Will Skyrim be fully playable on a HD 4850?

[Lyfer]

Was going to pickup a copy for my brother as a gift, his rig is this:

Phenom II 955 3.2ghz
Asus mobo
8gb ram
Sapphire HD 4850 512mb
Samsung 21" 1080p LED planel


Will he be able to play at medium at 1080p?

 

[hawtdawg]

might have to turn a setting or 2 down, but it should run fine and you should be able to turn up most settings.

 

[Yuriman]

Yes, my 4870 runs it butter smooth at max settings, 1920x1200 (no AA).

 

[aaksheytalwar]

It won't. Others are lieing you need a core i5 plus 6900 series or 7800 series card for max without the mods without aa for a decent experience

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Aren't the 4850 and 5770 about equal performance wise?

Tom's did a review with some older cards on lower settings, if you want to check it out I didn't see your card though.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074.html

 

[magomago]

i run it with all the mods I want with 2xgtx 460 (768MB...yup...SLI'ed 768 GTX460s plays this game buttery smooth with lots of mods at 1080p)

 

[DarkKnightDude]

my brother's rig has a 5670 and it runs it just fine at medium. And I believe your 4850 is faster then his.

 

[ViRGE]

Aren't the 4850 and 5770 about equal performance wise?

Tom's did a review with some older cards on lower settings, if you want to check it out I didn't see your card though.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074.html

The 5770 is closer to the 4870 these days. More to the point, most 4850s only had 512MB of RAM. So you'll have to turn some things down (particularly texture quality) compared to newer cards.

 

[Concillian]

Aren't the 4850 and 5770 about equal performance wise?

My 5770 was ~20% faster than my 4850. And I played skyrim at pretty high settings at 1920x1200. Not totally maxed, but performance was not bad at all, even with the Bethsoft HD texture pack.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Cool beans, so long as he's not vram limited he should be fine?

 

[Blue Shift]

Yup. Also, on the CPU side, a Phenom II x4 955 is more than adequate for Skyrim.

 

[dennilfloss]

It won't. Others are lieing you need a core i5 plus 6900 series or 7800 series card for max without the mods without aa for a decent experience

Bull! My 4870 yields a very nice playing experince at 1920x1200 high settings, 497h of play. Gonna upgrade it sometimes just to get more VRAM before I install the HD package.

 

[Shaydza]

I call bullshit. My 9800 gtx+ handles it beautifully and the 4850 is miles ahead of my card

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I dare you to show me any benchmarks which show 19x10 ultra max min 40 fps avg 60 fps with any 512 mb card or any 5700 series card for that matter. Also you need to show it with a core 2 quad or core 2 duo otherwise you will probably just get 70-80% of the performance of a modern CPU so you need min 60 fps

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Assuming you have 1gb VRAM, it will compete with a 550 Ti

With a high end CPU you get
Playable fps at high not ultra 8x af Fxaa
With your CPU this is going to be unplayable

At 19x10 med 8x af no aa
You will get very good performance provided you have a core i5 plus 1gb VRAM
But with these limitations you might struggle for a decent experience at even these settings

At 19x10 ultra with aa and af
A core i5 4ghz is 30% faster than a core i5 3ghz in terms of min fps and 20% in terms of avg fps and you need a core i5 4ghz to play acceptably at these settings with a 570
A phenom ii x4 at 3ghz provides just 60% of the performance of the core i5 2500k at 4ghz and is unplayable irrespective of the gpu

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html

And I don't want your shit unless it is backed by links from a reputable website.

 

[Gryz]

The system will run Skyrim. No doubt. And your brother will enjoy it.

Will it run at max settings ? No. Can you enable all eyecandy ? No. The good thing about Skyrim is that there is a lot of different eyecandy. And it is all separately configurable. So your brother should spend an hour or two tweaking his settings, and get the best settings he likes.

The 512MB on the videocard is gonna be a severe limitation. Skyrim with high textures (non-HR) likes up to 1 GB of videoram. If you install the bonus high-res textures, Skyrim will go over 1 GB of videoram. I assume AA has an impact. Your monitor's resolution will have an impact on how much videoram is needed. Your brother might be able to set textures to high, if he doesn't enable too many other features.

I used to run Skyrim on a E8500 + 4GB ram + gtx260 (896 vram). 4xAA, 16xAF, high textures (non-HR), not all setting maxed, 1920x1200. I got 24 fps at the tree in whiterun (one of the most taxing views in the game). Higher in most other places, up to 60 fps in dungeons.

I now have a gtx680. My fps at the tree in whiterun is now 31 fps. Not a lot higher. But I went to 8xMSAA + 4xTransparency SSAA. I now use SSAO (quality setting). High-res texture pack. All settings maxed (ultra/high). The game looks even more gorgeous.

Skyrim has a scalable engine. The better hardware you have, the more eyecandy you configure. I am sure there will be a balanced setting at which your brother is gonna enjoy the game.

 

[lifeblood]

I run Skyrim on a 4830 with 512 MB VRAM (rig in sig) using the high definition texture pack plus a couple of other mods without problem. I think I have almost everything at maximum.

 

[MrTeal]

Assuming you have 1gb VRAM, it will compete with a 550 Ti

With a high end CPU you get
Playable fps at high not ultra 8x af Fxaa
With your CPU this is going to be unplayable

At 19x10 med 8x af no aa
You will get very good performance provided you have a core i5 plus 1gb VRAM
But with these limitations you might struggle for a decent experience at even these settings

At 19x10 ultra with aa and af
A core i5 4ghz is 30% faster than a core i5 3ghz in terms of min fps and 20% in terms of avg fps and you need a core i5 4ghz to play acceptably at these settings with a 570
A phenom ii x4 at 3ghz provides just 60% of the performance of the core i5 2500k at 4ghz and is unplayable irrespective of the gpu

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html

And I don't want your shit unless it is backed by links from a reputable website.

I believe Balla already provide a link that would give reason to believe you could run Skyrim fine at 19x10 on high with 8xAF and FXAA. Fully playable doesn't have to mean everything Ultra with max AF/AA and sooper high-res textures while Furmark is running in the background.

 

[dust]

Was going to pickup a copy for my brother as a gift, his rig is this:

Phenom II 955 3.2ghz
Asus mobo
8gb ram
Sapphire HD 4850 512mb
Samsung 21" 1080p LED planel


Will he be able to play at medium at 1080p?

Whenever I see threads like this one, I wonder what would the op do if the answer was no? You aren't going to buy Skyrim for your brother any more, for fear it won't run well? Sorry if I'm derailing a bit the subject.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Nope, he gave no such link. Visit and then comment. And there was no 512 mb card in his links. And all of them were with at least a core i5 which itself doubles the performance as my link clearly points out

 

[aaksheytalwar]

And furmark wasn't running either, else even a core i7 plus 7970 would struggle to run furmark at max plus skyrim at max at the same time

 

[Leyawiin]

I run Skyrim on a 4830 with 512 MB VRAM (rig in sig) using the high definition texture pack plus a couple of other mods without problem. I think I have almost everything at maximum.

Interesting. I use the HD textures DLC and no other mods and the VRAM usage eventually maxes out my GTX 460 1GB @ 1680x1050. Its smooth up to that point, but as soon as it hits the VRAM wall it gets choppy. I can't imagine trying it at 1080p on Ultra with a much weaker card with only 512MB.

 

[maniac5999]

Interesting. I use the HD textures DLC and no other mods and the VRAM usage eventually maxes out my GTX 460 1GB @ 1680x1050. Its smooth up to that point, but as soon as it hits the VRAM wall it gets choppy. I can't imagine trying it at 1080p on Ultra with a much weaker card with only 512MB.

It's all about getting the right settings. aaksheytelwar is TECHNICALLY correct, you won't be able to max every single setting with a 4850, but Skyrim should be much more than playable, which is what the OP asked.

Personally, I find Skyrim to be relatively easy on my 4870 512mb, and the big difference between that and the 4850 is DDR3 vs. GDDR5. I can't use the high rez pack, and I can't turn everything all the way up, but I can get pretty close. (without AA/AF)

 

[dguy6789]

I dare you to show me any benchmarks which show 19x10 ultra max min 40 fps avg 60 fps with any 512 mb card or any 5700 series card for that matter. Also you need to show it with a core 2 quad or core 2 duo otherwise you will probably just get 70-80% of the performance of a modern CPU so you need min 60 fps

Because you need 40fps min and 60fps average for a game to be enjoyable

 

[lifeblood]

Interesting. I use the HD textures DLC and no other mods and the VRAM usage eventually maxes out my GTX 460 1GB @ 1680x1050. Its smooth up to that point, but as soon as it hits the VRAM wall it gets choppy. I can't imagine trying it at 1080p on Ultra with a much weaker card with only 512MB.

I don't know my frame rates but it does occasionally get a bit choppy. That doesn't bug me since its not a twitch shooter. It might drive you up the wall but its acceptable to me.