Skyrim Skyrim vs. Oblivion system requirements?

crpgnut said:

I run Oblivion and The Witcher 2 on high and get 40+ on fraps. It bogs a little if there are lots of creatures. I'm even running Qarl's highest end textures in Oblivion and doing fine. I guess I'll wait and see. Money isn't an object, but laziness scores high. Also, getting a power supply to fit inside the Dell case can be a pain. The GTS 240 supposedly requires a 450 watt PSU and it runs fine in the Dell. Of course, they could have tweaked the card so it uses less power. Decisions, decisions. If anyone is a power supply guru and has a guess as to what would fit in my Dell, I'm all ears.

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It is remarkable that you can get similar frame rates for both Oblivion and Witcher 2. Perhaps Witcher 2 is more CPU intensive than I realized.

If you get 40+ fps for Witcher 2, on high, I would imagine you will be just fine with Skyrim on Ultra settings.

On my laptop with i7-820QM, AMD 5830m and 1920x1080 display, Oblivion runs at constant 60fps with vsync enabled and Fallout New Vegas runs at about 45-50 fps; however, Witcher 2 is a barely playable slideshow, even with all graphics options at the lowest possible settings, 20-25 fps, often dipping below 20 fps. It must be your relatively powerful desktop CPU that enables you to get such high frame rates for Witcher 2 at 1680x1050.

As for your PSU, you may want to double check on a forum like http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ or http://www.overclockers.com/forums/

However, it sounds like you probably already have a 450W PSU running in your system.

I'm not sure if I played TW2 at 1680X1050. If the graphics were slow at that level, I may have turned down the resolution. I really don't remember. I also always turn off grass in every game. That may make a huge difference. I'm still thinking I might want to upgrade my card a bit. I'll wait till release and decide. I've copied and pasted the suggestions here into a text file for future considerations

I'll sacrifice resolution to keep eye candy, but only so much.

crpgnut said:

I'll sacrifice resolution to keep eye candy, but only so much.

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Absolutely! After seeing in-game PC screenshots like this one, I certainly envy anyone who can run the game on a multiple monitor setup:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8613775/Skyrim/PCscreens/NorthernCoastAuroraPanorama01.jpg

Recommended PC spec (for playing on High):
Win XP/7,
quad-core Intel/AMD CPU,
4GB RAM,
6GB HD,
DX compat snd card, DX9 vid card w/ 1 GB.
GTX 260/Radeon 4890 or higher

#
Min Spec:
Win XP/7/Vista (32 or 64 bit),
dual core, 2GB RAM,
DX9c video card w/ 512MB RAM

Both require Internet Access for Steam activation.

Official system requirements announced:

http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/10/25/skyrim-system-requirements-announced/

So can I run it? Again, I'm on a MacBook Pro (running Windows), 2.4 GHz with 4GB RAM, and a GeForce 8600M GT. I can run Oblivion smoothly.

Thanks from the thread starter.

Ovenall said:

So can I run it? Again, I'm on a MacBook Pro (running Windows), 2.4 GHz with 4GB RAM, and a GeForce 8600M GT. I can run Oblivion smoothly.

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CPU: OK
RAM: OK
Video Card: OK (it is DX9 with 512mb memory).

Your spec are slightly above or equal to the minimum requirements, so it should run it, but not on high.

azarhal said:

CPU: OK
RAM: OK
Video Card: OK (it is DX9 with 512mb memory).

Your spec are slightly above or equal to the minimum requirements, so it should run it, but not on high.

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Thanks! Much appreciated.

edit- Just checked and I only have 256 MB of VRAM... so I may be out of luck.

What surprises me the most about these specs is that it only needs 6GB on the hard drive. Doesn't that seem small?

I can run Oblivion well too but that's a game from 2007... Also I have Nvidia 8600GT (DX9 over here but 256 VRAM). I am surprised though of the 6gb space. Why so low?

Bethesda is going to be remembered for publishing the largest (RAGE, in terms of disk space) and the smallest (disk space) and the largest (Skyrim, content and world map) AAA games of 2011

bloodlover said:

I am surprised though of the 6gb space. Why so low?

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Oblivion wasn't much bigger: 4.6 GB according to the system requirements.

I would say it's so low, because everything is compressed in those bsa files.

azarhal said:

I would say it's so low, because everything is compressed in those bsa files.

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Fallout: New Vegas was 10 GB.
But of course, they used some super duper compresssion techinques for Skyrim which won´t at all result in a loss of quality .
Doesn´t seem much dramatic/surprising to me anyway, they may have indeed used more efficient compression, the game is a straight console port, it likely isn´t as talk-y as Vegas, it isn´t a "cinematic" game either and this type of game is bound to re-use resources extensively.

Personally I don´t care much about HD textures or the amount of dungeon tilesets and disk space requirements don´t tell much about world/level design or art direction which is what I do care about, but I expect a mild uproar about this .

I think it's essentially sized for fitting on a single 360 DL DVD.

Bumping the thread for Ovenall. You can play Skyrim if you could run Oblivion. However it will be on low details and a little bit of .ini tweaking. I am playing it well on my ancient (4yo) PC.