I am planning on buying a new processor next week, core 2 duo.
My motherboard is: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/G31TM-P31.html
I know it's LGA775 and core 2 duo will fit on it.
But the GPU is the problemo.
I have a ddr2 Sparkle Geforce 8400GS 512MB on my MOBO.
Will a ddr3/Gddr2/ETC. GPU fit my MOBO?
If none, can you suggest a video card powerful enough to run skyrim on medium/low.

Thanks.

Yes a DDR2 will fit, they all use PCI-E (atleast the new ones do) and that's not that fast tbh, you can get a gtx 560 ti for ~100$ and that will play most new games on high.

It does not appear your MB has a PCIe-2 port. As such, it probably cannot support a GPU capable of playing Skyrim properly.

PCI-E alone won't properly cut it for a 560 Ti, or even a 260. An 8400 may be able to play Skyrim, but it will not be remarkable, especially given where it is in its generation.

Shit, didn't look at his mobo lol. A PCI-E x16 slot should be ok for a 560, it won't be as fast but it'll still run shit. PCIe-2 is backwards compatible, it should be alright for running something basic like Skyrim. It'll still be a lot faster than a 8400 =P

not a good idea to get a gtx series card in something that the bottlenecks are the ram and cpu, he would probably get just as much performance out of a gt 440 or something that's a lot cheaper.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814500191

and yes it can run skyrim

games don't just run directly on the videocard, they utilize your hard drive, ram, cpu, gpu and sound card (yes believe it or not the sound card does effect performance because it takes processing power from your cpu, unless you have a good motherboard with a good built in sound processor)

that kind of performance hit can account for 15+ fps off of what a system that can run a game adequately with the same videocard would get.

Is there any GPU capable of playing games at high that would fit my motherboard?
edit: How about 9600GT?

Whoa organ, that's a nice GPU.
I'll try to buy that.
Thanks

edit:
I currently have:
2GB RAM
PENTIUM 4 2.66 GHZ
Sparkle Geforce 8400GS

I run Skyrim at the lowest setting and it was at 10FPS.
But if I buy an Intel Core 2 DUO and the GPU you mentioned above, what do you think will the FPS increase be?

I'd imagine you could get at least 40 fps on lowest, if not 40 fps on medium/reasonable settings.

Don't trust my estimation though, but it should be a very significant jump.

Albeit, for Skyrim, you will almost certainly want to up to 4GB RAM at the same time.

Yeah, it'd be a big performance jump. Skyrim isn't that graphics heavy more CPU heavy I've noticed. Since you're running a P4 the CPU upgrade should lend you a lot more power, leading to a higher FPS rate =P

ok, anything new on a single core processor is going to run slow, that's a given but the best upgrade he can make is still a gpu upgrade, then a memory upgrade, then a cpu upgrade. rating by biggest gaming improvement first. cpu's aren't as detrimental to gaming as a graphics card is and if you have a low amount of memory (2gb or less these days) that will impact texture loading and have other issues.

however it's not a bad idea either way if he's going to upgrade both the cpu AND gpu, it doesn't matter which one he upgrades because it's going towards a target and not a "which will give me better performance"

the cpu and ram would be a big upgrade for windows performance, program loading times, texture loading times, overall increased loading times and processing times but as far as graphics go his maximum fps wont increase very much.