snouman Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 (edited) Hello, I'm new to skyrim. To be honest, I haven't even yet purchased the game. Once I get it, I would like to have the ultimate gaming experience. I would want to play the game with the higest graphical settings and with many graphic enchancing mods such as higher resolution textures. At current state I'm lacking badly with GPU since I have radeon 4850. CPU is intel e8400. Have 4Gb memory. I'm wondering, will upgrading GPU be enough to run the best graphical mods? Or do I need total overhaul to my rig to be able to play with smooth framerates? Are the graphical mods demanding on cpu and memory? I'm little tempted to get ivy bridge which will be soon released. But if my current cpu has enough power, I would propably postpone my uprading for few months. Edited April 15, 2012 by snouman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Korodic Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 I have never heard of your cpu ^.^ If you aren't satisfied with your gameplay then you'd want to upgrade, otherwise don't. As for smooth framerate. Depends. What are you looking to download? Visual stuff needs a lot of resources. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarNilavu Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 (edited) Hmm. I don't run any high resolution mods, but I do run the game with a few mods and on highest settings with only three crashes since I've got the game last year. My specs:HP model h8 - 1000z (2011)AMD Phenom II X4 840T (2.90 GHz)6 GB RAMNVIDIA GeForce GT 530 GPU 2 GB A new GPU would help, but you might want some more memory as well. The newer updates make Skyrim 4GB aware, but you won't get to use them all since Windows uses like 1.5 or more. I've heard some people saying they have troubled with some Radeon GPUs. I suggest a NVIDIA one since their recent updates are made with Skyrim specifically in mind. Edited April 15, 2012 by DarNilavu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snouman Posted April 15, 2012 Author Share Posted April 15, 2012 I'm asking these things because I don't have the game yet. I'm trying to decide weither I should wait for ivy bridge and buy skyrim after I have new rig or if I would buy only GPU and get skyrim now. E8400 is one of the better dualcores, but I think its now little outdated and might hinder better graphic cards like radeon 7850. I have not yet investigated which spesific mods to get but propably quite many. Propably I'll get all the graphic enchancing mods that are considered good, including high res textures to most objects/characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gasti89 Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 I have a ATI 6850 1gb ddr5. I'm able to to run every texture pack i install, except for skyrim hd. I have 60 fps indoors and 25-35 outdoors. 20 on the top of DragonReach. For all the others i always pick the "high" one (i avoid "ultra" if there is). I run skyrim at "high" just because my old CPU (AMD Anthlon II X2) can't handle the ultra shadows. I think that with a ATI 6950, 2 more GB RAM and a common quad-core you can run nearly everything without issues (maybe just some ENB settings will kill your fps). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakisthe Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 I have just about every visual upgrade on the site, an ENB suite and max graphical settings. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 485M SLIIntel Core i7-3920XM12 GB ram Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iRobsta Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 I'm a computer tech. If that means anything, currently typing this out to you from work actually. A nvidia 480 or ati 5850 gpu wise should keep you nice and cozy for quite some time. They'll be able to play 99% of the games on the market maxed, this includes modded Skyrim. CPU wise and intel/amd quad core with ~2.4ghz or more will do you very well and you'll be very happy. If I have to recommend a quick and good build save up for a intel i5 2500k. Buying that will make you happy and you'll have a long gaming life with that CPU and well worth the money. The "K" means it's unlocked so you can OC (over clock) it in the future if you'll ever need more power. Suprising to most people, the i5 games better than the i7 because it doesn't have the same hyperthread technology that the i7 has, which actually lowers your fps in games. Note, I did say games, it's better for other things. RAM is super cheap these days. 50 - 60 dollars and you get find yourself a 6 - 8 GB kit DDR3 (~1600mhz) which is going to be more than enough. Motherboard wise find what you want, something cheap but not no name. You limit yourself when you buy your motherboard, so remember what you plan on upgrading int he future. Total cost for a build like this i'd say would be ~800? Maybe less, maybe more? This includes ALL components of the rig (PSU, MOTHERBOARD, GPU,CPU, RAM, CASE and HD). I know because I build a similar rig for my brother, although he got 16 GB of RAM for 75$ and some other extras that ended up costing ~1000$. He can max Crysis 2 with DX11. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMoss Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 Hi I have a 2 year old Falcon NE Talon. I7 at 3 Ghz. 8 Gigs fast ram, ATI Radeon 5870 video card. I can run Skyrim with the HD graphics pack and everything set to max, even shadows and run a stead 60 frames per second.I have Vsync turned on so it's limited to that. My friend just bought a new Talon with a new I5 processor and 16 gigs of ram and it runs faster then mine.it cost about 1,500 dollars. If you can build you own I'd check out the components on their site and see what they are using to put them together. You could build something similar and save a few bucks. Mike http://build.falcon-nw.com/?s=2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrivener07 Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 I have just about every visual upgrade on the site, an ENB suite and max graphical settings. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 485M SLIIntel Core i7-3920XM12 GB ram I had no idea laptops can do sli?! What model do you have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cthulutaur Posted April 15, 2012 Share Posted April 15, 2012 (edited) i have an amd athlon II x4 cpu + radeon hd 6850 with 6 gigs of ram. its ran every mod ive thrown at it including the hd textures packs, extended draw distance mods and fxaa enhancers and i run the game in ultra settings @ highest resolution with steady/benchmark frame rate. in your case id recommend updating your videocard at least, that one may not cut it and even if it did it would probably be at a really low setting and hardly enjoyable. thats my advice. the hd 6850 is only like 150 right now so you can pick that up if it will fit your mobo. make sure your psu is at least 500 watt though and youll be good to go. Edited April 15, 2012 by cthulutaur Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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