Computer Upgrade Advice

[anthony87]

Right so like so many of you I've recently purchased Skyrim, unfortunately my PC of 4 or so years can't seem to run it effectively on the higher settings. This has inspired me to finally shell out on a slight hardware upgrade but to be honest I'm kinda shite at figuring out what's decent and what's not when it comes to this sorta thing.

My computer at the moment is:

Dell XPS 420 running Windows Vista Home Premium,
Intel Quad Core 2 CPU Q6600 *@2.40GHz 2.39GHz*,
3GB of RAM,
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics card.

I'm really just considering a couple of extra GBs of RAM and a new graphics card so what would you guys recommend in order for me to be able to run Skyrim at max settings or thereabouts?

*Not even sure what this means.....-_-

 

[Waaghpowa]

ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics card.

There's your biggest problem.

Maxed out you're going to need a quad processor and probably a high end graphics card. ATI 5000 series or a high nvidia gtx 200 series would probably do it.

 

[James Mann]

My Rig isnt far off your own,
Vista Home Premium, Quad Core 2 Q8200 @2.33GHz, 2.3GHz
3326MB RAM, although the actual inserted memory is supposed to be 4GB, but hey.
The biggest difference i reckon would be the graphics card, mines an ATI Radeon HD 4850.

I can run the game on High settings perfectly, i havnt tried running any higher since i just left it as the game decided it would run when i first booted it up. I would consider upgrading your graphics card first, the 3800 series is a bit underpowered for most games these days.

Hope that helps any.

*Update: Just loaded the game with Ultra settings, didn't really do too much in it, was in the middle of a blizzard on top of a mountain, game seems to run mostly fine bar a little fps lag just after the game loaded my save. Take from that what you will, but it seems to run fine enough. Also note, while its Ultra settings, it was 1680x1050, but thats the monitors fault. cannot be sure whether the game would lag at full hd.

 

[anthony87]

My Rig isnt far off your own,
Vista Home Premium, Quad Core 2 Q8200 @2.33GHz, 2.3GHz
3326MB RAM, although the actual inserted memory is supposed to be 4GB, but hey.
The biggest difference i reckon would be the graphics card, mines an ATI Radeon HD 4850.

I can run the game on High settings perfectly, i havnt tried running any higher since i just left it as the game decided it would run when i first booted it up. I would consider upgrading your graphics card first, the 3800 series is a bit underpowered for most games these days.

Hope that helps any.

It does indeed. I may give the card you've got a looksee, anything would be better than the one I've got now. When I installed the game it automatically stuck me onto Low settings...

Hell it can't even run the particle effects in Skyrim decently so any torches or flames are just glows with some sparks coming off them. Kinda kills the immersion.

 

[octafish]

If that OS is 32 bit don't waste money on RAM, your system can't allocate more than 3Gb. That and a 775 CPU would seem to indicate DDR2 RAM and that shit is expensive since they stopped making a few years ago. You have a Dell so it probably has a shit PSU and a four year old one at that. Best bang for your buck would be a decent PSU a CPU cooler (212+ is good enough) overclock that q6600 to about 3.00 Ghz or so, and buy a decent current GPU, GTX 560, HD 6870, GTX 570, or HD 5950 depending on how far your budget will stretch.

I hate swapping out PSUs so myself I'd be looking at a new build with Sandy Bridge and Windows 7 64 bit.

EDIT: OCing the q6600 might be tricky if you have 667 RAM rather than 800, but it would still be worth looking at.

 

[TorqueConverter]

Right so like so many of you I've recently purchased Skyrim, unfortunately my PC of 4 or so years can't seem to run it effectively on the higher settings. This has inspired me to finally shell out on a slight hardware upgrade but to be honest I'm kinda shite at figuring out what's decent and what's not when it comes to this sorta thing.

My computer at the moment is:

Dell XPS 420 running Windows Vista Home Premium,
Intel Quad Core 2 CPU Q6600 *@2.40GHz 2.39GHz*,
3GB of RAM,
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics card.

I'm really just considering a couple of extra GBs of RAM and a new graphics card so what would you guys recommend in order for me to be able to run Skyrim at max settings or thereabouts?

*Not even sure what this means.....-_-

I would recommend overclocking your graphics card before replacing it. I had an old 8700m that would not play Borderlands do to the poor bit-stream rate of those cards and Borderlands being very texture heavy game due to the cell shaded visuals. OCing solved the problem but heat was an issue as it was a laptop. You have a desktop and there are cheap cooling options for desktop cards such as the peel and stick memory heat-sinks and universal GPU coolers. OCing is free. It's worth while to overclock both your CPU and GPU to see if your machine can run the game a acceptable settings and frame rates before dropping money on a new card. If it works then spend a little, but not much, on cooling. Don't spend new graphics card money on cooling obviously. OCing isn't magic, but it can make the difference between unacceptable and acceptable gaming experience.