Abstract: Seismic wavefield numerical simulation based on the staggered grids is widely used in seismic forward at present, there will be some differences in efficiency and accuracy by using different order difference scheme to simulate. In order to compare these differences, four kinds of difference formulas and coefficients of 4 order temporal and 2N order spatial of elastic wave equation are deduced, and the stability conditions of high order staggered grid under different difference schemes are calculated. The elastic wave field is simulated by using the four difference formulas and coefficients, and the results of wave field snapshot, synthetic seismogram and CPU time are compared and analyzed. The results shows that the staggered grid with accuracy of 4 order temporal and 6+6 orders spatial has high calculation precision and computational efficiency in numerical simulation of seismic wave field.