UESP Forums

This may not be the proper place, but barely anyone replies in the hardware thread, and Skyrim is probably the main game I intend to play should I build myself a gaming PC.
So I'd like to build a gaming PC, or at least have one built. Maybe I'll just buy one, who knows. What I would like to know is, how do your gaming PC setups work for you? What do you use hardware wise, graphics cards, processors etc. Which are the ideal ones to have? Price of such a build? I'm basically a caveman here, a fish out of water, so if someone would be kind enough to PM me with some sort of intro to what the graphics card and processor may actually do to the performance, that'd be great.

Depends on what you what want performance-wise, really. Personally, I now use a factory-built PC manufactured in 2009 I bought second-hand. Its main specs are: 8 Gb RAM, Intel i5 750 CPU (quad-core, 2.67 GHz), GPU GeForce GTX 260 Special Edition 1,75 Gb. With this setup I can play Skyrim in average with some 45 FPS using otherwise high presets, but Antialiasing set only to 4x and all view distances maxed. I could squeeze even more from it, I'm sure, but I don't bother since the graphics are already good enough and the game runs very smoothly. Other games I own play without a hitch, too (but Skyrim is clearly the most graphically demanding of them, anyway). If you want everything on Ultra with every possible quality-enhancing .ini tweak, you'll have to look for even beefier rigs. For self-built PCs I can't say anything since I've always used package ones.

My last PC only had ATI 3870 as graphics card, 4 Gb of RAM and 3,0 GHz dual-core processor. With somewhat lower settings than above, there were many freezes in certain areas and stuttering every now and then. So basically you want a PC with at least a quad-core processor and more than 512 Mb of memory in the graphics card. The difference is very noticeable. Here's a good ranking list of how various graphics cards perform with Skyrim: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:System_ ... ifications

Also, for Skyrim I'd recommend Nvidia cards over ATI's. The latter often can't display flames and spell effects at all, so they remain invisible. This was a problem with my previous rig, too, until I started to use a mod that fooled the game believing I was using an Nvidia card.

As for prices, I don't know where you live, so can't comment how expensive computers are there. Here in Finland even halfway decent factory-built gaming desktops seem to start from around 700-800 euros (and this without anything but the PC tower itself), but this is a rather expensive country to buy anything. If you look for second-hand computers, you can get very good bargains, though. My current PC cost only 180 euros including postage, and the previous one only one hundred.

Oh Thanks, yeah, I think I'll just buy one at this point, I'll keep those specs in mind though! I'm not exactly anywhere exotic, the UK, I'll be able to find one...
Mine is only a dual core processor' 2.40 GHz, and 4.00 GB of RAM, that'll explain it.

I'm in the same situation myself. My current PC is five years old and has an Intel Pentium Dual Core @2.94GHz, a GTX 580 3GB (not the original. The original was an old ATI 4300/4500 or something like that), and 4GB of RAM.

I've been considering what would be required to run Skyrim (or ESO) on ultra settings. Most games I play are older games (Skyrim is the newest. The oldest is Black and White), but I still want my PC to perform well with Skyrim. As it is, this thing manages 40-60fps (or 30, depending on the locations. Cities will lag) with reasonably smooth gameplay (it has the occasional lag spike, but stuttering/freezing isn't generally an issue unless I'm playing with an old save of 12MB or more). Game settings are on High with draw distance maxed, 8x AA run through the GPU (because I can't run 8x AA through the game without getting ugly black lines around fire), and 16x AF run through the GPU (higher quality than the game's AF). I also use a lot of graphic mods (mostly texture replacers; I tend to stick to 1k textures, but things like bodies are 4k). Using an ENB drops the performance, but I find most don't have that much of an impact. Most.

For my purposes, I'd go with an absolute minimum of a 3.0GHz quad core processor, a GPU with 2GB of VRAM, and 8GB of system RAM. That's the minimum. I estimate that would, around here (Alberta, Canada), cost in the range of $1500-2000. Too bad I can't afford that. Upgrading my current PC, though, might only cost around $500, so... I dunno. I'd have to replace the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. The power supply is new and the 580, while old, is still working perfectly fine.