Choosing a Video Card for Skyrim

Find the best Graphics Card for Elder Scrolls V

For you PC guys, graphic cards are a major component and partly responsible for a complete gaming experience. It is not fun to lag out when too many enemies are on the screen nor is it likable when a dragon swoops out of the sky and your character freezes on queue. Luckily, we are here to help you choose the right video card for your system and budget. But more importantly, to get your Skyrim benchmarks off the charts.

Nvidia Top Line Skyrim Video Card

GTX 580- If price is not an option and you have a compatible motherboard, slap this baby in and watch Skyrim fly. This is the big daddy. It will require a free PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, but will reward you with 772MHz core clock, 1544MHz shader clock and 512 Processor Cores– yikes! This puppy carries 1536MB GDDR5 memory in a 384-bit interface. With the support of DirectX 11 and a max resolution of 2560 x 1600 this should handle Skyrim without flaw. For you deep pocket gamers, dare I mention it is SLI Ready?

Technical specs aside, this video card will blast through any game on the market…period!

Nvidia Mid Line Skyrim Video Card

GTX 465- This card, while not as fast as the GTX 580, will handle Skyrim nicely. It is packed with an average core clock of 607MHz and shader clock of 1215MHz. The best feature of this card is price. Much cheaper than its counterpart, this is the best value card on the market for a price-to-value ratio.

Radeon Top Line Skyrim Video Card

Radeon HD 6970- With a different chipset maker (AMD), these cards can also run at extremely high levels. With a core clock coming in at 880MHz and 1536 Stream Processing Units, this card will eatup Skyrim. Just like the GTX cards you will need a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot open to support this card. This card also supports CrossFire X (linking multiple cards). The price is respectable and in the $325-$350 price range.

Radeon Mid Line Skyrim Video Card

Radeon HD 6850- With just a small fraction of points better on benchmark runs than the GTX 465, this card will handle Skyrim similar. The drawback on this card is its price is upwards of $40 more than the GTX 465 and coming in at around $170. The trade off however is that it will still pack Core Clock of 775MHz and equipped with 960 Stream Processing Units. For the Radeon supporters, this is your mid-range card.

When it comes to choosing the brand stick to the reputable companies such as Asus, EVGA, MSI and Gigabyte although Galaxy has been getting some good new reviews lately. I am biased Nvidia chipset, however Radeon still produces some nice cards.

Skyrim Benchmark Comparability

For a list of current benchmarks go here:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html