More so than Hitman or Far Cry 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim tends to be platform-bound. That's good news for mid-range mobile graphics processors.

Using the High preset, we still see that increasing resolution has an impact on each GPU, though. The Radeon HD 7670M is fairly playable at 1280x720, though it drops as low as 20 FPS in heavily-wooded areas. The last-gen VLIW5-based chip gets increasingly choppy as you step up to 1600x900 and beyond.
Meanwhile, the Radeon HD 8790M does better at 1920x1080 than the 7670M did at 1280x720. We're comfortable calling all three resolutions playable at this detail level.

The Ultra preset is notably more taxing on graphics hardware. We wouldn't bother trying to enjoy Skyrim on a Radeon HD 7670M-equipped notebook at even 1280x720 using that setting. AMD's Radeon HD 8790M fares better, but still suffers occasional performance dips.
In the words of Sgt. Schultz "I know nothing." =_=
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
Tom's Hardware
Though i suspect you and Chris already have large 'hints' about the HD8000 series performance, but under NDA.
And if thermal management is an issue, then the desktop GPUs could always be undervolted (but of course more expensive because of the extra step).
Though i suspect you and Chris already have large 'hints' about the HD8000 series performance, but under NDA.
In the words of Sgt. Schultz "I know nothing." =_=
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
Tom's Hardware
That's what they all say!
If you look, there is only one chip (shown on this page) which means it is not being CrossFired. I agree that 8780M would be a better name than 8790M. Andrew Ku, maybe on the front page you can clarify this?
About using desktop parts, it is my understanding that they sometimes do exactly that. Take the 7970M, which as far as I can tell, is an 78XX part (I forget which one) except the mobile chip has MUCH higher binning than the desktop 78XX.
Hell I wanted to show numbers, but I think it would be premature and possibly misleading.
They even have Haswell chips floating around their office(s), I just know it
Not because it's an ohmygodbestgameever type of game (has a few issues), but it is good for performance benchmarking.