I agree. I'm afraid to touch Star Craft II because it's lack of quad-core utilization. I have a Q6600, and it disappoints me that most of my applications won't even take advantage of it. At least this summer I'm planning on building myself a new rig.

Yeah, sorry. I posted that before I'd read the announcement that the engine was brand new. That just makes my point more relevant: we have even less to base these "estimations"/guesses on.

... man, am I glad more than ever that the guy who built my PC is a friend of the family and gives us discounts whenever we buy from him.

I'm definitely hoping for DX10 64bit support with Skyrim.

Is it possible to get a new computer that will most likely run this game for $500 (not including a monitor, keyboard, etc)? I usually buy from a name brand company like Dell but I have never seen a good Dell machine available for gaming that costs less than $800. Any suggestions?

Thankfully, I can run most of the reccomended ettings y'all are suggesting. :twirl:

One of the drawbacks of a laptop - it can't be upgraded...

...save another $300 and take a look at a site called www.ecollegepc.com

Athlon II X4 640 3.0 GHz/GTX 460 1GB or HD6850/4GB DDR3/500GB HDD/W7 x64/Antec EA650/Coolermaster 310 case runs just $800 +/- $5 now so better specs or a cheaper price latter on.

Yeah I think the mainstream PCs actually got WORSE. The mid end ones seem to mostly have 250W power supplies now. I helped someone pick one out and it was hard to find one with even a 300W PSU that was less than $800. I should have just directed them to eCollege PC or similar but Best Buy was better for the easy service coverage.

It was horrible, 90% of the PCs had 300W or less PSU and 80% of all the computers were laptops. If you aren't afraid to you can look into building yourself too, but don't get a gaming PC from a mainstream store.

We really have no way of knowing so people should stop making these threads. Also, typically in games there is very little difference in performance when you overclock your CPU. I ran Crysis benchmarking tool and only got 2 more FPS average with my CPU @ 4GHz then I did with it @ 2.66GHz.

You're kidding me! They're putting 250-300W power supplies in nowadays? My 5 year old gaming machine ran with a 400W power supply and it couldn't handle the strain when I switched from a GF7800GT to a GTX-Ultra and tried to play EVE Online. Had to put in a 700W supply to get things stabilized (well, could have gone for 500-600W, but the 700W only costs a trifle more) :brokencomputer:

So if this is the case of current 'offers' available, I'd recommend people to really check the power supply before making a purchase. It would be very bad in my opinion if people buy these machines, only to see their system croak (and possibly damaged) as soon as they load up a game.

Oh, and a buddy of mine told me I should also check the spread of power allocation (Amps). Seems that some manufacturers offer their 'great power' with very odd power allocation.

Contradiction. If XP is still supported, a DX9 compliant GPU will be enough.

Myself, I'm still on XP and Core Duo, but if Skyrim requires DX10/11 I WILL upgrade to Windows 7 sometime next year. Elder Scrolls really is a 'killer' app for me. I upgraded to a Geforce Ti 4200 especially for Morrowind and years later I bought a Geforce 7800GS just to be able to use anti-aliasing in Oblivion.

The XBOX360 is a blessing for old-PC users though; If the new engine is optimized to get the absolute most out of the 360, I guess the minimum specs for the PC will be similar to the 360 hardware:

- CPU: Min: 3 Ghz three-core, Recommended: 2.6 Ghz Quad-core.
- GPU: Min: Geforce 7800/Radeon 1800XT with 256MB. Recommended: Geforce 8800GT / Radeon HD3870 with 512MB.
- Memory: Min: 2GB (XP), Recommended: 4 GB (Vista/7).

TRS-80 M-III 2.03MHz Z-80
E/I Expansion Interface
48k RAM
5MB HDD
8" Floppy Dual Density/Side
Dual Cassette decks

Recommend an AM radio next to the system to play sound.

I'm hoping they'll drop XP support.

In fact, I'll be surprised if most games still support XP by the end of next year.

According to the november Steam hardware survey, 27 percent of all Steam users still run XP. Among non-Steam users the percentage is probably much higher. That's why I'm sure next year most games will still run on XP. And Skyrim is a DX9 console port, so I'm hopeful it will still have XP support as well. Long live XP, XP will never die!!!! :tongue:

This.

[/thread]

There is actually plenty to go on.

1-Skyrim will be on the 360 and PS3. There is no console game an average gaming PC can't run.

2-Your test of Crysis should tell you the role of the CPU is limited. If you think your Crysis bench is odd, check Metro 2033 with dual vs quad and quads 2GHz-4GHz.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/metro_2033_performance_guide,6.html
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/metro_2033_performance_guide,9.html

Here is some really good reading with gaming CPU tests:
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=13454&all=1
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=14309&all=1

So I would say that most people with gaming rigs shouldn't be too worried about their CPUs.


3-This just leaves a question about how good the GPU needs to be. It may be possible to approximate the GPU requirements depending on a few logical assumptions.

-If there is DX9 support:

If there is DX9 support it is not certain that DX9 cards will run it well, but DX9 mode may be there for the sake of older/lower-end DX10 cards [ie:8800/9600/9800] and then maybe the 7900 may squeeze by in lower settings. Cards below that get increasingly iffy.

-If it is DX10 and DX11 only.

-If this is the case then I would go on the logical assumption that there are certain DX11 cards that by all rights should be able to run Skyrim in DX10 at least and then flesh that list out. Starting off in safe territory, the GTS450 and HD5750 should not have a problem. Other cards in their range include the GTS250 [aka: 9800 GTX/8800GTS 512 MB] and the HD4850. These should all be safe as far as running Skyrim. Then below that there is the budget gamer cards, the strongest of which should still run Skyrim on lowered settings. These would be the 8800GT, 9600GT and HD4830.

I would be surprised if any of the mentioned GPUs [other than the 7900] were too weak to run Skyrim at all.

I don't think Multi-Platform necessarily means the system requirements will be lower. Look at Metro 2033 for an example. I play that maxed out and that would kill the xbox, but its just turned down. Hopefully they'll do that.

Minimum Requirements:

- 2 Cray XE6s

Do any of you think there is a possibility that Skyrim will be available for Mac?
And please don't start flaming just because I mentioned mac in a gaming forum.

Realistically,

Minimum
Core 2 Duo 2.8GHZ
Geforce 9800
1 Gig Ram
15 Gigabytes Hard Drive space

Unfortunately Bethesda hasn't shown any love for the Mac platform, and (while possible) I am doubtful they will bring Skyrim to it. :sadvaultboy:

Anyone know the setup of the 360/PS3? Do we have a basis for comparison by checking their core components against PC components? That way you'd know what the maximum power those 360/PS3's can chug out.

Ofcourse, if the 360/PS3 have things hardlocked on Medium and PC users could go to High/Very High; this comparison is moot (same with graphic enhancement mods like high res texture packs and such) :shrug:

Lastly, I'm not too familiar with DX10/11. Can you have a game run in DX9 with optional DX10 or DX11 features? Or are these completely different? I'd love to see a DX9 version to keep the XP/360/PS3 crowds happy, with optional support for when someone has the graphics cards, multicores and OS to support DX10/11 features.

At any rate, I'm going to save up some money and get me a quadcore with Win7 64bit and one of those GF460 thingies. My old 3800+ dualcore XP 32bit with GF7800GT-Ultra is now 5 years old and I'm thinking of degrading it to an 'internet/old games pc'

Recommended will be more like: Dual Core 2,4 GHz, 8800GTS 512mb, 2GB RAM, XP operating system.

It will be more demanding then Oblivion for sure, but shouldn't be by much. I reallly doubt we're going to see Crysis equalivent visuals. It'l probably be a bit better then a game like Red Dead Redemption. Those are my expectations though.

I think if your computer can handle 60 awesomes per second you should be good

i hope that the PC version is a powerhog with lots of DX11 effects built into it and global lighting and shadows and super long draw distances etc. but im sure its not going to require anything more than todays games......sadly.

My advice would be either wait until just before release to purchase new parts, or wait until black friday next year and save a ton of money, there are so many new levels of tech coming out between now and 11-11-11.. it would be ignorant to not take advantage of the awesome price drops which will ensue after these new products are released (new cpu architectures from ati/intel and new graphics chips from ati/nvidia, not to mention further integration of sata 6gb/s and usb 3.0 and possibly light peak)

For instance if you waiting until next fall to purchase parts, a (now) top of the line quad core could be priced as a mid level product, and the 460's will be long replaced or will cost much less than they do now. This is assuming you don't have a more pressing need for new hardware which needs to be met before next fall.

This is going to be a very exciting year from a tech standpoint :celebration:


Also yes developers can have optional dx 10 and 11 features which only are enabled if you have dx 10 or 11 installed with a compatible graphics card. Dirt 2 did this and was a launch title with dx11 back when the 5870 launched, you can run the game in dx10 mode or dx11 mode.