Elsarian

They do: The Catalyst Control Center. However, it isn't as in depth as the Inspector, so yeah. It lacks features like SSAO and probably other features as well.

This might sound stupid, but does Nvidia inspector work with AMD based GPU's?

My "desktop" is setup next to a TV stand and hooked via HDMI to a 42" flat-screen. Works great with steams Big Picture mode. I treat my PC as a console/pc hybrid of sorts.

Very well said. Exactly why I mentioned that a $550 dollar custom build desktop would have landed him a better rig than buying one. Also, in the future, keep in mind that you should steer clear of laptops. Sure, there are $1000 dollar gaming laptops out there, but they are heinous when it comes to upgrading different components. Besides, building a computer really isn't that hard, to be honest. There's a plethora of youtube videos out there that show you how to do it. Anyways, good luck on future endeavors! -Elsarian

Doesn't look that bad at all. It's got a nice CPU, decent graphics chip, good RAM, and all together seems rather nice. I think could have built a much better machine rather than buy one, but it's all up to you. I think you'll be able to run the game just fine. Also, welcome to the community! Happy Gaming! -Elsarian

Thank you very much for the link to that, man!! While I knew pretty much all of them, what I didn't know how to do was adding those multithreading lines to help out people with multiple cores. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Any save over 40 MB is pretty much not salvageable. The modding community has yet to find a fix for it. You can get the Unofficial Skyrim Patch which helps in reducing this problem (by a lot actually), but there is no guarantee that it'll save your character.

A month from December 4. I'm guessing early January.

2GB is plenty enough for today's games. If you're set on having a high budget, then get two 2GB cards and you'll be rocking for the next 4-6 years lol.

Also, keep in mind that running a high amount of mods, other than graphical modifications, will contribute to more CPU use. Skyrim as is (vanilla) is very CPU demanding, so adding more content including DLC's, mods, and so on will add to that strain. It also strains the game itself, so once applying a high amount of mods the game may start crashing randomly without conflicts, or it'll start stuttering and not performing properly due to all of your mods and skyrim eating up memory and your CPU. So there are lots of factors other than your GPU to consider.

You could just get another GTX 550 and go SLI. Twice the power, y'know. And I'm sure that if you can afford that one, and want newer one, then you might be able to afford another of the same series and just SLI them. Hell, just that card should be able to run Skyrim and any other game you throw at it. I have a XFX Radeon HD 6770 and it runs Skyrim maxed with 40 FPS, Crysis 1 and 2 maxed and running between 30 and 40 fps, Battlefield 3 maxed running at 40-45 fps, and so on. I know some of my other hardware helps contribute to my performance, but most of the games I listed, aside from skyrim, are very GPU intensive. I would recommend just getting another GTX 550 and do SLI.

I'd definitely recommend that you buy them now. Skyrim is 50% off and the DLC's are extremely cheap. Even if you don't use them just yet, they're worth buying because after the 26th, everything goes back up to normal price. It's now or never lol.

I play in online mode all the time. No issues on my end.

Now that I look back, there were a lot of memorable moments in Oblivion. However, I do think it would be difficult going back since I played that damn game for 5 years, so yeah XD.

Microsoft only had 30 day exclusive rights to only TWO of Skyrim's DLC's. Both Dawnguard and Hearthfire were 30 day exclusive, so Dragonborn should not be. If it is then we were lied to. So PC just might get the Dec 4th release date like 360. However, Playstation 3 players haven't gotten a single piece of DLC because none of them are running properly on the system. Dawnguard causes massive slowdowns and Skyrim itself experienced major issues on release date with the system as well. So, we shouldn't complain to much. Plus, I've started to get used to 360 players being our beta testers lol. Anyway, all should be fine. Maybe they only advertised for the 360 due to the massive amount of players that play on that system, who knows; we'll just have to wait and see. -Elsarian To be perfectly honest, even though I don't want to have to wait for this because A, I'm very excited for this DLC in particular, but more importantly B, we were lied to, I'd actually feel somewhat better if Bethesda fixed the PS3 issues and we and Xbox had to wait 30 days for them. I mean, I'd rather no wait for any of us, but if anyone deservers better treatment at this point, it's PS3 players. Well, I do agree with you on those points. While we PC players and the 360 players are going to be able to experience our DLC's, it's already apparent that PS3 people might just get left out in the cold. Bethesda admitted that Dawnguards performance on PS3 is unsatisfactory. Here is a link with what they had to day about the performance: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/02/bethesda-not-yet-satisfied-with-dawnguards-performance-on-the-ps3 Here is a snippet of the news one of the Devs had to say: "It's been a few weeks, and we wanted to make sure everyone knows where we're at with Dawnguard. Skyrim is a massive and dynamic game that requires a lot of resources, and things get much more complex when you're talking about sizable content like Dawnguard. We have tried a number of things, but none of them solve the issue enough to make Dawnguard good for everyone. The PS3 is a powerful system, and we're working hard to deliver the content you guys want. Dawnguard is obviously not the only DLC we’ve been working on either, so the issues of adding content get even more complicated. This is not a problem we’re positive we can solve, but we are working together with Sony to try to bring you this content. “We wish we had a more definitive answer right now. We understand the frustration when the same content is not available on all platforms. When we have an update, we will certainly let you know. We deeply appreciate all the time and support you have given us, and we’ll keep doing our best to return that.” So according to what they said above, if nothing can be done, then there may never be DLC for PS3. They've been at it for almost a year; I mean, how long can one possibly keep going until it gets to the point where you're basically beating a dead horse, y'know? Plus, just take into account that if just Dawnguard is causing problems, then imagine what a massive DLC like Dragonborn will do alone; now combine the two....yeah, doesn't seem very pretty.

Microsoft only had 30 day exclusive rights to only TWO of Skyrim's DLC's. Both Dawnguard and Hearthfire were 30 day exclusive, so Dragonborn should not be. If it is then we were lied to. So PC just might get the Dec 4th release date like 360. However, Playstation 3 players haven't gotten a single piece of DLC because none of them are running properly on the system. Dawnguard causes massive slowdowns and Skyrim itself experienced major issues on release date with the system as well. So, we shouldn't complain to much. Plus, I've started to get used to 360 players being our beta testers lol. Anyway, all should be fine. Maybe they only advertised for the 360 due to the massive amount of players that play on that system, who knows; we'll just have to wait and see. -Elsarian

Fascinating. Thank you very much for the update, my friend.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, francesco's ultimate monster and weapon mod, Better Cities for Oblivion, a lot of the interesting quest mods, and so many more. I'm just hoping that these great mod authors will take their skills to Skyrim and improve upon what they did in the past. I miss those guys' mods a lot. However it is rather interesting to see how many high quality mods are ALREADY starting to be released! I personally think that these next few years will be the biggest increase in modding we've seen in the ES games so far.

If they were ever located in Skyrim, then it's not recorded and has yet to be found out. We only currently know that there are currently no Ayleid ruins in skyrim due to the race being mostly concentrated in city-states in Cyrodiil. For instance, it was the Ayleids who built White Gold Tower that rests in the middle of the Imperial City, which had once been a great Ayleid Fort. Skyrim, then a kingdom of it's own, actually helped the human queen, St. Alessia, previously a slave of the Ayleids, to overthrow the Ayleids which drove them out of Cyrodiil. Now, from this we know they only inhabited the Heartland, they could have went into hiding in Skyrim unnoticed, but the devs have yet to add more lore about them for us to know. All we know about them is that they were the first race to establish an empire in Tamriel, they lived in a tribal society with each tribe being different from the next, they established the Imperial City, enslaved humans, used remarkable magic, were overthrown, and then run out of the province. We have yet to find wherever they went, however it would be interesting to find out.

The Aleids, or Heartland High Elves, only inhabited the Heartland, or Cyrodiil. They were never in any other province, so it wouldn't be lore-correct for there to be Aleid Ruins in Skyrim. I'm rather sick of them to be honest because they all felt the same (as well as the fort ruins and caves) due to having but one dungeon designer. However I do agree with the rest of what you said. Mainly the very long quest's found in Morrowind.

Go to Documents/ My games/ and delete the folder named skyrim. That's the folder that houses your old rendering documents as well as both .ini's. After deleting this folder, run the Steam launcher for skyrim so that the game will regenerate that folder and all documents will be fresh. If this doesn't work, then perhaps there is more we can do. Get back to me on this and we'll see what happens.

"Lore Friendly" mods are mods that stick to the lore of Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls games as a whole. For example, if you add an armor to the game, say master chiefs armor from Halo, then that would not be a lore friendly mod because Master Chief has nothing to do with the Elder Scrolls world and lore. However, if you add some Viking armor and weapons, then that may be considered Lore friendly because it matches the style and vibe that Bethesda intended. BOSS is a sorting tool used to sort your mods into a proper load order so that you can avoid mod conflicts. It's updated regularly and is an invaluable tool to those that are installing mods for the first time and are not well versed in sorting mods them selves.

Hop on over to Skyrim Nexus, click on the "Files" tab and then select "Top Files". There you will find all the mods ranked the highest by the community; that's probably the best place to start. However, you can also go to the "Categories" section and pick a category that interests you. Once that's done you can chose to list the mods by endorsements and find what the best mods are within that category. Skyrim Nexus, as well as the others, is a treasure trove of mods ranging from the best the community has to offer, all the way to the worst. Good luck and welcome to the community! -Elsarian

Not that I know of, no. Have you attempted any of the steps that I have listed?

This sounds like an issue that's happened to certain people with Bethesda's other games. I had this issue with Fallout 3, but not NV. I used to get weird color blotches pop up while playing Oblivion on my old Radeon HD 4670 card. It could just be a strange happening with your GPU, or something on Bethesdas end. Is this only happening in Yngol Barrow?