Nvidia geforce gtx 260 & Skyrim

[BlazingSun]

Hey everyone how the heck are ya?
I'm wondering if I can play Skyrim at max settings or near max settings I like to play with a resolution of 1920x1080 but I run into lag or hiccups as I like to call it
here's my specs

nvidia geforce Gtx 260 bfg tech
Intel i5 processor 2.4 ghz
4gb of ddr3 ram
2 ssd hard drives @30gb each in raid mode

My buddy said I should just get more ram but my video card is the very bottom of skyrims recommended video card

I want to run the game looking great with an average fps of 40 I'm thinking?
I tried over clocking my video card but It's not working with nvidia tools
I'm not very good with over clocking and I had a lot of help building my pc

 

[Rustyy117]

I'm freakin' fantastic how the heck are you?

To be honest your really going to struggle to get your GTX260 to play skyrim at max or near max settings even when overclocked.

If your interested in overclocking I'd suggest using MSI Afterburner, its free and really easy to use.

 

[Zanarias]

From experience (was on GTX 260 Core 216 until I got my 670), you will pretty much not be able to run it even close to max. You'll have to turn things down significantly, with my settings previously being scattered between medium-low.

EDIT: I played at the same resolution and am running with a Phenom II x4 955 BE.

 

[auntarie]

It's pretty CPU-based. Is your i5 a quadcore?

As for the GPU, probably around medium or maybe a bit higher if you turn off FXAA. That's how I ran it- medium to high w/o FXAA at 1280x1024 on a 9800GT, getting 50-60 fps, never dipping below 50. Given that the GTX 260 is quite a bit more powerful than a 9800 GT, I think you should be able to use those settings on a 1080p resolution.

4 gigs of RAM is more than enough, I have 4 gigs and the most I've had used is 2.5 GB. Btw, your SSDs will give you a few (not more than 5) fps.

So yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

 

[BlazingSun89]

So should i get a Gtx 560?

 

[BlazingSun]

Yea my i5 is a quadcore

 

[Rustyy117]

So should i get a Gtx 560?

A GTX 560 will give you almost double the performance over your GTX 260, What is your budget? maybe we could choose something better for your money.

 

[auntarie]

Also, PSU please. Wattage and amps on the +12V rail, manufacturer. If you go with a GTX 560 you won't be disappointed. As omgitzfatal(nice name bro) said, it will give you roughly double the performance of a GTX 260.

 

[busecks]

What's this nonsense? although the gtx 260 isn't that powerful, I can run skyrim on ultra no problems.
And might I add my cpu is actually weaker than yours haha

 

[Avro Arrow]

Well I used to run Skyrim at ultra settings with my twin XFX HD 4780s which are each equal or slightly better than the GTX 260. I don't know if you could run it at ultra settings but you'll never know until you try. Try it out, see what happens and then ask the question. All you're going to get here is conjecture and outright BS. (As you have seen)

 

[Archie Griffs]

Slightly confused with some of the names in this thread, makes me feel like I'm being trolled.

Anyways, the 260 isn't at all powerful, Skyrim is a pretty demanding game, especially if you get into modding texture packs and lighting mods. You're looking at medium settings with Skyrim, not high or highest.

If you wanted the absolute highest graphical quality with skyrim, you're lookinng at a good 300-400$ for both the CPU and GPU, as both could probably use an upgrade in your case. If you want to run vanilla skyrim on highest somewhere around 200-300$ for both the CPU and GPU. At this point you probably can run vanilla Skyrim on highest without upgrading your CPU, and just upgrade your GPU, so somewhere in the 150-200$ range for a graphics card, but I honestly wouldn't recommend it, getting a new CPU would really make your system handle Skyrim well.

Ex:
With a 4670 (230$ CPU) and a 7750 (100$ GPU) I can run Skyrim on highest with 60+ FPS, fully modded Skyrim with 20 FPS and severe GPU bottlenecking/stuttering (so basically unplayable). If I were to upgrade my GPU to a 200$ one, I likely would be able to play Skyrim with every texture pack and lighting mod I can get my hands on.

You might not have a PSU capable of running a better GPU though, so that might also need to be upgraded, and if you upgrade your CPU, you likely need a new motherboard as well. So basically to run Skyrim on the absolute maximum, you're looking at an entirely new PC.

 

[nikoli707]

you can try using boris's enb over and enbdev and turn off all the AA and AF settings in skyrim and let the enb handle them for you. you dont have to use the visual enhancement parts of the enb, just the AA, AF, and memory management parts. you should see a considerable boost in performance. that said, vanilla skyrim is very cpu bound and also a vram hog.

but my gut feeling is no, gtx260 896mb of vram, skyrim????? 1080p maxed out settings with 4xAA and 16xAF is a recipe for vram wall fps through the floor.