The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion redefined our expectations for open world fantasy RPGs, and it was brutally hard on the hardware of its day. Is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as challenging on today's PC hardware, or can a modest rig handle it?
The Elder Scrolls series of role-playing games is distinguished with a tradition of pushing PC graphics past contemporary expectations. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind amazed players back in 2002, and was one of the first games to use pixel shaders for realistic water effects, along with hardware-accelerated tessellation, a feature that only went mainstream when it was incorporated into DirectX 11. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion took visual quality up several notches, but also completely redefined what a rich, detailed, and open virtual world could aspire to be.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim lands at our feet with big expectations to satisfy. How do Bethesda’s developers push the envelope in the series' most recent chapter?
Time To Crack Open Another Elder Scroll, Don’t You Think?
You may be surprised to learn that the fifth Elder Scrolls installment doesn’t really push graphics much further than Oblivion, despite the fact that it centers on a new engine. The Creation Engine, as it's called, does facilitate improved detail, better lighting, and more realistic character animation. But, at the end of the day, Skyrim is clearly cut from the same cloth as its predecessor. Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 are in different leagues when it comes to visual fidelity.
So, if the studio didn’t concentrate on graphics, what was its focus?
When Skyrim is compared to Oblivion, it’s clear that the goal was to make a great game better. Everything is incrementally improved: the narrative is more engrossing, skill progression makes more sense, crafting is expanded, the game interface is more accessible, level scaling isn’t as ridiculous as it was in Oblivion, and combat is more engaging. It’s all smoother, better-designed, and more intuitive. It’s basically Oblivion, refined.
Beautiful view. Bethesda knows how to craft a landscape.
In fact, that might be the worst thing we can say about Skyrim. The feel of the game is so similar to its predecessor that it could have been sold as an expansion and I wouldn’t have thought twice. To clarify, I’m not saying the game is a ripoff; I think it’s worth every penny of the asking price. But it doesn’t feel like a new game. It feels like I'm playing Oblivion again. That’s really not a bad thing. Oblivion was good enough to claim more hours of my life than I care to calculate. In short, there's a winning formula in place, and Bethesda didn’t mess with it much.
Mead, elk, and a potato for $4.99
I could spend all day going over the refinements that Skyrim introduces, but this is a performance analysis, not a game review. Let’s face it: if you’re an Oblivion fan, you’re going to give Skyrim a try no matter what I say. So, have fun discovering the nuances when you dig in.
Congrats, you reached 27! I'm level 9000.
Let’s look at the graphics options and performance. That's why you're here, right?
- 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.
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.
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?
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