Computer Recommendations?

[Inafog]

I am due to buy a new desktop machine. I'm playing Oblivion on a 5-year-old Dell with modest specs (e.g. Vista; ATI Radeon HD2400 128mb). Actually it's playing surprisingly well, but... what would you knowledgeable people recommend to play Oblivion and Skyrim with the options set at maximum and no worries about installing a modest number of mods (say 10 or 15) but including some large ones like Better Cities? And should I get Windows 7 instead of 8? I am fairly ignorant about computers so I hope I can get some friendly advice on what to look for (without buying the current cutting-edge stuff; since Oblivion and Skyrim are older games, I hope they don't need the top-of-the line stuff. My budget is limited.)

[kalikka]

W7 vs W8, it's all about your tastes. If you like the W8 UI then take it.

 

Basically the budget is the most important part when designing a PC. Can't really help with anything without knowing anything about the budget.

 

But here are some graphs about GPU performance in Skyrim.

[Inafog]

Ah, the budget... Will $1,000 to $1,200 buy anything useful these days? Or should I keep saving?

 

Thanks for the very helpful chart link.

[Rennn]

Windows 7 is much better. Windows 8 isn't really worse for gaming, which is probably where kalikka is coming from, but Windows 8 is universally acknowledged as a horrible POS for everyone except tablet users. I highly recommend Windows 7. Vista is actually really bad, especially for gaming. You'll see a modest performance increase just by switching to Windows 7.

 

Skyrim and Oblivion certainly don't need top of the line stuff.

I use a GTX 660 GC. It cost me $210 when I bought it, and it runs Skyrim on ultra at 40-60 fps. It only drops to 40 in the big towns. Most of the time it's at 60 fps. I use over 90 mods and all DLC, including the official HD texture DLC. Of course, it puts Oblivion on ultra with 100+ mods at 60 fps.

 

This is the card I use.

http://www.amazon.com/Galaxy-GeForce-Express-Graphics-66NPH7DN6ZVZ/dp/B00965J7M2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1376432463&sr=8-2&keywords=gtx+660+gc

 

This is a card for a similar cost but it's newer with higher performance.

http://www.amazon.com/Galaxy-GeForce-Express-Graphics-76XPH6DV6KKZ/dp/B00D8BQJ9Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376432523&sr=8-1&keywords=gtx+760+gc

 

If you don't want to spend that much and you're content with 30fps on high-ultra with mods, there's also this cheaper card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121686

 

Edit:

Oh, I thought you were just looking for a video card. Well, you can easily get a PC to play Skyrim and Oblivion (as well as most/all other games) on ultra for $1000 as long as you build it yourself. Prices have gone down, not up.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Rennn

[kalikka]

I guess you are not an overclocker?

 

H87 mobo (the fatal1ty mobo seems to have pretty good features/price) and i5-4570 or Xeon 1230v3.

Something like XFX 550W PSU

Define R4/Bitfenix Shinobi/Rosewill Blackhawk/etc. for a case

SSD or no SSD?

How much HDD space you need, and can you use the old HDD (and the dvd-drive)?

GPU depending on the budget/"SSD or no SSD"/"need to buy windows?"

[Inafog]

Thank you for this useful advice.

[Roguespear]

The Intel Haswell chips are the tock in Intel's upgrade scheme of tick tock upgrades, that is to say it is the upgrade chip instead of the warm up chip or tock version, it uses less power and offers more performance than precious chips. As for video Asus has a super quiet and very fast gtx 660 ti available on Amazon for 218.00 down from 339 just 6 months ago. I have two and they are sick.

 

I know that there are a number of AMD fans out there but Intel really does have the fastest chips excluding the high clocks speeds achieved by using liquid nitrogen.

 

I am going to recommend a parts list but the final decision is yours....

 

Rosewill Blackhawk case 90.00 newegg (I have one and it has lots of extras for the price.)

 

Rosewill power supply 750 watt Hybrid 72.00 on Amazon (I have one and it works.)

 

CPU Ivy Bridge i7 3770 289.99 newegg

 

motherboard Asus P8z77 1155 139.99 newegg

 

ram Gskill 8 gigs 71.99 newegg

 

ssd Samsung 840 series 120 gig 99.99 newegg

 

hardrive storage Seagate 1 terabyte 69.99

 

dvd Asus 18.99 newegg (I have 7 of these)

 

Video card Asus 660 ti OC 218.99 Amazon (I have 2 of these)

 

Windows 7 pro 139.99 (I have 9 computers with this version on them)

 

Unless my addition is faulty, it comes in around 1140.00 plus or minus 5.00

 

We are talking about Skyrim at 60 frames per and very fast boot times at low temps quietly. That's quad core with 4 hyperthreading cores for 8 core performance.

 

I have been doing this for 29 years so I know just a little about this, I do not know what the peripherals of your current system are like but this would give maximum bang for the buck, all this equipment had lots of reviews and 4 or 5 stars.

 

Hope this helps.

[Roguespear]

I seem to be having problems with the editor so I am replying to my own post... I built 2 computers for a nexus user last year and they are working great, I would give out his name but do not yet have his permission so PM me if you need to know. Haswell parts would be great if it were not for budget constraints. I think last years stuff would

be a very good compromise.

[Inafog]

Again, thank you for providing this thorough advice! I am not actually going to buy parts and assemble them into a computer, a task for which I am entirely incompetent. (I am a historian.) Looking at your suggestions and realizing that I should probably not be too penny-pinching in buying something I will use for a good many years, and having just gotten an unexpected writing assignment that will bring in a little extra, I am considering going back to Falcon Northwest--I had two computers from them in earlier times, although my present machine is a very modest Dell--and forking out about $2,200 for a Talon. Here are the components I listed. Do you see any weak points? (I do want to play Oblivion & Skyrim, including several--but not dozens of--mods, at the best settings; but I do not expect to buy many more games.) I copy down the terms below with only a vague understanding of what some of them mean. (My screen name wasn't chosen at random :-)

 

Power supply: 750 watts Motherboard: Asus Z87 Plus

Processor: Intel Core i5 4670K, 3.4GHz Cooler: Asetek Liquid Cooling

Memory: 1866MHz 2x8GB Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 2GB

Hard Drive: Western Digital Black 1TB Optical Drive: Asus 16x

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

I plan to use "on-board audio" because I seldom listen to music on my computer and I usually play games with the music turned off--I find it distracting.

 

There will also, I believe, be a keyboard and a mouse. :laugh:

[obobski]

I think $2200 for everything you've listed is a little steep. It would certainly do what you want though. I'll add that Better Cities probably will still run a little slow in some parts (I remember bottoming out at around 25 fps in a few parts of the modded Imperial City; my machine does 60+ FPS across the board in Skyrim - both games run full max settings (and I play at higher than 1080p)). I think it's just due to the number of objects and NPCs that BC adds. Having said that, it's really a great mod, and I wouldn't shy away from it due to the performance hit (you can also tweak how it installs to make it less demanding - see the documentation for more details about that).

 

Looking around on the Dell site, I think you can probably save about a thousand dollars and still have what you want - I'm looking at an Alienware X51 with an i7-4770 and GTX 660 for $1099. I'm guessing you have a monitor and other stuff already, so it should be pretty much set at that price (it even comes with Windows 7).