Template:Notice by frihyland & S.T.E.P. Team
GUIDE FORUM THREAD
This hardware guide exists to help STEP enthusiasts decide what will provide the greatest performance boost within an approximate price range. This guide should also provide the reader knowledge and understanding of computer system components, their importance and relevance, and even general installation guidelines. It is not a guide of required hardware to run Skyrim; though, for reference, Skyrim's official system requirements are provided as applicable. General recommendations for running STEP in all its glory are also provided. This guide is written with the assumption that the reader has basic computer skills and general knowledge of relevant system components.
When reading this guide please keep in mind the official minimum system requirements will allow minimal STEP game-play ONLY. The official recommended system requirements will allow the Baseline installation of Core STEP to run with acceptable performance at 1600x900 (16:9) or 1680x1050 (16:10) resolutions. To play Skyrim with a full performance or quality STEP installation, the STEP-recommended system requirements are necessary:
Performance STEP: Core mods only; performance options wherever possible. These recommendations will not be much more that the official recommended system requirements. "My poor box needs all of the mercy that I can spare it, but I can't do without STEP!"
Baseline STEP: Core and non-Core mods; performance/quality and balanced options wherever possible. These recommendations will get up and running STEP with medium to high settings. "My box is nice but I hate FPS drops and stuttering!"
Extreme STEP: Core and non-Core mods; highest-quality options wherever possible. These recommendations will get you running STEP in all its glory! "My box is omnipotent!"
All price ranges are given in US currency($). This information is kept as accurate as possible; however, depending on the time of our last review, it is possible for pricing of some components to be outdated. Furthermore, although all technical information is facttual, all recommendations from this guide are strictly the opinions of the STEP-Community-Wiki-editorial consensus. Ultimately, it is the individual's responsibility to check specific pricing and use his or her best judgement.
Skyrim is incredibly dependent on a fast processor; to such an extent that even with a great mid-grade processor, such as an Intel i5, you may still very often find it to be the limiting performance factor in the game. This is because Skyrim offloads all DirectX calls for shadows to the CPU which the GPU would normally handle. For this reason, if you ever find your CPU being pushed to its limits while running the game try reducing the the shadow settings on the launcher and/or in the SkyrimPrefs.ini file until you achieve your optimal CPU performance. Shadow draw distance can make a big performance impact on the CPU as well.
Since DirectX calls are offloaded to the CPU, multiple cores are a requirement! You must have at least a dual-core processor and a quad-core is recommended. Skyrim will often max out the first core with the remaining cores being utilized between 30% to 50%.
In order to accommodate a new processor, you often have to buy a new motherboard, unless your board was purchased within the last couple of years. The reason for this is because as new processors are released, they often come coupled with a new socket type; which may not match your motherboard. A new motherboard can severely effect any budget, especially when the prices of CPUs usually aren't cheap.
The minimum recommendations for upgrading when purchasing for AMD you'll want an FX-Series (Zambezi); however, Intel is highly recommended. Intel performs better in nearly all tests. For Intel, a Core i5 or higher is best for gaming. Core i7s will not improve performance greatly for gaming; however, other CPU intensive programs such as video and photo editing software will benefit greatly from these cores. The closer you can get to 4Ghz the better, but keep in mind the higher the hertz, the higher the price climbs.
Laptop users aren't out of luck here. Most laptops have upgradable CPUs; however, they are much more restricted in the variety of choices for upgrading and it is often not worth the cost. For both desktop and laptop users, check with your laptop/motherboard manufacturer for a list of supported processors before upgrading. Often BIOS updates are available to support new CPUs.
When it comes to gaming, benchmarking has shown that Intel outperforms AMD processors. An Intel i5-2500K 3.3GHz can outperform any AMD processor to date in any gaming benchmark test. Any Intel i-series with better stats than this is only improving upon the i5's performance. In Skyrim specifically, the i5 is around 30% faster than any AMD processor when measuring FPS and time spent to draw frames. Of course, not every is going to need or be able to afford this performance right away. Below is the minimum requirements for running Skyrim with the individual STEP installs. To retain the most "upgrade-ability" use the LGA 1155 socket type.
Performance STEP:
Baseline STEP:
Extreme STEP:
Overclocking is possible on most processors; however, some overclock better than others. The Intel models with "K" at the end of their model names (i5-3570K) will have better overclocking potential. *Overclocking voids your warranties. Do so at your own risk.
*You need up to 6GB to install vanilla Skyrim with all patches. DLCs will require up to an additional 6GB.
Hard Disk Drives (HDD) are still the most commonly used type of hard drive. This is because they are relatively inexpensive when compared to the newer solid-state drives (SSD). In comparison, you can purchase an one terabyte (TB/1024GB) HDD for the same price as a 64GB SSD. For the same price you get approximately 93% more store space. However, HDDs are much slower than SSDs are. When purchasing a HDD, 7200RPM and 16MB of cache (larger drives have larger caches) is recommended. Faster, 10,000RPM drives are also available; however, keep in mind they are often noticeably noisy.
Recommended brands include:
Skyrim requires 6 GB of hard drive space un-modded, and you can easily triple that with heavy modding. Skyrim also has a great many loading screens, and you can greatly diminish the time spent on these screens by installing Skyrim on a solid-state drive (SDD), as well as increasing overall performance of the game. When Purchasing an SSD, SATA 6GB/s is the fastest available; however, make sure your motherboard supports it natively through AHCI. You can set it up to use AHCI in BIOS and it must be done before OS installation, otherwise you will find your SSD running in emulated IDE mode with diminished speeds. If your motherboard doesn't support the 6GB/s transfer speeds, 3GB/s is the next best option.
Most cards are now DirectX 11. (more detailed and accurate information will follow as benchmark testing is completed)
In Skyrim, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is as equally important as the CPU. The GPU is the powerhouse of all your graphical rendering. It will determine at which resolutions and settings you'll be able to play Skyrim and any of game on your system. With Skyrim, you will need at least a DirectX 9.0C compatible card; however, this shouldn't be an issue as all new cards and the ones recommended below are DirectX 11 compatible.
Your only major decision on GPU is the manufacturer; AMD (formally, ATI) or nVidia. An internal debate among all gamers is, "which is better?" and that entirely depends on who you ask. However, it is a known fact, proven through benchmarking and driver testing, that nVidia outperforms AMD when two cards of like specifications are compared and dealing specifically with Skyrim. This is only by a small margin though and AMD tends to be slightly less expensive. Both companies are still actively supporting Skyrim in their driver releases as of this writing. Ultimately, use your best judgement when making your choice.
Your card should have at least 1GB of VRAM to run Skyrim efficiently. When modding this amount will increase depending on the mods you install. Of these, texture mods will have the biggest impact on VRAM. The higher the texture resolutions you install the more VRAM your card will need. 1GB to 1.5GB of VRAM will handle .5K and 1K textures fairly well. For 2K textures and above, you will want to have between 2GB and 4GB of VRAM. The main cause of stuttering is running out of VRAM, forcing the video card to rely on the much slower system RAM. Thus, be sure you choose the appropriate amount of VRAM compared to the resolution of texture mods you plan on installing. STEP recommends 1GB to 1.5GB for Performance and Baseline installs. For Extreme installs, STEP recommends at least 2GB or above.
Each GPU in a system must have its own dedicated VRAM that is not shareable, additionally in order for GPU's to work together they need to have access to exactly the same resources. What this means is that for multi-gpu configurations (whether it is several different cards or multiple chips on a single card) all VRAM memory must be mirrored, so if you add up your total VRAM and divide by the number of GPU's you get your functional dedicated VRAM. All the extra VRAM for each additional GPU makes absolutely no performance difference whatsoever, it is entirely utilized to make the GPU's able to work together seamlessly. So lets say you have 3 HD 7970s in CrossFireFX, what you would expect is that your games will now have 9GB of VRAM available to them, in reality you are still limited to 3GB and the other 6GB is utilized entirely to make the other GPU's compatible.
Video card performance degrades as screen resolutions raise; thus, it is very important you choose a card which performs well at the desired screen resolution. Lower tier video cards may perform well at lower resolutions (1366x780); however, they will not perform well at the higher resolutions (1920x1080)! If you plan on using higher resolutions now or in the future, you will need to choose a higher tier video card now or plan to upgrade to one later.
Before you decide on a video card, first check your own card against the general recommended specs. If your current video card closely matches the specs, then there is no reason to purchase a new card unless you desire to run SLI/CrossFireFX. If you're not going to upgrade, it is highly recommended your current card matches the VRAM of the general recommendations. If it doesn't, you may experience stuttering and less than desired performance.
The below cards will maintain an average of at least 60FPS at given resolutions with Ultra settings. This is provided to give a sense of how resolutions effect performance. The higher the resolution, the more powerful a card you will need:
1600x900 / 1680x1050
1920x1080 / 1920x1200
2560x1600
Use all the above information to help you determine the best video card for your needs.
Mobile video cards are different than desktop cards. They are usually not upgradable, aren't as powerful, and they typically have limited dedicated VRAM; rarely do you find a mobile with more than 1GB of VRAM. Since mobile users are usually stuck with what the laptop comes with in terms of video card, it is very important to purchase a laptop with a sufficient card to handle your intended gaming purposes and settings. You can even find laptops with SLI/CrossFireFX setups, and there are companies which make laptops specific to gaming needs. Some of these companies include: Alienware (Dell), Asus, Eurocom, Falcon Northwest, Samsung, and there are many others. However, expect to pay no less than $1,500 and some can cost higher than $5,000. The price of being mobile isn't cheap!
1366x768
1920x1080
(more detailed and accurate information will follow as benchmark testing is completed)
As for system memory 4GB is the required minimum for all STEP installations, and though the Extreme install recommends up to 6GB your system may never need more than 4GB to run a stable Skyrim when heavily modded. If your system runs out of VRAM it resorts to using your system memory which is slower and is the main cause of stuttering. If you plan on using mods with high texture resolutions make sure you have at least 6GB to be safe and at least 1.5GB of VRAM to keep the game-play smooth.
If you have less than 4GB of system RAM move it to the top of your upgrade list. System RAM is inexpensive so it won't break your budget. If you plan on upgrading it is recommended you buy a dual-channel kit, which is simply a package with two identical memory modules, if your motherboard supports it. Dual-channel is faster and more efficient than running single modules. Consult your motherboard's list of supported models before purchase, which will often limit your choices. If your motherboard doesn't support at least DDR2 modules, you might consider upgrading your board to support the newer, faster architectures like DDR2 and DDR3.
For laptop users, all the information above applies to you as well. The only difference is, you can't upgrade your motherboard to support faster RAM architectures. Also, the cost of being mobile isn't cheap, unfortunately. Expect to pay 40% to 60% more for laptop RAM over desktop RAM.
Please note that a 64 bit OS is required to make use of more than 4GB of system RAM.
The selection of a correct motherboard is crucial. It is the motherboard which will define the components you can use now and in the future when you start thinking about upgrading. There are a couple questions to ask yourself when selecting a motherboard.
"Will it work with my desired processor?"
"Will it work with the remaining components I have selected?"
"Does it have all the external ports I need?"
"Is it compatible with all of the current standards?"
The two other areas to take note of are chipsets and form factors. Intel has merged a lot of the chipset functions into their processors, and AMD chipsets are still mainly on the motherboard. At the time of this writing for Intel the Z77 chipset is the best. For AMD, 9xx series are currently the best. Neither manufacturer has PCIe 3.0 native support at the time of this writing though 3.0 video cards exist. Form factor is the second area and this refers to the physical size of the motherboard. It is important to match your form factor up to your case. The case you choose must support the form factor of your board in order to properly install it.
The operating system isn't going to make or break your game; however, some options are better than others. If you take one piece of knowledge away from this section, it should be to stay clear of Windows Vista. Vista was Microsoft's experiment into nearly completely rewriting Windows into the 21st century. Compared to it's predecessor, Window XP, Vista is slow, doesn't handle hardware well, and has some compatibility issues. If you're upgrading from Windows XP, go straight to Windows 7 or 8 and skip Vista. If you already own and are running Vista, consider upgrading if it's in your budget. You won't be disappointed.
Windows 7 is the official recommendation for STEP users for it's speed and stability. Windows 7 is Microsoft's Vista done right. It's responsiveness and speed is on par with Windows XP and leaves Vista in the dust. It includes improved UAC and explorer, graphic card issues from Vista are no more, boot process is faster, better control over notifications, consolidated security messages, HomeGroup is introduced for simplified sharing, DirectX 10 support, and a ton of other features. Be sure you choose at least the Home Premium version or higher.
Windows 8 is Microsoft's newest operating system. It is on par with Windows 7 as far as performance with some tweaks; however, it still has a few kinks that need to be ironed out before it can be officially recommended, such as proper embedded network adapter handling. A few of the advantages are an incredibly fast boot process, cloud integration with SkyDrive, better multiple monitor support, improvements for better multitasking, and DirectX 11 support among other things. Some disadvantage you might find are the removal the the Start Button in favor of the Start Screen (once referred to as MetroUI), Charms Bar and Searching features, and system administration is a bit more complex (mainly due to new navigation methods). If you choose Windows 8, you'll have to learn a few new Windows shortcuts for fast and proper navigation. The Professional version is recommended.
While not necessary, Windows 64-bit will allow you to add more than 4GB of system RAM which will increase stability in your games and it is the recommended architecture for STEP. However, Windows XP 64-bit is not recommended as it is fairly bugging. Windows XP is no longer actively supported by Microsoft so an upgrade is highly recommended for XP user.
The below resources were not written by STEP; thus we can not make any guarantees for any of them. They are provided strictly for additional informational resources.
Pricewatch
Newegg
Logical Increments PC Buying Guide