Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: PC Performance, Benchmarked

[cleeve]

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion redefined our expectations for open world fantasy RPGs, and it was brutally hard on the hardware of it's day. Is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as challenging on today's PC hardware, or can a modest rig handle it?

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: PC Performance, Benchmarked : Read more

 

[xx12amanxx]

Ive been a fan of the Elderscroll series for years i look forward to playing this!

 

[Jarmo]

A bit disappointing to see the 2 threads thing, no doubt the console versions are much better optimized.
Looks like I'm both CPU and GPU limited with Phenom x4 and ATI 4870.

 

[lunyone]

A bit disappointing to see the 2 threads thing, no doubt the console versions are much better optimized.
Looks like I'm both CPU and GPU limited with Phenom x4 and ATI 4870.

Well with a Athlon II x3 450 and an AMD 4850 512mb GPU w/6 gb's of DDR2 it seems to work fine. The game has picked "Ultra" settings when launching the game the first time. I haven't seen all of the settings that the game has selected, but the game looks pretty good and is running quite well. I haven't run any FRAPS on it, but it seems to be about 30-40 FPS, from what I can tell, which is good enough for me

 

[lunyone]

Oh and forgot to mention that the game is running at 1920 x 1080 resolution (unless the game adjusted to something different). I'm trying to play and post, so I'm a bit distracted to say the least. I'll post back if something changes

 

[computadoro]

O well, was hoping to see the 560ti and 6950 tested as those are the two cards I was going to choose between.

 

[cleeve]

O well, was hoping to see the 560ti and 6950 tested as those are the two cards I was going to choose between.

Just look at 6850/GTX460 and 6970/GTX 570. The 560 Ti and 6950 will be in the middle of those, closer to the higher end though.

 

[Swolern]

Bethesda disappoints PC gamers again! It's very sad that Bethesda chooses to optimize the consoles and leaves PC with a basic port with a little extra detail. I'm not saying it's not a great game because it is, but the thought of what it could have been if Bethesda put a little extra effort into the PC makes me sick!

 

[Swolern]

Bethesda=Activision. Dice blows em both away!

 

[koogco]

I havent played this yet, due to a pending CPU upgrade (somehow i doubt my athlon x2 5600+ (2,8ghz) is enough for much.
But even if this game doesn't quite push the top cards, you gotta commend them for the great scaling! Some of the worst console ports doesn't even HAVE graphics settings, in other games the settings make little difference in the hardware needed, and based on these screenshots (if rather small, larger ones please!) the game looks almost as good if you turn the settings down some.

 

[Guest]

Man looks really castrated so it can work on xbox/ps3. Too bad, 5 year old graphics are lame.

 

[Stardude82]

[citation][nom]koogco[/nom]I havent played this yet, due to a pending CPU upgrade (somehow i doubt my athlon x2 5600+ (2,8ghz) is enough for much.[/citation]
I bet you that CPU is plenty to push something like a 4850 with reasonable resolution and quality. I mean my old Core 2 Duo with a 2600XT managed to hack Fallout 3 fairly well at appropriate resolutions and quality settings.

 

[cumi2k4]

so, will i see another wave of thug wearing daedric armor as i progressed in level like Oblivion?

 

[ojas]

At ultra details with transparency anti-aliasing and 4x MSAA, only the fastest cards like AMD's Radeon HD 6970, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 570, and its GeForce GTX 460 in SLI provide playable frame rates.

So does the 6850...barely, but it does...

 

[ojas]

What about memory usage? I've been curious to see what effect BF3 and Skyrim would have on that 1GB vs 2GB 6950 article...

Would be good if we could just get charts for both games with max VRAM usage for cards with memory greater than 1GB for ultra and high settings at various resolutions...i know my 9600GT goes up to 800MB with BF3 set mostly to medium at 1024x768...

 

[Jarmo]

[citation][nom]lunyone[/nom]Well with a Athlon II x3 450 and an AMD 4850 512mb GPU w/6 gb's of DDR2 it seems to work fine. [/citation]

Sounds promising, even if I'll have to push it to 1920x1200.
I can do without AA but I'd like the action to stay smooth even (and especially) when crowded by opponents.

 

[jdw_swb]

Wait a minute........I'm confused!

Is this that new Scrolls game being made by Notch?

 

[molo9000]

Was vsync enabled or disabled for this test?

I think Skyrim enables it by default and you have to either turn it off in an .ini file or force it off with the graphics driver.

 

[Onyx2291]

Hmm seeing that a 6670 is right between the 240 and 5770 it should be playable at the settings I'm looking toward.. Leaning more and more toward upgrading my GPU.

 

[Kamen_BG]

I wonder why the game gives such a little difference between 2 and more cores on AMD CPU's but it seems to use 4 SB cores.

 

[enkichild]

This is proof dev are in bed with AMD/NVIDIA

How can this run on console hardware, yet so poorly on a more recent computer?

$$$

 

[cancer2]

I tried the game for a bit, it looks really good, and the leveling scheme is improved. I love perks when leveling!
I'm playing mostly with the bow, and have a little hard time figuring how to snipe, I'm not sure it is even possible, but in Oblivion this was not a problem.
What I do hate about the game is the menu. It is clearly a port from console, the mouse is totally useless I REALLY hate it. This MUST be fixed in a patch, it is foolish to give up on the freedom of movement thru menu items, to be just limited to keyboard which is considerably slower. Also, showing up the character when equipping items would be a great improvement(like it was in Oblivion) especially now that the character looks very nice.

 

[Guest]

My pc is a intel duo core 3.16ghz cpu overclocked to 3.8ghz, with 4gb of ram and an overlocked hd6850.

Would this be good enough to run skyrim on decent settings? or would the cpu be a bit of a bottle neck?

 

[Agges]

And a side note - I do not get the love for Oblivion, it was nowhere near Morrowind..

 

[Agges]

The login swallowed my first comment ...

What I am missing in these performance reviews is the inclusion of EyeFinity and the Nvidia equivalent. It would be nice to read about the impact of running 35**x1920 or 5***x1080.