Skyrim bottleneck, CPU or GPU?

[atmos929]

so... for running Skyrim, where's the bottleneck? is it CPU or GPU? Also, is this game favored towards Nvidia or Ati?

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Depends on YOUR specs ?

All the best Brett

 

[atmos929]

well.. I am on a amd 965BE, radeon 5850 1GB... but that wasn't really the point.

I remember seeing in Tom's a whole analysis of games in which they would find where the bottleneck is on each game... but that happened before skyrim was released.

For example, I upgraded once my video card in an attempt to run Dragon Age smoother... and it was the opposite way, it wa slower... and later when this analysis showed up, they said that Dragon Age bottleneck is in the CPU, if you put a faster card, it will lag in CPU trying to keep up with it.

so I was wondering for Skyrim, if I could only upgrade either Vcard or CPU, which would be the best chance for increasing performance a bit.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

To play ANY game better, you NEED A BETTER GRAPHICS CARD....

The 965 is a fast quad , plus you can overclock it, but your g.card is very low end nowadays...

All the best Brett

 

[mactronix]

Skyrim is pretty balanced but does lean towards taxing the CPU more than the GPU.
Having said that you really should not be having any issues playing the game with your set up.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074.html

Maybe you have the graphical settings up too high for the GPU to handle ?

Your CPU will power a more powerful GPU should you decide to purchase one, however realistically you need a platform change to make a worthwhile CPU upgrade.

Mactronix

 

[Supernova1138]

A GPU upgrade would help you, the 5850 doesn't quite have enough grunt to deliver 60FPS if you are running the game on ultra at 1080p. It's not exactly a low end card, but it can't max out all of the latest titles. If you are using the high res textures, you'll have to turn them off. Skyrim's high res texture pack requires 1.5GB of Video Memory. Your 5850 only has 1GB, so if you are using high res textures, you will suffer a performance hit as the game has to go to system RAM for a third of the data the video card needs.

 

[darth pravus]

A GPU upgrade would help you on skyrim and all games but skyrim is very Intel cpu biased. Amd chips don't tend to perform that well and most struggle to hit 60fps.