Core parts for a good Skyrim box?

[cleverhandle]

I haven't followed hardware closely in years, so I'd appreciate some pointers to get me started Googling in the right direction. I'm not a heavy PC game player by any means, and generally play stuff that's a year or two old, mostly RPG's or strategy games with the occasional action title thrown in. However, I do like using new Elder Scrolls games as an excuse to build a fresh rig after giving the game/drivers/modders a year or so to get settled. And... it's about that time now, isn't it?

So the target is Skyrim. I don't care about other games (which is to say I don't mind dialing back settings further on other titles if necessary). Let's say I want to play on a single 1080p setup - I'm too ashamed to reveal the monitor I'm *actually* using at the moment, but will buy a new one soon. I'd like to run at the max settings or close to them, but don't need to run a setting just for bragging rights if it doesn't matter much. I'm sure I'll want to include a good spread of mods eventually, and probably won't upgrade my vidcard for a few years. I'm not interested in overclocking, extreme cooling, etc. Purchase horizon is probably the next couple of months.

Given those parameters, how well could I do with a budget of $800 for the CPU/RAM/Mobo/Vidcard and which parts should I be researching? My understanding (which may be mistaken or outdated) is that Skyrim is quite tough on the CPU, but doesn't gain much (anything?) beyond two CPU cores. And a single 1080p display, by modern standards, really isn't anything crazy. But I'm too out of the loop of the current hardware scene to know what I want to look at.

I appreciate any advice you can provide.

 

[Ken g6]

"The next couple of months" is a difficult time horizon. A couple of months after that Haswell is supposed to come out, so you might want a different CPU and mobo if you wait until then.

The other thing you want to know about Skyrim is that it depends on high memory bandwidth on the GPU. So a 7870 or 7950 is probably a good choice.

Generically, you'd have a good system that fits your budget if you take [thread=2192841]Mfenn's build[/thread] at that time, remove the nVidia video card, and stick in a 7870. You could probably do better, if you don't want to overclock, by selecting a non-overclocking CPU and mobo, and then swapping in a 7950. (If you did want to overclock on the cheap, an AMD FX-4300 could be surprisingly good for this particular game only.)

 

[Logical Orion]

Mfenn's build looks like an excellent option.

I'll add that you should make sure you have more than 1GB RAM on the video card, since Skyrim with high res textures is one of the few games where it makes a difference.

I wouldn't worry about Haswell. Since Intel doesn't have much competition from AMD these days, they have no reason to give us any more performance / price than with their current chips.

 

[cleverhandle]

Thank you both - that's very helpful. Will a stock i5/7950 setup be sufficient to max settings on Skyrim at 1080p and maintain a playable framerate? I've scanned some of the benchmark articles, but I'm not familiar enough with Skyrim and the current tweaks and driver options to understand all the possibilities.

 

[riversend]

In general, you will do very well with an i5+7950 setup. However, if there are lots of mods that you like to load on, that could be more taxing. With no mods (or even just adding the HD texture pak) you should be well above playable. AT bench shows a 7950 at 1920x1200 maxed settings at over 80fps.

 

[Termie]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427-6.html

Above are some recent CPU benchmarks with a GTX680.

While some people have suggested the game only uses two cores, that's simply not borne out by the numbers. Whatever the case is, it would be a mistake to buy a dual core.

And yes, the 7950 is plenty fast to run Skyrim:
http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update-to-reduce-radeon-frame-times/2

So that being said, your part selection is easy:

3570K - $230
Z77 motherboard - $100
8GB RAM - $45
HD7950 - $300
TOTAL: $775

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In general, you will do very well with an i5+7950 setup. However, if there are lots of mods that you like to load on, that could be more taxing. With no mods (or even just adding the HD texture pak) you should be well above playable. AT bench shows a 7950 at 1920x1200 maxed settings at over 80fps.

I do quite well with a (slightly overclocked) HD7870. Even with the HD texture pack, everything is nice and playable at 1440p.

 

[mfenn]

Generically, you'd have a good system that fits your budget if you take [thread=2192841]Mfenn's build[/thread] at that time

:thumbsup: I agree. Taking the $1000 machine and knocking the GPU down to fit into $800 is what I would do. Getting rid of the SSD is also an option, but the SSD really helps with load times, so I'd rather not do that.

 

[cleverhandle]

Taking the $1000 machine and knocking the GPU down to fit into $800 is what I would do.

The $800 was just for the CPU/Mobo/GPU/RAM, not any drives, power, enclosure, etc. I have at least some of that already and have a pretty good idea of how much those parts will cost if they do require upgrading. The i5/Z77/7950/8GB route fits nicely into what I'd budget, and sounds like it will be plenty powerful enough.

Thanks again, everybody.

 

[mfenn]

The $800 was just for the CPU/Mobo/GPU/RAM, not any drives, power, enclosure, etc. I have at least some of that already and have a pretty good idea of how much those parts will cost if they do require upgrading. The i5/Z77/7950/8GB route fits nicely into what I'd budget, and sounds like it will be plenty powerful enough.

Thanks again, everybody.

In that case, you have the budget to grab the SSD and the 7970 instead of the 7950.