoping that they increase the "near" distance (whatever the new engines "equivalent" of ugridstolad = 5 is) far enough that I don't really care if I have a REVWD mod. I was really happy enough with just what could be loaded with ugridstoload = 9 if only the reflections would have worked. I don't need to see infinitely, just far enough that a whole castle/fort doesn't appear out of nowhere just across the river would be nice in vanilla settings and have water reflections at the same time!

I'm actually pushing 80fps on a 6850 with RAEVWD and my only gripe about the reflections (which do drop my fps to 55-60) is that some of the object's reflections like Ayled ruins flicker... a lot. can't stand it so i have reflections off. That affords me an animated window lighting and chimney smoke mod at about the same cost in fps. I really would love to have reflections though, the game world looks so real with them enabled.

Good news is everything has been re-written(including all of the shaders) so chances are pretty good they will be better than Oblivion. I'm optimistic and that says a lot because I'm a born pessimist.

come on, think of this game as just an upgrade from oblivion, the difference in system requirements will not be the same as between morrowind and oblivion, i think any system that can run oblivion in medium graphics can run skyrim in low. as for processor, dual core 2,4ghz should probably be enough too.

yes, i think 2,4ghz dual core, 8800 gts nvidia and 2gb of ddr2 would run this game on low graphics (same thing as i used for oblivion). 3ghz, 4gb ddr2 and like radeon HD 5700 or nvidia GTX 295 would be enough to run this game on pretty high settings. (about the equivalent of what i'm using now)

regardless of that, i've had it with using amd and ati so i plan to upgrade before 11/11/11. its not if i can run the game, its about how well i want it to run. i need about 1800$-2600$ for the kind of upgrade i'm planning on.

Not sure where you are getting your info, but you CANT NOT compare this game too Oblivion as far as graphics go.

These are Facts so far.
? Dynamic snowfall
? Dynamic shadows, and shadows on everything
? Water physics
? Draw distance increased (todd has talked about this alot vs Oblivion .. they line were rocks and stuff would appear from nowhere)
? New creation engine ( not what they did Oblivion or Fallout 3 )
? Havoc Behavior for smoother and higher quality animations.

Draw Distance Alone will eat A huge amount of FPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVHF4w3dtlw
Start at 4:21ish - Todd Talks about New Engine and Draw Distnace.

I also recall Running Oblivion @ max (not when it first came out , but latter on) & and barely got Med Quality on Fallout 3 @ 1920x 1200.

I dont see how PPL cant tell by Watch the 1080p Videos this has WAY more going on in it then Oblivion.
Also would like too note: The Xbox 360 Verson of Oblivion LOOKS nothing Like A good PC for time of release. My friend was PO howmuch better PC was at the time.

It doesn't matter what the PC version of OB looks like compared to Xbox. The Xbox360 and PS3 haven't changed bro. They still have 512mb ram/vram. The game has to be made to run on the same hardware as Oblivion did. If you think Skyrim is going to be generations ahead of Oblivion in hardware requirements you are sadly mistaken.

After having fairly awful performance in Oblivion for a few years I will certainly appreciate running this game with what will likely be flawless performance this time around. (As my build, apart from the graphics card, which I don't think supports DX 11, is overkill.) I'm guessing they've optimised the game properly this time too. :biggrin:


Really? My experience was that Fallout 3 looked graphically superior and yet had better performance due to improved optimisation.

... and it all has to run on the XBox 360, which is pathetic, cheap, low-end hardware from 6 years ago. A $500 PC will max out this game with graphics upgrade mods. Mark my words. Beth don't give a crap about pushing the envelope on PC or supporting DX11 features. They just want to push out a console game that conforms to horrible, old hardware, do a quick port, and push out a construction set while their next project is being organized, all because two outdated, under-performing platforms are holding the entire gaming industry back in 2006. Crysis came out in 2008, and will take more muscle to run than this while also looking several times better. Mark my words.

It's rumored Nintendo's new console code named Café will support OpenGL 4.1 (which has tessellation) so maybe we'll see more games with it after that launches in 2012. As for Skyrim I'm glad it's where it is. More people will get to play it this way.

Maybe they'll port it to project Café and implement some of those features, patching them into the PC version. Granted the improvements given to the PS3 version of Oblivion never made it to the PC did they, or were they always in the PC version?

Starcraft 2 is not a graphically demanding game. Actually quite the opposite. I wouldn't get your hopes up just based on this.

Xbox 360 has supported tessellation since launch. Most people don't know this, nor do most people make games that utilize it. At least not in the sense invoked when people use the word today. Tessellation is really just the creation of smaller triangles from larger ones. There is no implied detail gain in that... you must tell the new triangles to be displaced via a texture, or procedurally ala ATI's "TruForm" which is now called PN Triangles tessellation generally. I am not sure of the specifics of the Xbox tessellation pipeline but I know it's not exactly like DX11's.

Also, I thought I'd seen the GPU was rumored to be a modified R700 (4000-series) GPU. These don't support OpenGL 4.1, unless they rewrote the architecture so much for Project Cafe that it's hardly an R700 GPU anymore... There is precedent for this after all. The Xenos GPU in the Xbox is a "modified" R500, but it ended up with some R600 elements. If the R700 rumor is true my guess is that they'll be manufacturing it at the lowest nanometer process available (28nm by production time, I presume) as well, for heat/power reasons. There'd be no sense to keep the nanometer process -- a whopping 55nm -- of such an outdated chip. However, I think R700 is so outdated by now that it'd be better if they went with a modified Evergreen GPU instead. Hopefully they do. Notwithstanding, it would still be 3 or more generations ahead of Xenos depending on how much they tweak the design.

It will probly run this on the 360 as cheap low-end hardware from 6 years ago .. it will look Nothing like A highend PC nowdays but will look better then Oblivion did on the 360 because they have worked with it for A bit now

PPL putting Limits on games and what they can look like Based off PS3 & 360. This is never true, I have yet too find Any game that is => PC. They Limit what the PS3/360 Can do when they write the code for the game., PCs tend too have very few Limits. They Dont Demo games off the PS3 or 360 when you have A PC verson , I can tell you from the video that is not PS3 or 360s and that video is not being ran on your $800 computer

"The engine looks absolutely phenomenal in motion, with the draw distance, streaming and detail able to handle “massive changes in scale from plant to mountain.” There’s none of that awkward visual disparity between near and far away objects which we saw in Oblivion. Meanwhile, tree branches wobble delicately in the wind, mountain peaks have their own micro-climates (such as gorgeous snow and mist), and even your character’s hands are wonderfully animated – a far cry from the forever-clenched fists of so many games. “We like the downtime, the moments like watching the sunset, staring at the water.” Even pulling up the map involves seamlessly zooming up and above the world to look down at a full 3D rendering of it"

You will not get any of that in 1920x1200, Max W/ +45fps. On old Tech that Maxed Oblivion. You cant compair this with the PS3 / 360 hardware because it CANT do 1920x 1200 Max at 45+ FPS.

When I first played Oblivion on PC I had just got A X1800. And it was the best at the time but would not run Oblivion Max. I did not Max Oblivion setting till 2007 when I built my 2007 Super comp (2x HD2900 Pros , Intel X6800 EE & Asus P5k Black Pearl) If I took that comp and tryed too run fallout 3 Med 1920x1200 I would get about 30fps. Now Take what we know about TES5 (Draw distance increased ) I am sure this system would blow at hi res.

Also would like too Point Out I never said you will need Dx11.. in fact I said you would more then likly not, However if you are spending money on A computer ... Buy stuff that will Scale with / for the Future. No point spending good money on halfass hardware that will let you down next year

Hehe I've just got a ￡350 dell with a mid range ￡150 graphics card and it seems to run everything I throw at it, even Arma 2 on 1600x900 with just about full graphics

Whatever runs Crysis on very high or with ultra high mods above 80 fps will run on Skyrim with anything thrown at you. If its not 80fps some where near 60 fps it will still run high on vanilla game without issues.

Your wrong. It has been confirmed that all screenshots and video footage released IS from the 360.

Technically, they are from a PC running a 360 emulator.

But yes, its looks exactly as like all we've seen on the 360.

Exactly 3,345. Guaranteed. Thanks for contributing!

My hope is that they release some info at least a month before the game's release about what the system requirements are and what is needed to max it out.
Until then I'll get it for my 360 and then upgrade to a better computer once the game is out.

I think the important thing here is can I play this on high settings. (/sarcasm)

I am debating on whether to buy a new graphics. I'm thinking the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510&cm_re=cyclon_msi-_-14-127-510-_-Product

My setup:

Intel Quad Core Q6700
8GB Corsair RAM DDR2
XFX 9800 GT

The 9800GT can handle SC2 and WoW on ultra no problem.

But I want to play this on ultra mega high settings, because, I'm such a fan of series.

Thoughts?