Skyrim Performance

[FieryMastermind]

Skyrim lags a whole lot when I play on medium/high graphics. The FPS drops to 15-20 when i'm out in the wild near whiterun, but inside cities it runs perfectly smooth (30-40 FPS)

My Specs:
Proscessor: Intel Core i3 CPU 3,20 GHz
Memory: 4GB RAM
Card: nVIDIA GeForce GT 9600 - 512 MB
Other: 500 GB hard drive (80 GB left)

Can the FPS drop be because of all the crap i've got in my PC (like 35 games and loads of software) or is it just the fact that my specs are bad?

And when I say medium/high graphics I mean:

Resolution: 1440:900
AA: 2x
Anisotropic Filtering: 2x
Texture, shadow & decal quantity: High
Radial Blur: Medium
Distant object quality: Medium

Thank you!
(If there is not enough info, just tell me)

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

With that graphics card I am amazed it plays at all....lol...

You NEED a better card..

All the best Brett

 

[FieryMastermind]

Thank You! And I thought that it was good haha!
But you mean that the rest of the specs are fine the way they are for a decent computer? I'm not very good with computer hardware.

 

[FieryMastermind]

And which card would you recommend? Best that you can get for a maximum of 150 euro?

 

[simon12]

Going by UK prices a Radeon 7850 is likely just out of your budget but worth the extra if you can afford it. Otherwise you may find a bargain on a Radeon 6950, 6870 or Nvidis 560Ti or 560 all of these are better than any newer generation cards as long as they are under 150 for the 6950/560Ti and under 125 for the 6870/560Ti thats based on a 7850 being 175 the tax where you are may change the value. If you can gewt any of the above then a Radeon 7770 is really the only choice.

 

[FieryMastermind]

Thank you both! I managed to find a Radeon 7850 for 120
Thanks again!

 

[JMG2012]

Hi

With that graphics card I am amazed it plays at all....lol...

You NEED a better card..

All the best Brett

That's a bit of an unfair statement. Sure it's old but that cards decent.
I used to run Skyrim on High settings with a 9600 GSO.

More on topic, the rest of your Spec is fine for Skyrim, maybe a slightly better processor wouldn't go amiss and maybe a HD6/7 series card or nVidia GTX 5 series card. That'd easily achieve 60+ fps on max settings.