Any cost effective options to upgrade my PC to use higher settings on Skyrim?

spongebobrob

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Dec 15, 2011
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Hello, here is my current computer specs:

2.33 GHz Intel duo core processor
2 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
455 GB hardrive, (45 GB free)
Windows vista.. :(

When running skyrim, it defaults to the lowest settings. I am wondering what my options are to upgrade my pc specs to improve performance enough to use the higher settings.

Should I buy more RAM or a new video card, if so what video card and how much of a different would that make to the settings I could run? If someone with a bit of know-how could tell me what is holding me back most and any cost effective ways I could improve on this.

thanks a mil,
spongebobrob
 

5T34LTH

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Dec 22, 2011
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first of all, ram is really cheap, buy some more you dont have enough to run the OS and skyrim with an HDD and that? CPU
second of all what do you have on your computer? i mean 45 GB free........... 400 GB of data? thats allot of things you dont want to loose or want to loose..... cuss there might be things in your computer slowing it down
and how old is your computer and what M/B do you have?
 
1. You should upgrade to at least a total of 4GB of RAM.

2. Delete some programs / games you do not need to free up some hard drive space. Burn important data onto DVDs. You generally want at least 15% free space on your hard drives.

3. Get a new video card. But you need to find out if your current card is the old AGP standard or the newer PCI-e standard (not to be confused with PCI).
 

5T34LTH

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Dec 22, 2011
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4GB of ram is not worht much if its DDR1, i would say to you that if you got DDR400 you should consider changing your board soon, but if its DDR2 you should be able to last a little bit longer

you need at less 4GB to run anything smooth these days, 2GB is hell for any computer running windows vista or 7, good enough for XP(but 3GB would be better)