Cost to play Skyrim/STEP

[Garfink]

I just bought a huge upgrade to my computer and graphics card recently. Didn't change my life at all and certainly didn't help with Skyrim, between you and me the only upgrade in the past 5 years that made a significant difference to my life is the advent of the SSD drive!

 

SSD drives are AMAZING!

[MontyMM]

The only other thing I would add is, if you're a real enthusiast, there are a few PC-focused games that could still benefit from the most powerful rig you can buy. MS Flight Simulator will still use all the CPU power you can throw at it, the Total War games also benefit, and Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame is up to his old tricks with Star Citizen. This last one is described as a high-end PC space sim built with Cryengine and realistic physics, and could well make the most of overpowered PCs. I'm personally very fond of these types of PC game, and for those willing to spend more on the highest spec kit, they may provide some justification.

 

Also agree about SSDs - certainly in daily use, they make the OS much more of a pleasure to use.

[Garfink]

He he he.... I have a replica of the cockpit of a Boeing 737 in my house... I have 7 monitors and a projector hooked up with 3 computers that sync the various views out of the cockpit and all the consoles. (used to have 5 computers, but the newer computers can do so much more now I don't need so many!) No mouse and keyboard, I have knobs for everything...

 

Yeah, I love my flight simulation more than Skyrim by MILES!

[phazer11]

He he he.... I have a replica of the cockpit of a Boeing 737 in my house... I have 7 monitors and a projector hooked up with 3 computers that sync the various views out of the cockpit and all the consoles. (used to have 5 computers, but the newer computers can do so much more now I don't need so many!) No mouse and keyboard, I have knobs for everything...

 

Yeah, I love my flight simulation more than Skyrim by MILES!

Cool, I used to have something similar but I had to get rid of it to make room for other things; never had that many monitors though and a max of four pc's in the room with me the knob ideaa sounds interesting however. Did you make the replica yourself or did you buy it and how much did it set you back (also what scale is it)?

 

Yeah... I know OT couldn't help myself.

[Noobsayer]

Figure I might as well hijack this thread than start a new one. Trying to keep the forums tidy but mods, if you'd prefer no necro, please let me know

 

So I'm finally in a position where I can justify some computer upgrades to my aging system. I definitely want more RAM, but I'm also looking to upgrade my graphics card ... which leaves me wondering if my motherboard also needs an upgrade. Problem is, I'm somewhat computer illiterate, so I'm hoping ya'll can provide some guidance. Let me know if there's other relevant info that would help.

 

Current CPU: Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7-950

Current card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 (x2, actually, but won't be going that route this time)

Current motherboard: GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58

Current power supply: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 80 Plus

... and I've got 6 GB RAM, which is top on my "to fix" list.

 

Target card: GeForce GTX 780 ??

For cards, $500 is about my cutoff. I know absolutely NOTHING about motherboards, so I don't want a bottleneck or anything ... if that's even possible. -flail-

 

Bonus question: I know you need matching cards for SLI, but it's possible to use one of my current cards to dedicate to PhysX, even with a new card, right?

[TechAngel85]

Figure I might as well hijack this thread than start a new one. Trying to keep the forums tidy but mods, if you'd prefer no necro, please let me know

 

So I'm finally in a position where I can justify some computer upgrades to my aging system. I definitely want more RAM, but I'm also looking to upgrade my graphics card ... which leaves me wondering if my motherboard also needs an upgrade. Problem is, I'm somewhat computer illiterate, so I'm hoping ya'll can provide some guidance. Let me know if there's other relevant info that would help.

 

Current CPU: Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7-950

Current card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 (x2, actually, but won't be going that route this time)

Current motherboard: GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58

Current power supply: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 80 Plus

... and I've got 6 GB RAM, which is top on my "to fix" list.

 

Target card: GeForce GTX 780 ??

For cards, $500 is about my cutoff. I know absolutely NOTHING about motherboards, so I don't want a bottleneck or anything ... if that's even possible. -flail-

 

Bonus question: I know you need matching cards for SLI, but it's possible to use one of my current cards to dedicate to PhysX, even with a new card, right?

For the GTX 780 you'll want a motherboard that supports PCI Express 3.0. Your motherboard is PCI Express 2.0 and although the GTX 780 will work on your board, you'll be running at slower speeds and will never reap the full potential of the video card. So if you're going with the GTX 780 I would also recommend upgrading your motherboard or it will be your bottleneck on your graphics.

 

However, to do that you're going to run into another issue. Your CPU is a 1366 socket which is an older socket (mainly used for servers so I find it an odd choice for a gaming PC) so the likelihood of finding a 1366 socket motherboard that supports PCI Express 3.0 is slim at best. Meaing...you're going to have up upgrade your processor as well.

 

As for using your old card for a PhysX processor, you are correct. You can certainly do that.

[Noobsayer]

Thanks so much for the detailed response ... I know enough to know there are problems I can't forsee, hehe.

 

OK. Assuming I manage to swing for a card, a new motherboard AND a processor (unlikely, but ... we'll see) ... do you have recommendations for a motherboard and CPU? If not, I'll start slogging through reviews, but I'd certainly appreciate a jumping off point. :)

 

EDIT: Alternatively, if I went for a card with just 2GB, would I still probably need to upgrade motherboard and CPU?

[TechAngel85]

Keep in mind that you can upgrade to the card you want now, all the newer cards will work on PCI Express 2.0 but just at the slower 2.0 transfer rate, and upgrade your motherboard and CPU later down the road when your funds permit.

 

The CPU choice would depend on what you're running. Most games don't benefit from hyper-threading and that is one of the main reasons to go with an Intel Core i7 (beside the obsessed need to have the latest and greatest...haha!). The only programs that really benefit from this would be creative programs such as Photoshop and Premiere. So unless you do a lot of encoding and editing I would say an Intel Core i5 is as good as you'll ever need. Go with the latest Haswell core which is a socket 1150 because they are pretty much the same price as the previous generation, IvyBridge, cores and aim for around 3Ghz.

 

As for a motherboard, that is really personal preference. Most of them have the same to similar features but be sure it matches the socket type of your CPU. You can expect to spend anywhere between $300 and $450 on a new CPU/motherboard combo.

 

EDIT: Alternatively, if I went for a card with just 2GB, would I still probably need to upgrade motherboard and CPU?

 

I believe I answered this in the opening statement. You can purchase any card you wish and it will still work on your motherboard because they are backwards compatible. However, it'll just run slower than its intended speed.

[Dshoru]

GPU: GTX 780 is definitely a good choice atm. Also keep in mind that a heavy modded skyrim benefits from a decent amount of vram the most.

 

CPU: Honestly last year was a pretty bad year for gaming cards. The current Haswell generation is in my opinion not worth the buy for desktop gaming. 2014 looks more promising for both Intel and Amd so far. I would wait. If it has to be now, I'd recommend buying nothing with over 4 cores, as most games dont support the extra cores anyway. My recommendation for the 1150 socket is the i5-4670K and for the 2011 socket Core i7-4820K, which both can (and should) be oc'ed.

 

MOBO: The difference between pci 3 and 2 is quite subtle (~4 or 5% improvement). True it will have a slightly bigger impact on skyrim specifically, since skyrim only uses direct-x 9, but still i don't know if that alone warrants a buy if you don't intend to crossfire.

[TechAngel85]

A lot of users think that the Haswell core isn't good for gaming because the clock speeds are lower than previous cores and when purchasing the K versions of the processors (unlocked versions for overclockers) they typically don't overclock as high. What many users fail to realize is that the Haswell cores are more powerful than the previous cores when compared at the same clock speeds. In other words, the Haswell cores will out perform the SandyBridge and IvyBridge cores when running at the same clock speeds. The Haswell cores are able to provide more power at lower clock speeds which translates to more power with less energy meaning they are more energy efficient. These differences in clock speed to power ratio in the new Haswell cores have mislead many users to think they are less powerful and not as good for gaming when that simply isn't true.

 

Check out this benchmark test from Tom's Hardward: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-review,3521.html (testing starts on page 11)

Ignoring the i7-3930K (SandyBridge-E six-core) and simply comparing the stock SandyBridge, IvyBridge and Haswell cores (all quad-cores) you'll notice that Haswell is the winner of nearly every test between the three stock processors when they are all running at the same clock speed.

[Dshoru]

Of course Haswell is slightly faster than previous architectures (~5-10%) but is this minor improvement really worth spending 200-300Eur on?

 

Directly from the conclusion of your test (p19):

"So, for the second time in a week, we’re disappointed. Haswell has a lot to offer, just not to desktop enthusiasts. Intel’s attention is fully in the mobile space, and we can tell."

 

edit: +skyrim is unlikely to be capped by his current cpu anyway.

[TechAngel85]

Of course it's only a minor improvement for those with IvyBridge or even SandyBridge cores and for those users I wouldn't recommend an upgrade as it's not really worth it. However, that's not what we're talking about here. Our friend isn't upgrading from one of these cores. He's upgrading from the Westmere core which is the die shrink of the Nehalem core (from 45nm to 32mn). This is quite old and any upgrade would benefit our friend, Noobsayer. My recommendation of the Haswell core is due to price point. If our friend is going to upgrade, it might as well be to the Haswell core since the prices are pretty much the same as the IvyBridge cores.

 

I agree with your recommendation of the i5-4670K, if and only if Noobsayer will be overclocking. Since our friend claims being a newbie in some aspects, I wouldn't expect overclocking is a thought as that can be a fairly advanced process. If no overclocking will be done, then the i5-4570 will be around $50 lighter on the wallet.

[Noobsayer]

The CPU choice would depend on what you're running. Most games don't benefit from hyper-threading and that is one of the main reasons to go with an Intel Core i7 (beside the obsessed need to have the latest and greatest...haha!). The only programs that really benefit from this would be creative programs such as Photoshop and Premiere.

 

Great, guys. I think I have enough to go on to hone in on a purchase. I actually do newspaper design so InDesign is a computer staple for me, and I'm finally working toward Photoshop proficiency as well, so this isn't strictly a gaming rig for me. Just mostly.

 

 

Once again, thank you all so very much for taking the time to spell this out for me. I'm thrilled I found this community.

[Ubeogesh]

Hey all!  I am curious as to what some questimates would be to build a PC capable of playing Skyrim/STEP-Core and Skyrim/STEP Extreme.

 

No product names or fanboy bickering. Just some estimates in general.

~800$ fore Core @ 40+ FPS - it will be something like AMD FX-4300, Radeon R9 270x

~1200$ for Extreme @ 30+ FPS - instead of R9 270x you get something like GTX 780 (or even Ti)

~1600$ for Extreme @ 60 FPS - instead of FX-4300 you get an i5-4670k\i5-3570k and some cooling for overclocking