Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: PC Performance, Benchmarked
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Page 1:Can Your PC Handle The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim?
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Page 2:Image Quality And Settings
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Page 3:Test System And Benchmarks
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Page 4:Medium Detail, No Anti-Aliasing
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Page 5:High Detail, FXAA Enabled
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Page 6:Ultra Detail, 4x MSAA Enabled
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Page 7:Ultra Detail, 4x MSAA Plus FXAA
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Page 8:Ultra Detail, 4x MSAA Plus Transparent/Adaptive AA
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Page 9:CPU Benchmarks
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Page 10:Skyrim Scales Well On Slower Systems
Ultra Detail, 4x MSAA Plus Transparent/Adaptive AA
If you want to address transparent textures without applying FXAA’s blurring effect, transparency AA is the way to go. Use Nvidia’s Transparent AA and AMD’s Adaptive AA technologies.
Keep in mind that these techniques are similar, but yield a different result. Nvidia’s TrSSAA causes a larger performance hit, but does a better job of smoothing foliage edges in this particular game when movement is involved.



At ultra details with transparency anti-aliasing and 4x MSAA, only the fastest cards like AMD's Radeon HD 6970, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 570, and its GeForce GTX 460 in SLI provide playable frame rates.
Summary
- Can Your PC Handle The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim?
- Image Quality And Settings
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Medium Detail, No Anti-Aliasing
- High Detail, FXAA Enabled
- Ultra Detail, 4x MSAA Enabled
- Ultra Detail, 4x MSAA Plus FXAA
- Ultra Detail, 4x MSAA Plus Transparent/Adaptive AA
- CPU Benchmarks
- Skyrim Scales Well On Slower Systems
Is this that new Scrolls game being made by Notch?
Looks like I'm both CPU and GPU limited with Phenom x4 and ATI 4870.
Well with a Athlon II x3 450 and an AMD 4850 512mb GPU w/6 gb's of DDR2 it seems to work fine. The game has picked "Ultra" settings when launching the game the first time. I haven't seen all of the settings that the game has selected, but the game looks pretty good and is running quite well. I haven't run any FRAPS on it, but it seems to be about 30-40 FPS, from what I can tell, which is good enough for me
Looks like I'm both CPU and GPU limited with Phenom x4 and ATI 4870.
Well with a Athlon II x3 450 and an AMD 4850 512mb GPU w/6 gb's of DDR2 it seems to work fine. The game has picked "Ultra" settings when launching the game the first time. I haven't seen all of the settings that the game has selected, but the game looks pretty good and is running quite well. I haven't run any FRAPS on it, but it seems to be about 30-40 FPS, from what I can tell, which is good enough for me
Just look at 6850/GTX460 and 6970/GTX 570. The 560 Ti and 6950 will be in the middle of those, closer to the higher end though.
But even if this game doesn't quite push the top cards, you gotta commend them for the great scaling! Some of the worst console ports doesn't even HAVE graphics settings, in other games the settings make little difference in the hardware needed, and based on these screenshots (if rather small, larger ones please!) the game looks almost as good if you turn the settings down some.
I bet you that CPU is plenty to push something like a 4850 with reasonable resolution and quality. I mean my old Core 2 Duo with a 2600XT managed to hack Fallout 3 fairly well at appropriate resolutions and quality settings.
So does the 6850...barely, but it does...
Would be good if we could just get charts for both games with max VRAM usage for cards with memory greater than 1GB for ultra and high settings at various resolutions...i know my 9600GT goes up to 800MB with BF3 set mostly to medium at 1024x768...
Sounds promising, even if I'll have to push it to 1920x1200.
I can do without AA but I'd like the action to stay smooth even (and especially) when crowded by opponents.
Is this that new Scrolls game being made by Notch?
I think Skyrim enables it by default and you have to either turn it off in an .ini file or force it off with the graphics driver.
How can this run on console hardware, yet so poorly on a more recent computer?
$$$