So since Day 1 I've had ongoing issues when playing in fullscreen mode, the game will just crash my whole computer and I'll have to hold down the power button to turn it off and back on again. My screen displays what was last on screen but no music loops (the sound stops totally), nothing responds (the keyboard lights no longer light up etc) and there is no hard drive activity, no black screen of death as many people report, the whole system just dies, even the optical sensor on my mouse powers down. The issue seems to occur anywhere but it has a SIGNIFICANTLY higher chance of occuring during the character creation screen and scene after that at the start, when in combat inside Whiterun and around the areas around Riften, as well as when inside interiors (although caves seem fine).

Going through these hotspots when playing in Windowed mode produced no problem, however with every loading screen the game displayed "Not Responding" when loading and at one point my game speed sped up randomly forcing me to quit and reload the game.

I'm playing on Ultra settings @ 1920x1080 with x4 AA, changing the graphical settings/resolution makes no difference. This issue also occurs on a "vanilla" install (no mods/tweaks to the .ini files).

Specs:

MSI Twin FrozR III R6950 2GB Power Edition/OC (850MHz core/1300MHz memory)
4GB DDR3 (1.5V)
Intel Core i5 750 @ 4GHz (1.36V)
ASUS P7P55D-E motherboard
1TB Samsung HDD (SATAII)

CPU usage is never above 60% (highest I've seen it spike to was 100%) and GPU usage was not going past 70% usage in the affected areas.

Every other game I run is fine, I can play them all at max settings and they never run into any problems. Furmark/Intel Burn Test/Prime95 are all ok too, CPU temp never goes over 72C and GPU never passes 66C. Everything is stable in any other game, it's just Skyrim which causes these crashes.

Any advice? I love the game but these crashes are highly annoying and potentially hardware damaging if I have to keep manually powering down my PC via the power button.

Anybody?

Are you running the 11.11c drivers?

Also, did you apply the community LAA patch? The official one that came out last week conflicts with that.

I was using that patch until the official update, then I stopped using it. Although these problems were occuring on the day of release without any 3rd party mods/executables. I tried the 11.11c drivers but for some reason they made my performance worse in a few other games I play, so I rolled back to 11.10.

Another strange thing is that Windows lists my card as my old HD 5770 regardless of driver version I use, the Skyrim launcher also detects it as a 5770.

I also tried the community mod which allows the game to be played in a fullscreen window, the crash still occured here (as soon as I got into combat in Riften). Getting into combat has a high chance of triggering the crash the moment an attack is hit.

Should note that the 6950 I bought is pre-overclocked, 50MHz extra on the core and a slight bump in the memory too, could Skyrim dislike this when no other games do?

We have seen game performance go down with some overclocks, so try that. The game will see any flaw in your system, exploit it, then dance and caper on the smoking remains your system.

Also, the ATI drivers that were around for the first month of the game and prior really svcked for this game. People had no end of issues prior to 11.11c

Have you tried Skyboost? Also, if you have the ENB Series fix that came out, try removing that as it is no longer needed post 1.3. However, some have still needed to use this if they do not have enough memory on their video cards. But, you do have enough, so it may not help.

Yes, it can. The engine has always been sensitive to GPUs running near their absolute max.

Regarding the 5770, did you move the old INI file out and force the Launcher to create a new one for the new card, and when installing the new card's drivers, did you use a Driver Cleaner of any kind to remove all traces of the old driver?

I have the same GPU and system as per my sig and I have had no issues at all since day 1 (started playing on LAA patch 1.3.10) - I'm on the 11.11 drivers if I remember correctly (waiting for the official 11.12 ones before jumping ship since I have zero problems).

Yeah I used the latest version of driver sweeper to remove the old ATI drivers when switching to the 6950, and the 6950 was installed before Skyrim was released. Every application and windows still reads my display device as a 5770 except for CCC and System information and GPU-Z.

Guess I should try and lower the 6950 to stock levels, but I've read that tools such as MSI Afterburner can cause problems with Skyrim, or can I just set the clock speeds then close it and they will stick? Will also try 12.1a preview driver and see what happens then.

I'm also using Skyboost although just recently, it has occured with and without it although I have noticed a small increase in fps when using it which shows that it is working.

I've only got one possibility left. Some software interference is happening. You need offline mode from Steam, and get off the 'Net and run as absolutely clean of a clean boot environment as possible to eliminate software from the equation and see what happens.

I would still see this as a driver fail.

Steps to take...Uninstall drivers for your GPU.

DO not install another driver, until Windows, and every piece of software (for a truly stubborn one i would uninstall said software) says you have a "Generic VGA display driver". Make sure windows is set to NOT install drivers with Windows update. Make sure you wipe with driver cleaner in Safe mode.

Once you can reboot twice, and Still see "Generic VGA driver" then you can install a Driver. Yes, this can be a real pain , but BOTH ATI & Nvidia are crap at cleaning up after them-selfs. Your Registry has leftovers.

Hope this helps with the house cleaning.....

Side question should I be using 11.11c or the 12.1 preview for my 6970? It is not overclocked.

Update: Haven't got around to installing the new drivers yet as I was playing some Saints Row: The Third where for the first time the same issue occured, so it looks like it's not just Skyrim triggering it now.

Also when I first installed the 6950 after I removed everything with Driver Sweeper it reported a Generic VGA display driver before I installed the new ones, but I'll try it again and see what happens.

My system responds the same however all of my hardware is set to stock speeds. GPU 57% usage tops and CPU about 65-75% maybe a little more but nowhere near 100%.

Try disabling the Steam Overlay (right-click on the game in your library, the option should be in the main tab of your popup menu).

That didn't eliminate hard-locks for me, but it reduced them.

Not to thread jack but intended to contribute.....

I have a very similar situation with the OP though Nvidia card here. New system with 80 gold cert power supply too. Things I have tried include clean drivers using driver sweeper and all variations of settings. No matter what driver version or setting i get the same freeze with sound buzz on full screen 1080(if there was sound playing) and screen is viewing the last frame.

I have always suspected the video card even though it test ok in other benchmarks. I've also starting to suspect the on-board realtek sound. I haven't gotten a chance to use a separate board, but I do wonder what the OP is using. I plan on full sweep of the realtek drivers and try the audigy I am picking up from a friend tomorrow. Too bad you can't play skyrim without a sound card enabled, so I could troubleshoot better. Any other thoughts?

I have also tried offline steam, skyboost and under-clocking the card...

Run stress tests like 3Dmark11, Heaven DX11, Memtest86, Prime95, Linx. From what I've gathered and after fixing my own crashes these crashes are due to instability. Whether it be your component configurations or drivers, its due to instability. Especially if you are overclocking.

Update: Latest ATI/AMD preview driver (12.1a) and i'm still getting the crashes, even in windowed mode too. Something must be unstable but all stress tests such as Prime95/Intel Burn Test/MSI Kombustor/Memtest all pass with no problems.

I'm at a loss on what to do next except for a format and re-install of the OS, although i doubt that would help if my hardware is unstable. Guess the next step is to lower my GPU clock/GPU mem clock via MSI Afterburner although I've heard this application can cause problems with Skyrim as well...

Although I haven't read of that vector for problems, you may want to consider ATI Tray Tools as a utility with which to lower the clock settings on a Radeon. I like the fact you can put both the GPU temps and the FPS speed on screen in the game using Tray Tools.

How's your power supply?

http://www.ocztechnology.com/resources/drivers/600wchart.JPG

Bingo!!
If thats the Specs for your power supply its not enough. I looked up your OC card, is pretty hungry for Power..@ idle it can consume 20 amps. At full load its more like 31 amps.
Your power supply has 4 rails , yes but none of the rails can power that card at Idle!!
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/MSI_R6950_Twin_Frozr_III/18.html
TO get the Amps we divide the total watts by the voltage..IE
Idle = 243 watts
power = 12 Volts
_________
20.25 amps
see post below..
Hope this helps...

2 of the 12V rails are used to power PCI-E devices, which I believe should be fine if not close to the limit. If there was not enough power, wouldn't I have ran into issues when running MSI Kombustor with the power draw limiter disabled?

Also, quoting that source:

To measure power usage, a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter was used. Note that the numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves.

Just the card measured:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_6950_Twin_Frozr_III/21.html

Your right ..my bad .. the new max would only be 15 amps..so not a problem..thought that was weird it was drawing that much but some cards do .

Again sorry for the miss info. but the math is still right..just used wrong numbers. Peak draw is 189\12=15.75

@ OP how stable IS that overclock on your CPU? have you tried using the stock clock? to keep that overclock have you bumped the volt for the CPU??

Intel Core i5 750 @ 4GHz (1.36V)<
Give this a read..http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-750-overclock,2438-6.html

This is my current CPU-Z:

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7707/cpuhl.jpg

1.36V isn't stock (I can't even remember what the stock value was).

I'll fire up the stress tests again overnight and see how they do. I've managed to play other games in the past which were really hammering the CPU, for example Dragon Age: Origins had 99% CPU usage or something silly and never ran into any problems apart from the CTDs which plagued that game on Win7 64bit. My temps with the overclock are a bit high but nothing serious.

This is looking like it....what im reading(refreshing my mind to do my own overclock) most people run 1.37 volt to just get to 3.8 ghz...and need to do 1.4 to get 4.0 ghz stable...

.is this on AIR? or are you water cooled? If air I would back down...