Ahoy!

Recently I decided to get Skyrim for PC as it was 50% on Steam even though I already have it and completed it on Xbox, because I fancied adding mods as I did to my lovely Oblivion.

Anywho, enthralled with excitement, I failed to think 'Would it work well?' it was in the back of my mind, well in the end I managed to get 10 fps whilst running. I assumed it was some settings that were affecting my game as my brother had recently bought this Gaming PC. It was a build, Galaxy 3 body with a Cyborg Gaming Keyboard, R.A.T. 3 mouse and a HP 2311x monitor. These are the specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Intel Core i5-2380P CPU @ 3.10Ghz, 3401 Mhz 4 Core

ATI Radeon HD 5400

1Terrabyte Disk Drive

8 GB RAM

It runs most of my usual games, Team Fortress 2, Garrys Mod, Mount & Blade: Warband etc well as expected since they aren't really 'graphic heavy' games and focus more on the simplicity and gameplay, rather than beauty.

Anyway, to the point, I was told on the Nexus forums that my graphics card was holding me back, the HD 5400 series is apparently out of date compared to the 6000 and 7000 series being produced. But I didn't like the idea of having to pay an arm and a leg for a £100-200 graphics card when the PC with all this together was about £400-600, as well as money being tight at the moment. So after hours of searching for graphics cards, almost frying my brain, I picked out a few but in the reviews it's all 'expert jargon' speaking of '2.1 hubs connected to the 30.5 Ghz 0203io53 cisco kelskf 020202 system' which isn't helpful to someone who just wants to play a fantasy game without interruption or lag.

So which of these is the best to be able to run Skyrim on Ultra detail or just High detail?

GeForce GTX 650 1024MB GDDR5 - $104.99

GIGABYTE GV-R677D5-1GD Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 - $89.99

MSI AMD Radeon HD 7770 1024MB GDDR5 - £86.99

MSI AMD Radeon HD 7750 2048MB GDDR3 - £69.98

SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY Radeon HD 7770 - 1 GB GDDR5 - £80

Or any you reccomend that aren't there? I want to get a graphics card that goes 'above and beyond' preferably so I won't have to update it anytime soon + when the PC gets older, it won't just fail on me.

Thanks guys!

It is better to have a Mac ;) apart from that, it seems to me that your specs are fine (although I always ask my high school students about such a things ;)) All parts of the computer add up of course, so the speed of your harddrive, the ammount of memory, the i5 or i7 technology, etc. A graphics drive is important, but not always the most important thing, even with games.

I think you should also look at your power supply and calculate if you have enough power to support the power requirements of those graphic cards.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:System_Requirements Maybe something in the 7770 range.

This is a subject I actually have experience in. I have build a total of 9 computers and I have a gaming notebook along with a gaming computer right now.

Depending on your resolution and how many monitors you have depends on what card you will need. You are likely to have a 720p or 1080p monitor as you want to play skyrim at ultra/high. Any GDDR3 cards are out of the question. Out of the list I'd go for the GeForce GTX 650 1024MB GDDR5. Also check out systemrequirementslab, pretty sick website which helps you find out what your system needs for software/games.

Also if you have any huge problems with fps you might want to consider disabling shadow effects, antialiasing effects etc. Those drain alot of graphics memory on many different games.

Hope it works out for ya man.