What Skyrim uses more?

[roohx]

I'm a bored player, I like to install various followers and put them to fight against various NPCs just for fun. The problem is my PC is not that strong, I have a lot of lag and freezing doing that. 
I already tried all the optimizations possible(I guess), but I accept, I need to upgrade my hardware and I want a place to start. 

So, what Skyrim uses more, videocard, processor or ram? 

[Frankfranky]

Well you want all 3. Ideally you want 16gb of ram, an i7 5series or later processor and at least a 1070 GPU. Then you will be able to make Skyrim dance to your tune. How much of that is in your budget? Obviously RAM is the cheapest place to start, and if you have less than 16GB now, you will see an immediate improvement, not just in Skyrim, but in everything you use your PC for. After that ... untill you have have GPU with enough VRAM, you are really pushing it uphill with Skyrim....

 

tldr you want all 3. I would prob upgrade RAM > GPU > CPU. Do you have a sister you can sell?

[Nazzzgul666]

I'd rather put it the other way around, CPU->RAM->GPU. Depends a bit on what mods you want to use, i'm totally fine without ENB and high texture overhauls but want to play scripted quest mods. Either way, even vanilla Skyrim is qute CPU heavy. RAM is cheaper than new GPU and while not as perfomant as VRAM for graphics, it can help. 

[roohx]

I have 8gb of ram, buy more 8gb is not a big problem. I was thinking to buy a 1060 6gb, the problem is my processor(Phenom II x4). Some friends told me that processor will show some ''freezes'' with that video card. So, maybe I have to buy a new MOBO and the processor first. It will be expensive, lol. 
Anyway, now I have some parameters. Thanks, guys!

[sila]

4 minutes ago, roohx said:

I have 8gb of ram, buy more 8gb is not a big problem. I was thinking to buy a 1060 6gb, the problem is my processor(Phenom II x4). Some friends told me that processor will show some ''freezes'' with that video card. So, maybe I have to buy a new MOBO and the processor first. It will be expensive, lol. 
Anyway, now I have some parameters. Thanks, guys!

I would agree with Nazzgul. Upgrade cpu first, depending on your budget the ryzen series are quite nice. Or if you can go for an i5 8400 those are even better but cost a bit more (mainly because they are always out of stock atm and cheaper mb are not available).

Keep in mind if you do upgrade processor you will most likely be needing a new motherboard as well.

 

The processor will limit your options for script heavy mods, if you don't really use m any of those you could go for the gpu first, which would let you run some hd textures and maybe some enb (1060 6gb is easily strong enough to run high end enbs, but paired witha  weaker cpu it might not run very well).

[27X]

CPU might make better sense for every game but for gambryo specifically the bottleneck is memory speed and the amount of bandwidth your mobo allocates to that memory. Because of bethbryo's allocation scheme even scripts are affected by how fast this stuff can be loaded and unloaded while in active memory.

 

As an example going from a 980 to a 1080 will net you about +30%@ 1080 and much more consistent frames once the game is fully loaded into a cell, going from 1600 to say 4200 memory will net you DOUBLE the framerate sight unseen, and even going from 1600 to 2000 will net you 20-25%, and the faster your memory is, the larger the gap in an almost straight incline, and any changes to resolution have no effect on this until you get to 8K resolution.

 

The next bottleneck after that is storage bandwidth.

 

CPU is the better choice because of gaming in general, but the biggest gap in performance for beth games has been memory speed since Oblivion, and as long as they use the current engine and state loading scheme, it will continue to be.

[SassaAria]

57 minutes ago, 27X said:

C but for gambryo specifically the bottleneck is memory speed and the amount of bandwidth your mobo allocates to that memory. Because of bethbryo's allocation scheme even scripts are affected by how fast this stuff can be loaded and unloaded while in active memory.

 

Was going to update from 3000mhz to 3600, cos gain looked pretty good, like 20%.

But memory prices went silly since i bought in march of this year.

Up to now, wasn't sure if it would impact Skyrim game too.  Sounds like it does for sure.  Thanks for confirming.