Improving Skyrim Performance

Adam Lucke · Apr 23, 2013

I'm looking to upgrade my system to be able to play at high graphics settings.

-2.20Ghz AMD
-5 GB RAM
-EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 1 GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 DVI/HDMI/VGA Graphics Card
-My two displays are a 42" flatscreen and a 24" lcd monitor. I run the game on the 42".

What components should I prioritize replacing?
I've run a benchmark utility in my second monitor while playing and my GC is maxed out and I'm getting about 5fps at medium settings.

17seconds · Apr 23, 2013

Well, you have several priorities in this order:
1) Video Card
2) CPU
3) RAM

I would shoot for a GTX 650 Ti Boost or a GTX 660, and then overclock your CPU as much as possible. Then look at upgrading the other components.

leo2kp · Apr 23, 2013

I agree. Updates to the game have made it more GPU-bound than it was when originally released, so I would focus on GPU first, then CPU/RAM if that isn't enough. But with your current CPU, I think it will bottleneck a 600-series card.

Kypav · Apr 23, 2013

You should get a new graphics card with atleast 2GB VRAM. Skyrim is pretty VRAM hungry. The Gtx 650 Ti boost 2GB would be great, or if you want just get a gtx 660. If you are going to play on multiple monitors and/or higher resolution than 1080p you will definetly need more.

Skyrim is a CPU intensive game, but I'm not so sure what CPU you should get since you use AMD.

The RAM doesn't really need to be upgraded unless you want to play with a bunch of mods. If you want to upgrade, go for 8GB.

iam2thecrowe · Apr 23, 2013

first things first, upgrade gpu, that will give you the biggest performance increase. something like a gtx650 or hd7770. your cpu will also be a limiting factor depending which AMD cpu you have, is it single, dual or quad core? If its single core forget it entirely, dual will give you about 15-25fps in that game in some areas, quad might boost it to 20-35 as its only running at 2.2ghz. What motherboard do you have?? maybe you can just upgrade cpu without a motherboard upgrade.

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Improving Skyrim Performance

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