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| Skyrim requires 6 GB of hard drive space un-modded, and you can easily triple that with heavy modding. Skyrim has a great many loading screens, and you can greatly diminish the time spent on these screens by installing Skyrim on an SSD (solid-state drive), as well as increasing overall stability and performance of the game. If you do not have an SSD the next best thing would be to install an extremely fast traditional drive or a RAID0 array (Caution: RAID0 can be unstable longterm, see [[wikipedia:Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_0_failure_rate|here]] for details). When Purchasing an SSD, SATA 6 GB/s is what your looking for (at $1/GB) and make sure your motherboard supports it natively through AHCI (set it up to use AHCI in BIOS as it is never the default, and must be done before OS detection), otherwise you will find your uber-SSD running in emulated IDE mode. | | Skyrim requires 6 GB of hard drive space un-modded, and you can easily triple that with heavy modding. Skyrim has a great many loading screens, and you can greatly diminish the time spent on these screens by installing Skyrim on an SSD (solid-state drive), as well as increasing overall stability and performance of the game. If you do not have an SSD the next best thing would be to install an extremely fast traditional drive or a RAID0 array (Caution: RAID0 can be unstable longterm, see [[wikipedia:Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_0_failure_rate|here]] for details). When Purchasing an SSD, SATA 6 GB/s is what your looking for (at $1/GB) and make sure your motherboard supports it natively through AHCI (set it up to use AHCI in BIOS as it is never the default, and must be done before OS detection), otherwise you will find your uber-SSD running in emulated IDE mode. |
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| = GPU and VRAM = | | = Video Cards = |
| ==== Skyrim Official Video Card Requirements ==== | | ==== Skyrim Official Video Card Requirements ==== |
| :'''Minimum''' | | :'''Minimum''' |
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| A word on Windows 64-bit: while not necessary, x64 will allow you to add more than 4GB of system RAM and that will increase stability in your games. I would not recommend 64-bit XP and especially Vista as they are fairly buggy in regards to hardware and games, neglecting the benefits of the RAM increase. | | A word on Windows 64-bit: while not necessary, x64 will allow you to add more than 4GB of system RAM and that will increase stability in your games. I would not recommend 64-bit XP and especially Vista as they are fairly buggy in regards to hardware and games, neglecting the benefits of the RAM increase. |
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| = Video Cards =
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| ==== Skyrim Official CPU Requirements ====
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| :'''Minimum'''
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| ::Intel Dual Core 2.0GHz or equivalent processor (AMD Sempron @ 2.4 GHz)
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| :'''Recommended'''
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| ::Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU processor
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|
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| ==== STEP General CPU Recommendation ====
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| Quad-core CPU as close to 3GHz as possible and up to 4GHz.<br />
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| The Intel i-series processors are among the best in the business providing exceptional performance while remaining power efficient. They are the CPU of choice of the STEP community.
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| == Video ==
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| {{Notice|'''SLI/Crossfire and multi-GPU cards'''
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| 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 just spent $1620 for 3 HD 7970's in Crossfire, 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.}}
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| The following chart lists cards by GPU power and sorts them into tiers along with a range of appropriate VRAM amounts required to get the best performance/price value.
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| First check your own video cards model and specs, if your card is on the table already you don't need to upgrade unless you have less than 1GB VRAM. If not peruse for an upgrade in your price range. Note that if you upgrade from one model on this list to another, jumping at least 3 tiers is recommended in order to actually be able to 'feel' the upgrade, anything less is fairly trivial.
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| Not all models will be available with recommended VRAM as that is entirely up to manufacturers, it's up to you to find one with the appropriate VRAM specs. Also be aware that these are seriously oversimplified recommendations, all types of different configurations are available for each model, I am just suggesting a rather idealized upgrade path, don't hesitate to buy a card (if you feel its a good price) just because its slightly below the ideal.
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| ''Dual Chip boards are not listed, if you have one you should be fine as long as you have at least 2GB (1GB for each chip), if you are buying one, make sure to get 4GB (2GB for each chip).''
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| Price listings are just what I was able to find with a quick online search and are meant as examples not definitive in any way (if the VRAM is less than recommended I provide the available amount).
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| {| class="wikitable" style="color:blue; background-color:#ffffcc;" cellpadding="10"
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| |+ align="top" style="color:black;" |'''<big>GeForce and Radeon Graphics Card Performance Hierarchy Chart</big>'''
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| |+ align="bottom" style="color:blue;" |''Value is arbitrary but gives an indication of what to shoot for, if its way over wait for a price drop or choose another model, if way under its a deal. The top 2 tiers will unlikely ever be a value, just there as an indication of how much money your burning to have the best''
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| |-
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| !'''US$ Value/Performance'''
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| !'''Nvidia Models and Available Pricing'''
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| !'''ATI Models and Available Pricing'''
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| |-
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| ! scope="row" colspan="3"|'''High End GPU's, look for models with 3GB VRAM and up'''
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| |-
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| |340
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| |GTX 680 2GB $499, GTX 680 4GB $590
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| |HD 7970 3GB $540
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| |-
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| |310
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| |GTX 670 2GB $400, GTX 670 4GB, GTX 580 $480
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| |HD 7870 2GB $360, HD 7950 3GB $430
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| |-
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| ! scope="row" colspan="3"|'''Mid Range GPU's, look for models with 2GB to 3GB VRAM '''
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| |-
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| |250
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| |GTX 480 1.5GB $250, GTX 570 2.5GB $350
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| |HD 6970 $360, HD 7850 $250
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| |-
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| |220
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| |GTX 470, GTX 560 Ti $250, GTX 560 Ti 448 Core
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| |HD 5870, HD 6950 $250
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| |-
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| ! scope="row" colspan="3"|'''Low End GPU's look for models with 1.5GB to 2GB VRAM '''
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| |-
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| |190
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| |GTX 560 $230, 580M
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| |HD 5850, HD 6870 $200, 6990M
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| |-
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| |160
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| |GTX 285, GTX 460 $215, GTX 465
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| |HD 6850 $180, HD 7770, 6900M
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| |-
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| |130
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| |GTX 260, GTX 275, GTX 280, GTX 460 SE, GTX 550 Ti $140, 570M
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| |HD 4870, HD 5770, HD 4890, HD 5830, HD 6770, HD 6790, HD 5870, 6800M
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| |-
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| |}
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| My personal conclusion at this point is that for ballsout graphics without sending you to the poorhouse (and future-proof for 4 years) a GTX 670 4GB (of Samsung DDR5) priced at $400 is the way to go, it may be several months before we see this but I am a patient man. The 670 is only 4% slower than the 680 and has much less cooling issues, the Samsung DDR5 is proving to be much faster and more reliable than other vendors and 4GB should be sufficient to guarantee 4 years of usefulness. Go to [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html Toms Hardware] if your looking for a comprehensive chart, it was used as a primary information source.
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| <headertabs/> | | <headertabs/> |