Card recommendation for Skyrim Remastered

[Winston Marmaduke III]

Yeah, I'm planning on paying for the SE. I think I missed the boat as far as buying the original game and DLCs cheaply off Steam for a free SE credit.

 

[Red Hawk]

Yeah, I'm planning on paying for the SE. I think I missed the boat as far as buying the original game and DLCs cheaply off Steam for a free SE credit.

According to Gamespot, you have until the end of the day tomorrow to pick up the DLCs and get the Special Edition free.

 

[bystander36]

Apparently I was not playing the new version. After installing the new version, I can say it performs much, MUCH better than the original. TAA is an improvement over FXAA or MSAA. Things are a little bit soft, but not like FXAA, and it fixes most AA issues, unlike MSAA.

My GTX 1070 is at 1Ghz and 75% usage while playing, and have had no dips at all. They must have made big improvements to the engine.

 

[Ranulf]

To the OP, definately stay with the i7 for long term value and no the 950 pro isn't worth it for the money, not for just games anyway.

 

[Red Hawk]

Haven't had any problems with the game, it's pretty smooth. Worth noting is that the textures appear to be pretty much the same as the official high res texture pack for the original PC version. Meaning if you want better, you'll need to resort to mods. The various new effects are pretty nice, with official support for ambient occlusion, volumetric "god rays", screen space reflections, improved water and snow shaders, it's all nice. There's a curious option in the configuration menu called "64 Bit Render Targets". Not sure what that means, but I figure it's beneficial if it has to do with 64 bit.

There seems to be more dynamic lighting going on, but maybe that's just me. What I'm sure about though is that shadows look better, much cleaner. Skyrim's original release used a flexible dynamic lighting system that actually allowed every object in the overworld to cast shadow from the sun that would change position and shape as the sun moved. This was impressive because it was achieved using DirectX 9 level tech on consoles -- but it limited what could be done to clean up the shadows on PC because it was using that same DirectX 9 lighting engine. Even at the highest setting, shadows would look aliased and crawl-y at the edges. Presumably they've changed over to a DirectX 11 feature level lighting system, because shadows are noticeably better.

 

[Leyawiin]

Have it on both my PCs, but so far only tried it with the i5-4690k, 2x GTX 960 4GB in SLI and 1920x1200 60Hz. Had to used Nvidia Inspector to force SLI (just used the existing Skyrim profile in the drivers) and on Ultra (which the game chose) its getting between 55-60 FPS. With only one card it was getting 35-45 FPS. I'll try my i7-4790k/GTX 1070 rig tomorrow and report back. Oh, this was without any mods.

 

[Winston Marmaduke III]

Apparently I was not playing the new version. After installing the new version, I can say it performs much, MUCH better than the original. TAA is an improvement over FXAA or MSAA. Things are a little bit soft, but not like FXAA, and it fixes most AA issues, unlike MSAA.

My GTX 1070 is at 1Ghz and 75% usage while playing, and have had no dips at all. They must have made big improvements to the engine.

Nice thanks! Your initial post had me concerned LOL

To the OP, definately stay with the i7 for long term value and no the 950 pro isn't worth it for the money, not for just games anyway.

Really? I thought that M.2 would blow a normal SSD out of the water? If that's not the case, I'll stick with the ADATA SP550 480 or 512 whatever.

Have it on both my PCs, but so far only tried it with the i5-4690k, 2x GTX 960 4GB in SLI and 1920x1200 60Hz. Had to used Nvidia Inspector to force SLI (just used the existing Skyrim profile in the drivers) and on Ultra (which the game chose) its getting between 55-60 FPS. With only one card it was getting 35-45 FPS. I'll try my i7-4790k/GTX 1070 rig tomorrow and report back. Oh, this was without any mods.

Thanks, I'm interested to see what your experience is like.

 

[bystander36]

Really? I thought that M.2 would blow a normal SSD out of the water? If that's not the case, I'll stick with the ADATA SP550 480 or 512 whatever.

There are often 2 different versions of M.2 cards. 1 that costs the same as their typical Sata connected version, and another that is more expensive, but quite a bit faster. For most purposes, the slower version is perfectly awesome in comparison to an HDD and just as fast as the typical SATA connected SSD. The benefit to using this type of SSD card, is that it is the size of a stick of gum, that is hidden away under my GPU, and it does not require an SATA cord or power.

 

[escrow4]

Apparently I was not playing the new version. After installing the new version, I can say it performs much, MUCH better than the original. TAA is an improvement over FXAA or MSAA. Things are a little bit soft, but not like FXAA, and it fixes most AA issues, unlike MSAA.

My GTX 1070 is at 1Ghz and 75% usage while playing, and have had no dips at all. They must have made big improvements to the engine.

Skyrim came out in 2011 and was in development at least since 2008. It used a re-jigged Gamebryo engine from Oblivion which is now a decade old. I seriously doubt they made any big improvements, you'd need a new engine for that. More likely they re-jigged it for the last time, slapped it out for full price and are awaiting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to roll in.

 

[Winston Marmaduke III]

There are often 2 different versions of M.2 cards. 1 that costs the same as their typical Sata connected version, and another that is more expensive, but quite a bit faster. For most purposes, the slower version is perfectly awesome in comparison to an HDD and just as fast as the typical SATA connected SSD. The benefit to using this type of SSD card, is that it is the size of a stick of gum, that is hidden away under my GPU, and it does not require an SATA cord or power.

This one costs $315 for 512 gigs....I'm assuming it's the faster one. Samsung 950 Pro M.2

Skyrim came out in 2011 and was in development at least since 2008. It used a re-jigged Gamebryo engine from Oblivion which is now a decade old. I seriously doubt they made any big improvements, you'd need a new engine for that. More likely they re-jigged it for the last time, slapped it out for full price and are awaiting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to roll in.

Someone above said it's a port to the 64bit Fallout 4 engine. Honestly I don't care what they did with it, so long as it looks nice, which it does.

 

[RussianSensation]

This one costs $315 for 512 gigs....I'm assuming it's the faster one. Samsung 950 Pro M.2

In terms of longevity of the PC, the 3 most important components are CPU, monitor and power supply. In terms of graphical performance, the GPU rules. In terms of immersion, the monitor rules them all and the monitor has the potential to outlast everything other than an EVGA/Corsair/SeaSonic PSU. Spend the $ on the most important components:

CPU - wait 2 months for the i7 7700K. If must buy now, get i7 6700K
PSU - If you already have a good PSU, don't need to spend $

Now here comes the hard part. I'd personally get a GTX1060/RX 480 and a $500-700 monitor rather than a $400-500 GPU and a $200 monitor. A $500-700 monitor is going to be enjoyable over 5+ years but on average GPUs increase in performance ~ 32-35% per annum. That means in 3 years from now, there will be a videocards 2.2-2.3X faster than GTX1060/480 for $250-300 and 2.2-2.3X faster than GTX1070 for $450. It's highly, highly unlikely that in 3 years from now you can buy a $500-700 monitor that's twice as good as a $500-700 monitor you buy today.

I think the hardest part in PC building today is picking the monitor because picking a GPU is extremely easy after you have picked the right monitor to keep for long-term.

The biggest benefit of a PCIe SSD such as the Samsung 950/960 NVMe is when you are writing a lot of data or copying a lot of data for work. For example, if you are streaming/writing 4K video files in real time, a regular SSD will choke. Otherwise, for game and OS loading, the difference isn't dramatic between a regular SSD.

I think for slow-paced games (not twitch shooters), I'd much rather buy a 28-32" VA/IPS 1440p 60hz or 4K 60Hz monitor than a 24" 144Hz 1Hz TN panel.

There is only 1-2 use cases for 144Hz TN panels - twitch shooters or pro gamers. In every other aspect, when it comes to actual IQ, contrast levels, black levels, colours, viewing angles, immersion, 24" 144Hz TN panels are crap. If you spend $1000, $2000, $3000 on high-end PC parts but you pair it all with a low-end TN panel, in my eyes, the system is severely compromised.

If you have a physical store such as MicroCenter near you, go and check out various PC monitors in person to see what you actually like. I couldn't go back to using a 24" PC monitor for media, productivity and games, even if such a system has a Titan XP SLI and 6950X as the backbone, I wouldn't feel that the PC was special enough. If you don't play twitch shooters and don't need the lowest input lag, I'd even go all the way to a 4K HDTV for a PC monitor.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-the-best-4k-screens-for-hdr-gaming
http://ca.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-usage/video-gaming/best

 

[VirtualLarry]

Could this game be a reason to upgrade from my G4400 @ 4.45Ghz, and 7950 3GB video card?

How do you get the Remaster Version? Guess I need to buy some Steam cards to put some money into my account. (No way I'm linking my payment method with my acct.)

 

[Winston Marmaduke III]

Wow, thanks Russian. If read time isn't improved with that Samsung 950 Pro then I can DEFINITELY go cheaper. Back to the SP550 for 200 savings.

I used to be a big FPS gamer way way back during the Quake 2 days....haven't gamed much since then at all, aside from Elder Scrolls games here and there. Now that the wife left (and took my old PC), I have a feeling I'll have more free time and slowly get into "twitch" gaming as they say these days.

Looks like I'm going to have to think hard about the gaming / general usage balance I need to achieve with a monitor.

 

[Red Hawk]

Skyrim came out in 2011 and was in development at least since 2008. It used a re-jigged Gamebryo engine from Oblivion which is now a decade old. I seriously doubt they made any big improvements, you'd need a new engine for that. More likely they re-jigged it for the last time, slapped it out for full price and are awaiting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to roll in.

They ported the game to use Fallout 4's upgraded version of the Creation engine, which runs in 64-bit and DirectX 11. That's a pretty significant upgrade, meaning better effects can be implemented and more memory than 4 GB can be addressed. It should be highly beneficial to anyone running a ton of mods, but I don't really think it should improve performance when running the game with vanilla settings.

Could this game be a reason to upgrade from my G4400 @ 4.45Ghz, and 7950 3GB video card?

How do you get the Remaster Version? Guess I need to buy some Steam cards to put some money into my account. (No way I'm linking my payment method with my acct.)

The 7950 should run the game fine. Bethesda's recommended spec on the AMD side is an R9-290, so you might not be able to max everything out, but the game should run fine at somewhat reduced settings. Not sure about the G4400, how many cores/threads is that?

If you have all the DLCs for Skyrim, the Special Edition is automatically placed in your Steam library for free. That offer expires by the end of today though, from what I've read.

Wow, thanks Russian. If read time isn't improved with that Samsung 950 Pro then I can DEFINITELY go cheaper. Back to the SP550 for 200 savings.

I used to be a big FPS gamer way way back during the Quake 2 days....haven't gamed much since then at all, aside from Elder Scrolls games here and there. Now that the wife left (and took my old PC), I have a feeling I'll have more free time and slowly get into "twitch" gaming as they say these days.

Looks like I'm going to have to think hard about the gaming / general usage balance I need to achieve with a monitor.

Honestly my experience with playing Skyrim Special Edition is that load times are breezy even on a plain old 7200 RPM HDD. I'd only invest in a SSD for Skyrim SE if you plan on loading up on tons of texture mods.

 

[bystander36]

Skyrim came out in 2011 and was in development at least since 2008. It used a re-jigged Gamebryo engine from Oblivion which is now a decade old. I seriously doubt they made any big improvements, you'd need a new engine for that. More likely they re-jigged it for the last time, slapped it out for full price and are awaiting more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to roll in.

Well, either I had a bad Skyrim install, or the changes they made greatly improved performance.

 

[Leyawiin]

Thanks, I'm interested to see what your experience is like.

Nailed at 60 FPS and smooth as butter. All the spots that had hitches in the original game are gone. Its also better than Fallout 4. Just guesstimating from my GTX 960 4GB SLI setup I would imagine you could pretty much max it (without mods) @ 1080p 60Hz with a GTX 1060 6GB or RX 480 on up.

 

[bystander36]

Nailed at 60 FPS and smooth as butter. All the spots that had hitches in the original game are gone. Its also better than Fallout 4. Just guesstimating from my GTX 960 4GB SLI setup I would imagine you could pretty much max it (without mods) @ 1080p 60Hz with a GTX 1060 6GB or RX 480 on up.

I'm having the same experience with the lack of hitching now. I guess it's possible some mods caused it, but I did uninstall all of them, and reinstalled the game to compare, and it still hitched, with the new version smooth at all times.

The bad news is 3D vision does not work with the new version.

 

[Winston Marmaduke III]

I was doing a bit more research and it seems, at 1440p, a GTX-1070, hell, even a 1080 isn't going to give those super high 100+ framerates on the modern games with maxed out settings. I'd kind of rather just get a high refresh, low input lag 1080p TN screen and not even worry about gsync. I'd rather blow out games in 1080p with a 1070 for a good long while than have it struggle at 1440p in a year or two. As far as TN, I can just adjust the gamma and color and it can be good enough.

That can at least last me until high refresh 4k IPS screens are a thing and the price settles on them, on the cusp of 8k or whatever is to come next.

I'm behind the curve with resolutions anyway having JUST got a 1080p television, so I'm still kind of awe-struck by that rez. And I'm sure I would be even moreso on a 24" high refresh monitor than my 48" tv

With 4K already here, and most people still on 1080p anyway, 2K probably isn't worth the expense right now is my theory.

 

[Ranulf]

I see no reason to go with more than 1080p at 24'' size, monitor tech is in flux right now and gsync being $100+ more irks me.

As for m.2, you can buy cheaper models if you get a mobo with m.2 slot (they can be sata or pci-e based though).

I should try the Skyrim SE on my 8350 with 480x as the original is also installed on there. Doubt I'll get around to it for awhile. BF1, CIv6 and WoW on deck right now and that system is giving me troubles again.

 

[frozentundra123456]

How are the loading times? I have a lower end system, and while it would run FO4 decently, the load times were atrocious, and sometimes the game would even lock up during a loading screen and have to be restarted. And, no, I dont have an SSD, but I do have a Dell XPS with Raid 0 7200 RPM hard drives. I know I need an SSD, but FO4 was far, far worse on loading times than any other game I have played.

Edit: I will be able to try it with my current system. It was in my steam library and I downloading now. I know I bought a few of the DLC, but did not think I had all of them. Whatever, looking forward to giving it a try.

 

[Face2Face]

I installed in on my SSD and loading time are pretty incredible. Maybe 2-3 secs? Way faster than FO4 on the same SSD.

For what its worth, the game does look better. They've thrown some color in it, and the lighting and mist/fog effects looks very good. Sky looks much better as well. There some TAA blur going on, like FO4, so I may inject some sweetFX sharpening to get rid of that. Game runs like butter at 1440p Ultra; barely stressing my system at all.

EDIT:

Okay, so I went ahead and installed some SweetFX lumasharpen and I like the results. I've been using it with FO4, and I don't like playing without it.

it's harder to see in a screenshot, but is more noticeable when playing the game. See pics below.

Without sharpen:

With Lumasharpen:

The difference is more pronounced in the trees. Doesn't look so blurry. I hate the blur that FXAA and TAA create, so this is a must for me.

If you want instructions that show you how to do this, then see here, just switch FO4 with TESV. It's super easy.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout4_1.html

 

[bystander36]

I noticed the TAA blur too, but I didn't think it was bad. It's certainly better than FXAA, or the lack of smoothing at all from many things with MSAA. Maybe I'll mess with sweetFX if I get back into playing it.

 

[Red Hawk]

Here's a video highlighting some of the more subtle visual effects and performance improvements in the special edition:

At 1:35 he demonstrates how the switch to DirectX 11 and 64 Bit works to improve the game's stability and performance. The game handles more objects and NPCs much better now. On their test PC, using the command console to spawn in 200 NPCs and kill them would cause the original game to slow to 15 FPS, if not crash altogether. In the special edition, there's a bit of a hiccup when they give the kill command, but otherwise the framerate remains near a smooth 60 FPS. This will enable much larger scale battle scenarios for mods.

Also demonstrated in the video: rain and snow occlusion (outdoor shelters will stop rain and snow from passing through) and improved water flow physics (river water will now change direction and slow down so it appears to flow around objects and bends in the river).

 

[Headfoot]

Apparently I was not playing the new version. After installing the new version, I can say it performs much, MUCH better than the original. TAA is an improvement over FXAA or MSAA. Things are a little bit soft, but not like FXAA, and it fixes most AA issues, unlike MSAA.

My GTX 1070 is at 1Ghz and 75% usage while playing, and have had no dips at all. They must have made big improvements to the engine.

If the TAA is the same as Fallout 4's, then install Reshade and apply a post sharpen filter per the instructions out on the web for Fallout 4. It makes an incredible difference, totally fixes the blur without bringing back the jaggies. I cant even play FO4 without it anymore

(http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout4_1.html)

EDIT: whoops, looks like others have already pointed this out. Seconded.