PC not living up to its specs? Skyrim

[lethalv3ctor]

Hello,
Hello, to get my Specs out of the door
Foxconn H55MXV
intel core i3 530 @2.93GHz
4Gb DDR3 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5450
20" monitor 1600x900
i have been having problems recently playing games that my Pc seems to be able to play on recomended settings, a lot of games also upon start up will recommend i use high settings, which then almost run badly. take Skyrim for example, it recommended high settings so i went for it, and it ran horribly. i then tried keeping my native resolution while turning all settings to low. this did show some improvement but not much, then turning the resolution down had, again, almost no effect. i had a similar problem with GTA IV recently when i bought it in a steam sale. as i don't know much about hardware my question is, does there seem to be anything instantly wrong with my set-up that jumps out? or is there something wrong with my computer that anyone can see? because i have friends who have fairly similar rigs who can seemingly run these two games,as well as others including Starcraft 2, much better than my PC and i'm starting to think theres something wrong with the PC itself. but if not is there something i can easily upgrade to help? or will i need a whole new PC?
/Thanks

 

[rolli59]

Your GPU is the weakest link the rest is OK, what is the size of your PSU? that will decide which card you can upgrade to.

 

[mayanksinghsolanki]

well playing with a very entry level Graphic card at a resolution above 1024*768 will be very difficult even at low settings. If i am not wrong the ATI 5450 has DDR3 ram and not the faster DDR5. You might consider a new graphic card like at least ATI HD 5670(old series) or like AMD 6670 (New series).

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Skyrim has poor performance with AMD GPU's

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/11/elder_scrolls_v_skyrim_performance_iq_preview/3

 

[AbdullahG]

Skyrim has poor performance with AMD GPU's

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/11/elder_scrolls_v_skyrim_performance_iq_preview/3

Drivers, my friend. Drivers.

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Of course it's the drivers.

 

[rolli59]

They do OK here apart from crossfire support http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-6.html

 

[AbdullahG]

Of course it's the drivers.

Yeah, but not necessarily poor performance. My friend has Skyrim and played it on an HD 6770 @ 1080p. Decent to good performance. The drivers are just causing issues, but not the GPU itself.

 

[lethalv3ctor]

ok, sorry it has taken so long to reply i had to physically take the back of the PC to find out the PSU, which i think is 300w.
in terms of drivers steam says they're fully updated but i will download the latest one from the AMD website, but all it ever seems to download is the CCC? or are the drivers included? either way i have now downloaded it

 

[AbdullahG]

ok, sorry it has taken so long to reply i had to physically take the back of the PC to find out the PSU, which i think is 300w.
in terms of drivers steam says they're fully updated but i will download the latest one from the AMD website, but all it ever seems to download is the CCC? or are the drivers included? either way i have now downloaded it

The drivers for Skyrim from AMD have not been released yet. Either way, your GPU is holding you back. The best option for you (without the need to upgrade anything else) would be an HD 6670. Less than $100, uses very little power, and produces very little noise. A decent card. Here's some gameplay with the HD 6670 (though you have a smaller res and a somewhat more powerful-but not by much I believe-CPU):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXRjcfqpDEk

 

[lethalv3ctor]

looks good, i'll look into it, is my GPU really that bad? i mean if everything else i have is roughly the same, my GPU must be awful to get the results i'm getting compared to that video. either way thanks for the help and hopefully soon this will have solved it

 

[AbdullahG]

looks good, i'll look into it, is my GPU really that bad? i mean if everything else i have is roughly the same, my GPU must be awful to get the results i'm getting compared to that video. either way thanks for the help and hopefully soon this will have solved it

Simply and straight: your card sucks when it comes to games. It's a budget card Eyefinity, or multi monitor, system, as well as HTPC. The HD 6670 has 6x as many shader/processing cores compared to the HD 5450, as well as a higher core clock. You will notice the boost in performance.