Skyrim:adequate video card?

Hey, sorry if this has been brought up before, but I really loved Oblivion and Morrowwind before it, so I can't wait until Skyrim comes out in November! I am wondering, seeing as I can't afford a laptop with an Nvidia 580m right now, will a laptop with the 560m be adequate to play Skyrim with most of the visual effects turned on? Eventually, I will upgrade to the 580m, but will the 560 tide me over until then? Or should I try to shell out for the AMD 6990m now?
Thanks!

 

I would think the 560M will handle Skyrim on high settings, but not at max settings unless your playing on a lower resolution. Though I could be wrong but, I am very active on the Bethesda forums and their saying Skyrim won't be more demanding then FNV or maybe a little at the most.

 

Thanks, it is a relief to know I will be able to play Skyrim at decent settings with the 560. Just out of curiosity, do games written by the programers of Oblivion and Skyrim run better on an Nvidia video card, or with an AMD card? I often wonder, as someone who has no background in computers, if programers write games that "prefer" one brand of video card over another? Or is that a ridiculous question?

 

No, there is not one card that runs games "better". But there is money paid by Nvidia to developers and publishers to put code in that hamstrings AMD/ATI cards without adding any benefit to the end user. So, when you see "Nvidia, The Way It's Mean to be Played" logo in the beginning, you'll know exactly what that means.

 

Yeah, like in metro 2033...

 

If Skyrim is a Xbox 360 port, would it favor AMD hardware?

Dont care, got it preordered and waiting for the preload. Xd

 

It's a console port and it will also reportedly take advantage of DX11 optimization features.

so if you have a DX11 card, it probably won't be too much more demanding than any other recent 2010-2011 games. If you can get decent frame rates for other recent games maxed at 1080p you can probably get similar frame rates.

I guess it will probably be around the same or slightly more demanding than Fallout: New Vegas and FO3. (unless the DX11 optimization really makes a huge difference, in which case it would be less demanding)

For a laptop, if you are going for 1920x1080 display, try to get at least NVIDIA 555m, 460m, 560m, AMD 5830m, 5850m, 6770m, or better. I have a 5830m in my laptop and I'm hoping to get at least around 30+ fps at 1080p, with most settings maxed. The 560m is rated much higher than the 5830m.

For 1600x900 display you could go a step or two lower and get a laptop with a slightly weaker graphics card.

I think it would be a mistake to go with a laptop below 1600x900 resolution because you will be missing out on part of the visual experience of a game like this with lost of panoramic vistas and excellent art direction.

 

Gtx460m/560m slightly oced will handle the game just fine if they said that performance is similar to FNV.
Consider that i can run FNV ultra settings with my gaming oc while having stable 60fps, just a few dips in the 50's.

 

How well do you think apple fanbois (like me) would do?
(see notebook in my sig)

It was quite annoying that i couldnt play Witcher II on medium-high before it was fixed (anyhow i finished it on low before fix was released).
But i am looking towards skyrim.

 

i sure hope 560m cant run skyrim on high. 560m cant even play deus ex on high smoothly and the deus ex graphics arent stellar but gameplay/storyline is very good

 

My 6770m runs DXHR just fine.

 

DXHR has... weird performance, to say the least.

 

Probably due to some dodgy Nvidia drivers.
Both a HD 6970m and GTX 485m gives roughly the same performance in that game, and that is smooth framerates with allot of eye candy.

 

So the adequacy of the video card drivers is a major factor in it's ability to run a game at high frame rates? Where does the speed and number of cores of the CPU figure in? And how important is the RAM you have, amount and Hz? Is it true that a higher rpm hard drive also plays a role in the speed of the game on your PC? Newbie questions, I know!

 

Using old drivers can always be a problem. If you have issues with performance or visual glitches in a game, a good starting point for troubleshooting is to update your graphics card drivers, if they aren't up to date. CPU speed/cores can make a difference, especially if the game takes advantage of multi-threading (some do).

RAM doesn't make a huge difference in gaming, unless you don't have enough. 4-8 GB should be plenty for current games. Hard drive speeds have minimal impact on performance, and have more of an effect on load times.

 

Yes until a couple of months (or so) after the game release when both Nvidia and AMD would've released well optimized drivers. Of course, this applies assuming your PC/laptop specs are sufficient to run the game.

 

The real answer is, nobody knows how it will run on what hardware because it hasn't been released yet.

 

people have very different standards on whats smooth. my friend just retired his desktop gtx 580 and got a gtx 590 because apparently he lags in deus ex.

 

That is if you have 80+ fps standards which is overkill IMO. (even at bigger resolutions than 1920 x 1080)

Ask him how many Hz his monitor can output. If it is 60, then the purchase won't make a difference in this case.

I even consider 60 fps overkill. Anything around 30 is perfectly playable.

 

I guess? I don't know, you can't even see anything over 60 FPS on most notebook displays, but I generally consider 40+FPS to be pretty smooth.