Will I be able to run Skyrim on this laptop?

[raiinbowz]

Mine is almost dead so I'm looking to pick this up within the next week or so.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX40305

On the uesp site it says that graphics card can run it at high but I want to make sure the other specs on the laptop will be able to run it, even if it's just on medium.

If not, what can you recommend? It needs to be a laptop and not over $1,000.

 

Also, what exactly will hyper-threading do for me?

Edited October 9, 2012 by raiinbowz

[Vecna6667]

That laptop shouldn't have much problem. My laptop can run Skyrim at 1080p on high settings and it has a Core 2 Duo, GTX 260M and 6GB of DDR2 ram so this laptop should handle it.

 

As for hyper-threading, it doesn't do much for you. What it does in a basic description is allow your CPU to process 2 sets of instruction per core by virtualizing the unused portion of the core. Depending on the application, the laptop's dual core cpu can function as a quad core cpu, but not quite be a quad core in performance. It be much better if you can get that laptop with an actual quad core cpu.

[raiinbowz]

Thanks! I was mainly worried about the dual cores being able to run it well, but you've convinced me.

And thanks for the description about hyper-threading

[FMod]

On the uesp site it says that graphics card can run it at high but I want to make sure the other specs on the laptop will be able to run it, even if it's just on medium.

Graphics card is a possible weak spot. CPU is OK since Skyrim only needs two cores.

 

GT 650M is a ~600 GFLOPS board, you have the weaker GDDR3 version. It's only about the equivalent of a desktop GTS 240.

I tried running Skyrim on a desktop GTX285 and it runs but not too pretty, GTS240 is about *snip* half that.

 

I suppose you'll be customizing settings between medium and high. Turn off the daedra-damned shadows, keep your NPC view distance moderate, don't install big texture mods (because GDDR3) and you'll be OK.

 

 

Also, what exactly will hyper-threading do for me?

Almost nothing really.

But it's a two-core, so it will be able to pretend it's a quad-core when needed.

Edited October 10, 2012 by FMod

[Vecna6667]

On the uesp site it says that graphics card can run it at high but I want to make sure the other specs on the laptop will be able to run it, even if it's just on medium.

Graphics card is a possible weak spot. CPU is OK since Skyrim only needs two cores.

 

GT 650M is a ~600 GFLOPS board, you have the weaker GDDR3 version. It's only about the equivalent of a desktop GT 240. Slower actually.

I tried running Skyrim on a desktop GTX285 and it runs but not too pretty, GT240 is about *snip* half that.

 

I suppose you'll be customizing settings between medium and high. Turn off the daedra-damned shadows, keep your NPC view distance moderate, don't install big texture mods (because GDDR3) and you'll be OK.

 

 

Also, what exactly will hyper-threading do for me?

Almost nothing really.

But it's a two-core, so it will be able to pretend it's a quad-core when needed.

 

My laptop's graphics card(GTX 260M) also uses GDDR3 vram and it is handling Skyrim's high settings at 1080 with Bethesda's HD mod and it is a downclocked version so a GT 650M shouldn't have too much of a problem if not perform better than mine. The only change I had for a stable performance to do was turn down anti-aliasing down from 8X to 4X and then I was able to add ambient occlusion.

[FMod]

I suppose it depends on the definition of handling. 30 fps average with occasional dips is still playable, while 60 fps average with 30 rock bottom is the comfortable level.

[Rennn]

There is a quite big jump from the -50 Nvidia cards to the -60 cards. A 550ti can't even match a stock 460, for example. The mobility version will be slower still, but the laptop in general should run Skyrim on medium or high pretty well. Most of Skyrim's performance issues on modern pcs are cpu-related, and your cpu is actually stronger than the graphics card.

 

If you want to keep and improve your shadows, I recommend turning the shadow resolution to something low (like 1024), and then using a high-performance ENB for the shadow filtering.

 

My particular high performance ENB has just about no framerate hit. The worst reported loss is about 3 fps. I just use it for the color effect and the shadow filtering, with all the large effects disabled.

I'm not saying you should use my ENB, but I'm just using that as an example of how you can gain performance and quality over vanilla using certain high-performance ENBs.

Edited October 10, 2012 by Rennn

[FMod]

Having said that, I can't imagine that a 650m would perform worse than a 550, and a 550 would run Skyrim on high.

It's quite a way behind a desktop 550 really:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html

 

So it's about as fast as GTS 450 on comparison charts. And GTS 450 is 75% as fast as a 550Ti.

 

If you look at Skyrim (which they run without mods of course), 650m shows about 41-43 fps on High in 1366x768, all for the GDDR5 version. That is the average fps. Going down to GDDR3 reduces performance. Then, 1600x900 is about 37% more area to render. So I would expect something in the 30-35 fps range as the average.

 

For me that wouldn't be comfortable. I tried playing at 30 fps once, by mistake (installed Stutter Remover and didn't edit the ini) and it was horrifying, I thought my game install broke down. That's fixed solid at 30 fps, here it would be 30-35 average with dips down to a slideshow at 15-20.

 

For some people it would be comfortable. But I think that manually tweaking between Medium and High, with shadows off (they're performance suckers and work poorly in Skyrim anyway), to get a more comfortable framerate, would be a better option.

Anyway, the bottom line is, it will run and it will run, by laptop standards, well.

[Rennn]

Having said that, I can't imagine that a 650m would perform worse than a 550, and a 550 would run Skyrim on high.

It's quite a way behind a desktop 550 really:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.71887.0.html

 

So it's about as fast as GTS 450 on comparison charts. And GTS 450 is 75% as fast as a 550Ti.

 

:blink:

 

I never would have thought that...

I'm editing my previous post, because it was misleading.

 

I play at 30fps in most games. In Skyrim I generally cap at 60 fps, since it doesn't look too stable at 30 fps for me.

I've been playing Dark Souls at 30 fps and I sometimes mistake it for 60, but if I play Borderlands at anything below 60 it starts to look really stuttery.

Each engine and game looks different at different framerates, depending partially on the framerate that the animations were recorded at. Skyrim doesn't look great at 30, but it's not nearly as bad as putting Borderlands at 30. Of course, it depends on what the player is used to as well, and how much bandwidth the graphics card in question has, compared to the recommended bandwidth for the game. The human eye/brain is pretty good at smoothing low framerates over time, assuming the framerate is consistent.

 

No hate to Borderlands. It's a great game that just happens to look really stuttery at 30 fps.

Edited October 10, 2012 by Rennn

[raiinbowz]

I don't really need crazy good graphics, just so it's playable at least. So if you think it can run on medium i'll most likely get this one