Will this laptop run Skyrim?

Hey guys, I was getting pretty excited about getting a new P150HM for Skyrim and Diablo 3 down the line, but I was talking to a friend who thought that it wouldnt be possible for me to play Skyrim on high/ultra settings. Basically, he thought Id need a Xfire or SLI capable desktop with top of the line GPU to pull it off.

Thought Id bring it up here just cause I figure if I cant get the most out of the games I really am buying the laptop for, then why buy it? Id rather have a laptop, but i suppose i could settle for a desktop/netbook combo, or buy the laptop a handful of months down the road.

Anyways, here is the build, if anyone can offer me their opinions on whether ill be able to run Skyrim (and maybe some other demanding games like BF3, etc) on some very nice settings:

15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display features 95% NTSC Color Gamut in Matte Finished Surface (1920 x 1080)
AMD Radeon HD 6990M w/2GB GDDR5 w/ IC Diamond
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 2 X 4GB
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.20GHz)
120GB Intel 510 Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive

Id really value some opinions here since if this isnt enough to run the game at great settings, I may as well save some money and go a different route. Thanks guys

 

Um... Obviously yes.

 

You got the best ATI mobility card in the market right now so yes, you are good.

 

It'll run Skyrim on all maxed + 4x AA + 16x AF @ 1080p no problem; for BF3 you might need to cut a few corners if you want to run everything on ultra though.

How much is this costing ya?

 

as jerg said u ll run it all maxed with no problem cuz skyrim its a console port!!!

 

Not necessarily. I heard they are tweaking the PC Version to be a bit different from the consoles. However, if the core code is from console-optimization, you should be fine. Also don't forget mods can also tax your PC as they seem to completely overhaul and enhance the graphics by quite a bit.

 

-blink-

I, for one, don't understand why so many of you are insisting that Skyrim will run great on that laptop, even going so far as to state that it'd run fine with "all maxed + 4xAA + ... ...".

This is Skyrim we're talking about. It's going to take that piddly mobile card, crunch it in its dragon teeth and spit its charred, shattered remains onto the floor.

EDIT: P.S. - to the OP: If you're not planning to play those fancy games while outside of your house very often, or at all, then I would certainly suggest picking up a desktop and a netbook. You'll get much better gaming performance for the same amount of - or less - money.

 

Since you mentioned it already, id go for a desktop+laptop, as i do.
I have a g53sw for light gaming and mobility (specs are good, performance outstanding most of the situations) and a desktop for serious gaming.
A desktop will last longer, upgrade better, and had a better components selections. A middle level cpu such my i5-2500 can last alot considering how technology matured, and raw power delivered. Mine is running 24/7 @ 4,3ghz on all 4 cores. Plenty of power.

The gpu is a gainward GTX570 GS GHL, oced, with 8gb of ram and other stuff. I think ill be fine for alot of time, while keeping my laptop for, as it should, laptop/mobile use. The gtx460m is a good card, its able to run games at 1080p with a good oc and a small graphical tweaks; when an heavy game hits the streets usually ill keep it maxed but lower the res to 900p, or 768p.
As an example Witcher 2 patched to 2.0 can run with Ultra preset (no ubersampling, everything else on/maxed) with 32-35 fps at 768p, which is good if you ask.

This is just an example, but with the money of the laptop build you posted, you could make a great desktop machine, and later get a discreet laptop for mobility.

As far as i understand you dont really have the need to buy a laptop, right? Like me. I dont travel alot and i hardly use my laptop on battery, or outside, you may apply to a good desktop+laptop.

 

While I don't disagree that a desktop may be a better suitor to the needs of a not-very-mobile gamer, I wouldn't necessarily count out the latest mobile cards running Skyrim at max. Yes, it is a beautiful game from what we've seen, but Bethesda is hardly breaking any new ground here with their engine when it comes to rendering. If games like Battlefield 3, The Witcher 2, and Crysis 2 are running flawlessly on my system, I doubt something with a 6990M would flinch at Skyrim, especially when you consider overclocking into the equation.

Just my 2 cents for what it's worth, which probably isn't much in this economy.

 

It is Skyrim, I dont care if I had to attach a nuclear reactor to an 8600M GT it would run or I would wither and die.

Oblivion x 2 with everything improved. Like having homemade cornish ice cream on top of a chocolate cream cake.

....& I digress.

It will run fine on a 6990M btw.

 

Much appreciated guys, I guess ill just have to think out whether the mobility is worth the extra cost. The unit overall will be above 2000. I figured I may as well go all out and get exactly what i want, then skip out on other luxuries for a while to save a bit of that money back. We'll see though.

Appreciate all the thoughts

 

Yeah if you can run Crysis on high settings I don't see a problem running Skyrim...

 

Definately, you have a beast laptop. Will definately run it even at ultra

 

So if the mobile version of the 6990 can run brand new games at ultra, or at least very high settings, what is the point of having a god-like desktop? I understand that you can easily match an expensive laptop with a significantly cheaper desktop, but why go beyond that and build a $2000 desktop?

 

My impression is that Bethesda has said if you can play FO3 on high, you can play Skyrim on high. And any decent gaming laptop can play FO3 on high settings. IMO you are WAY over hyping the requirements for Skyrim... this is Bethesda, not Crytek...

Bethesda games are not very GPU taxing. And just because it's a new game doesn't mean it will be PC crusher. Skyrim is a true cross-platform game. And even Crysis 2 being cross-platform can be run on Ultra settings on laptops now. You are making a huge deal out of this.

Bethesda has been indicating on their official forums that a GTX 460 should be able to max the game. And a HD6990M is faster than a GTX 460. Their recommended requirement is at least a 3 core CPU and 512mb GPU with DX 9.0c support... Recommended is GTX 460 for high settings. Hardly a monster game... Far from it.

 

I think it looks absolutely stunning in the demo vids, and those are damn old too. Would that mean that they just do an excellent job optimizing it? Or maybe my expectations for graphics are just low...

 

Rofl, ok bro. Just because it says M at the end doesn't mean it automatically sucks.

 

You and I disgree. All the demo videos and screenshots far as I know have been from the Xbox 360... If you are stunned by the 360 then you and I disagree on what is stunning graphics. Can't change the core of the engine and core of the Skyrim engine is a console engine. You can like CryTek add some more post processing effects for PC, but that's all they are, post-processing which aren't necessarily better or good. I personally do not like DOF, Blur, Bloom, intense HD:R, or ridiculous sunshafts. Those are not realistic, makes me think I'm playing a movie made with horrible cameras.

But just because a game is console port or DX9 doesn't mean the game can't look great. Skyrim probably will, but it just won't be a PC crusher, which is good for us laptop gamers I think Batman AA has the best graphics of any UE3 game and it looks great and I get 90 FPS average on this machine. That's totally fine by me But do the graphics stun me? No.

On the other hand, CD Projekt managed to make the most PC crushing game with Witcher 2 which is DX9. But then Witcher 2's recommendation for their high settings has been Dual Cross-Fire or SLI GTX 580 or HD6970s...

Bethesda has repeatedly said, high settings with GTX 460. And that is not PC crushing. That's old technology if we are talking about PCs . But then I have old technology so I'm happy that the Skyrim requirements will be laxed.

 

The PC specs will be released next week, but if you are simply looking to run Skyrim on high at 1920x1080, the 6990m is overkill IMO.

There are lots of less expensive laptops available retailing around $1000 - $1500 with excellent mid-range mobile graphics cards like the NVIDIA 560m, 460m, 555m or AMD 5830m, 5850m, 6770m, 6850m, any of which should be able to deliver decent frame rates for Skyrim at 1920x1080.

Can you provide a link? Although I would imagine that is probably true, since most 2010-2011 games can be maxed with a GTX 460 or AMD 5770 at 1920x1080, I don't recall ever seeing any official info from Bethesda about specs other than the fact that they should be released next week.

 

Multiple monitors, 1440p and "true max" i.e maximizing AA and stuff like that.

 

Bethesda games are not very GPU taxing? I played Oblivion when it was first released, on my then-state-of-the-art 7900 GTX, and it just rolled all over my GPU. If the game looks as good as I hope it does, then I'm not sure any mobile GPU is going to be able to keep up with running it at maximum settings at 1920x1080 or greater. Especially with AA on.

EDIT:

Not to mention the ability to actually upgrade stuff when you want to without having to dump the entire machine.

 

Then you will be crying and weeping at game release then...

I predict Witcher 2 will remain as the best looking PC RPG game. Skyrim won't touch it. I've not been impressed by the screenshots or videos released of Skyrim.

 

Gamebryo/Creation is a console-oriented engine, so a PC-targeting engine like the one used in TW2 will obviously triumph.

However, note that most if not all the screenshots released so far are from console ver. of Skyrim. PC version will undoubtedly be much more detailed (more texture / foliage / polygons at max settings vs console).

 

Not only that, Gamebryo is by far and away the worst cross-platform engine out there IMO among main stream games. It performs terrible, it's buggy and it just doesn't look good. Even Source Engine looks better than Gamebryo. And look at all the FO3/FO-Vegas problems with Gamebryo. People replacing dx files etc, it's stupid. I'm not sure why Bethesda continues to use it. Just use UE3 if they insist on using generic cross-platform engines. Why they just didn't use ID Tech 5 is beyond me...

RPG games are known for large open spaces, large areas to explore etc. ID Tech 5 Engine probably does that better than any engine out there right now. That's like it's biggest feature right now. Now all they have to do is fix it so it uses vRAM on PC Gfx properly, that engine is ready to rock for any RPG game I bet and it will run fine and best of all, probably can mod it to run on Linux for the Linux fans

 

The size of Skyrim's worldspace is several multiples larger than the RAGE worldspace.

Instead of a 25GB Steam download, how would you feel about 500GB or perhaps 1TB download in order to install a megatexture file for Skyrim?

And completely unrelated to textures, there are numerous other open world RPG game mechanics going on behind the scenes that the Creation Engine seems to handle perhaps better than any other game engine to date, not to mention the importance of the Creation Kit for the TES modding community.

Personally I'm more interested in features that will greatly enhance replay value such as Radiant Story and the PC taking a larger role conflict between major factions.

As far as the graphics, I expected nothing more than a bit of an improvement from Oblivion and FO3. Judging by the console gameplay footage and screens (and the only two in-game PC screens that have been released Pic1 Pic2 ), Bethesda has already far surpassed my expectations.

If anyone out there was expecting Witcher 2 graphics for a massive open world RPG like this, perhaps Skyrim is not the game for you. Personally I found all the invisible barriers, lack of free exploration, extremely low frame rate and unresponsive controls in Witcher 2 far more problematic than what I have seen so far of Skyrim graphics.

I certainly hope you are correct, as I have been blown away by how well RAGE runs on my laptop and how visually stunning the game looks. Some areas seem to be a sort of artistic dream of what a Fallout game could look like.

However, the compression methods used for the megatexture file still seem to be a hurdle for a using this engine for a massive open world game. I don't think consumers (or publishers) are quite ready to handle games that are hundreds of GB in size.

 

Protip: Don't spend $2k on a notebook if you don't even know from what desktop chip the graphics card comes.

Asking whether a 6990M can run anything on high settings is just silly.

 

Maybe at lower res than 1920x1080 but yeah...

 

You should take his advice.

6990M can play ANY game at 1920*1080 easily with high settings.

There is only ONE game that I can't play at 1080p with high settings on 5870M and that's Witcher 2. 6990M is way faster and with it's 2GB of vRAM, tons more rops etc, it can do what my 5870M can't. I will be playing Skyrim @ 1080p with high settings. I have zero doubts about this. Creation engine, not even apprehensive about it.

 

It does mean that it's going to be some combination of more expensive and/or less powerful than a desktop card.

As mentioned by Moviemarketing, there are other considerations to take note of, too. The Witcher 2 ran like a slug even though it was essentially linear, with tiny amounts of space to move through. Skyrim's going to involve lots of running around truly open-world environments. That's going to add to the strain of the game on our systems.

As an aside:

I'll admit that I was pretty impressed by how The Witcher 2 looked. That is, when it would run. And in the 5-minute periods during which I could play it before it crashed. Or Geralt got stuck doing nothing after I threw a couple of bombs. Or I died because he's apparently not aging very well. %!@#&*ing QC.

 

You definitely need to give it another chance, because the recently released 2.0 patch fixed pretty much everything that was wrong with the game.

 

I will, when I've the time. Arkham City's going to be out in a couple of days, though, and Skyrim in less than a month, so...

See you in 2013, Witcher 2.

 

I think your build is strong enought to go max settings and get minimum of 30fps. If you go check recommended gpu requirement is Radeon 5870. The 6990m's desktop equivalent gpu is an underclocked 6870. So you will probably be fine. I might be wrong since I am no tech wiz.. BTW if your gpu actually is too weak to go max, just crank one or two settings down

 

Arkham City is delayed a month, so go play Witcher 2!

I also wouldn't hold my breath about this huge open world idea. This is the first game in the Oblivion series that has made console first. Skyrim is undoubtedly a console first platform game, and that's going to have some consequences and I expect the huge open world is going to be one of them. Or this is going to be the first console game to have a huge open world you speak of. There is a reason why DA:O, DA2, Witcher 2, ME2 and every other RPG that has been made to be cross-platform doesn't have huge map where you can explore endlessly.

IF... Skyrim pulls it off, then props to them. But I'm not going to hold my breath for it.

 

Arkham City is delayed? Curses!

Well, Morrowind and Oblivion did get developed and released on consoles pretty much simultaneously with their PC releases, and while they did show some of the signs of being console-ish, they weren't really the worse for fear.

I mean, take a look at the crappy UIs that carried over from the console editions. Didn't stop either game from being fantastic.

 

I don't quite follow - are you suggesting that Skyrim might not be an open world game? AFAIK this has been confirmed since January.

 

Not to the extent Oblivion fans expect. I think the whole open world exploration has become a marketing tool. As others have noticed, Rage claimed the same it's not so open world. Same with Borderlands. There are teleports, gates everywhere, and each area is pretty limited. I expect something similar with Skyrim.

These games have become bigger budget and they are targeting a much wider audience now. So I think it's foolish to expect Skyrim to be the same as previous Oblivion games. RPG has become a cool thing to play now with ME2, DA2 successes on consoles. Bethesda knows this and they will capitalize on it. Why completely do something different of what BioWare, CD Projekt and others have been bigger successes than their games? Bethesda is still a company that has to answer to investors.
- Seems to me Bethesda has been spending more of their resources to voice acting and making the AI in the game more interactive than anything else.

I could be wrong. But I no longer have faith in AAA games from AAA developers to produce what they claim, other than Batman AC (which is supposed to be just a ruckus action game anyhow )

 

As others have said you should have no problem running Skyrim or any other game you want This made me laugh though because of how much struggling I had to do ocing my 8600m Gt in my old laptop to play Battlefield Bad Company 2

 

Morrowind and Oblivion were both console games, and they both were open world. I'm not at all sure what you're talking about. One of the hallmarks of the Elder Scrolls games is that the world is huge.

 

I humbly disagree. I think you're going to be in for a surprise because Bethesda has done nothing but set the standard for me for the last 10 years and I find hard to believe they will drop the ball. Rage was mainly an id game, the guys who made Quake and Doom. Rage was also an FPS shooter...not a FPS RPG like ES/FO/etc. so it's impossible to imagine an open world, despite what people may have claimed.

 

It's hard to match up vague categorical settings like "ultra" and "high" to how a game looks and how much power each of those settings will require, especially before it's released.

You'll definitely be able to run Skyrim and make it look good. It's possible that the ultra quality settings will have massive compromises to performance for little image quality benefit. Maybe there will be a "very high" setting in between. Maybe ultra settings will add some graphics options that are targeted for crossfire setups only. "High" and "Ultra" are just names. They don't mean much.

 

Also @ the OP - Yes you'll be fine. Bethesda isn't widely known to be a company that pushes the envelope when it comes to computing power...that would be Projekt Red ;D

 

Thanks a lot for all the responses guys. When i made the thread I was actually still working on the build for the notebook. I just wanted to double check people's opinions on the matter as im practically buying the notebook to play Skyrim on.

Ive since ordered and it should be arriving in a couple weeks

I may need to subsist on bread and water for a few months/years however...

 

Which laptop did you end up ordering?

A couple of jars of Nutella and Vegemite can help with that.