It will probably be some time yet before we are told the PC system requirements, but we can all guess that more is better, right?

So, what are your plans to upgrade your system before 11/11/11?

For my part I bought a 'gaming PC' as a graduation present for myself in July - I know it is tru-kvlt metal to build your PC (and cheaper too), but I don't have as much time as I used once did to research RAM/mobo/proc compatibility and such. Building a PC has many benefits, including a lower cost -- but only if you don't need to have most of the parts shipped across a boarder to you as I would.

I bought the computer with as much 'future-proofing' as I could, hoping that when TESV was released it would still be hot enough to deliver a very high-end experience. To that end, it is a quad core i7 860 at 2.8ghz, 16 gigs of ram, and an ATI 5850 with 1 gig of memory on board. The harddrive is just SATA, I don't think solid state is ready for prime time just yet.

Anyways, I bought as much computer as I could, but the one thing my computer did not include was a dedicated soundcard. If Skyrim is anything like Oblivion, dedicated sound is the only way to fly - the snag is my mobo is so new and 'enthusiast' that it doesn't have old school PCI ports at all, and I'll have to pay a premium for a PCI-e card. Whats worse is that I've only read about problems with the mid-range Creative PCI-E soundcards, leaving only the over-priced top-end "Fatal1ty" card as a solid option (at least as of my last research on the topic 5-6 months ago).


What about you? Is the impending release of Skyrim causing you to plan any upgrades or replacements for your computer? Answer in the poll, provide details if you want to below.

I built a high-end gaming PC earlier last year. I highly doubt it will need upgraded again to cope with Skyrim - it defaulted New Vegas to Ultra-High settings. Hopefully I wont be needing to upgrade for a couple of years yet.


EDIT: I can run OB fine without a sound card. They're damn near redundant IMO.

I have a PC that plays Oblivion but doubt it will play Skyrim. I will make (build, cousin will do this) a whole brand new tower.

I'm going to build a brand new computer.

I plan on spending around ￡1400 on a custom built PC, which will hopefully be able to run Skyrim on high, if not maximum, settings. I believe that ￡1400 would be around $2100 US dollars currently, according to the current exchange rates. :3

Upgraded just before ME2. I think it'll handle Skyrim just fine.

Since pc is the only platform that will show skyrim in its full beauty i am building a rig with nividias gtx 580 think it will run it ? :toughninja:

Surviving on a 3 year old xps... pushed to its limits. May run game well, but a new rig is in order regardless.

well, im afraid i dont have half a million to upgrade my computer like all you rich little boys and girls, so im gonna have to stick to my ps3.

wish i could hit the damn lottery once or twice so i could afford to upgrade, though...

I have a fairly high-end rig. But I'm going to get around to putting in a dedicated sound card, up the RAM (I don't need more, but I want more) and possibly get a new graphics card closer to Skyrim's release.

Sound card? I pity the fool who thinks that buying a new sound card is important for gaming. There's literally no differance in sound quality between a new one and one several years old nowadays, or a new integrated for that matter.

Don't cost a lot, you don't need to be rich.

A new computer doesn't cost much more than a ps3...

I can play Fallout New Vegas without any problems, well never had anything worse than occasional freeze so I am not going to upgrade. If I do have problems I will just play it on my XBox.

I'm going to replace my current PC.
Been planning to for a long time, but Skyrim only improved the need.

I built mine with future proofing too, Phenom II 955 Quad core, HD5770 GPU, 8GB RAM, that should be more than enough.
This is my best guess at the system requirements.

Minimum
2GHz Dual core
2GB RAM
256MB of VRAM

Recommended
3GHz Dual core
4GB RAM
512MB of VRAM

Run the game at 30FPS on max detail
3GHz Quad Core
4GB RAM
1GB of VRAM and DirectX 11


I bet 1/2 of the requirement in PC games these days is simply because of poor optimising and bugs. Developers have been getting lazy with doing that because the current gen is so long, yet PCs are still getting more powerful. Explains why graphics don't seem to be getting much better.
An example would be that glitch in New Vegas where looking at a group of NPCs would drop my framerate from 70 to 15 because of glitches with what handles the facial animations.

I bought a new GPU for Morrowind shortly after its release (an ATI Radeon 9700) and a brand new comp just in time for Oblivion (with a $500 Radeon X1900XT GPU) and I'll buy a new one for Skyrim (hopefully the Radeon 7900-series is out by then, but if not, then I'll just get a Radeon 6970 or something). Exactly what type of CPU or RAM is secondary, it's all about the GPU.

I was planning on upgrading before I learned about Skyrim. I figure I will hold off awhile until I get some info on game specs, maybe save up a little extra money

I'm not rich, actually I'm pretty far from it actually but the reason I've managed to get that amount of money is purely off saving it up - you should try it.

Im not playing it on PC, but I have bought a HD cable which is minor, but still and upgrade.

Building a new one from scratch this March, planning on getting the best graphics card on the market and maxing everything out.

Since TESV will be playable at current consoles,I will not need to upgrade my computer.
But I'm planning on getting a new system when AMD will release the Bulldozer cpus.
Of course by the time TESV will be out,there will be new graphics cards,new ssds,and new cpus,so it's really no advisable to buy stuff for the game sooner than perhaps 1 month before the game comes out.
The most important upgrade personally I should do is get a new monitor since my old 1024x768 doesn't let me play at HD.
(I just realized I payed so many hundreds of euros for better performance,and I overlooked the basics)

I just built mine last month.
I might upgrade my processor or motherboard. I already have 8 gigs of Ram. My video card is decent.
I might be able to play it on full, I can play Crysis and Farcry 2 on full, so I am not to worried.

Well, you've got 11 months to go (at least, cross your fingers).

If you can put away $100 a month and don't mind building your own rig, you could assemble a very respectable computer for ~$1000. Esepcially if you're upgrading an existing computer -- worst case scenario you could still save on a case, maybe the PSU, even if your mobo is too old for current gen parts (like if you've got an AGP only mobo).

If you could set aside closer to $200 a month for ten months, you could outright purchase a pre-built gaming computer, or build a monster of a rig.

But that all only works if you've got a job. If you're school-age and only have a paper route or something, freeing up $100 a month is going to be hard.

Seeing as I just built a decent PC for only 1/3rd more than the base cost of just a PS3, "half a million" is perhaps a little OTT. I don't have a great deal of money, so I costed everything up and buying a half decent PC came out cheaper in the short term, and significantly cheaper in the long term.

I seriously doubt I'll have to upgrade to run Skyrim, so far the only thing she's struggled with is, ironically, Oblivion - and that's only because mods are letting me push it significantly harder than most cutting-edge games, it runs like a dream vanilla. In the same way that you can make Morrowind look better than Oblivion|Vanilla, it wouldn't surprise me if you could make Oblivion look better than Skyrim|Vanilla.