I'm having trouble with Skyrim and I have already tried to turn my audio down to 24 bit and 16 bit 44100Hz without success. I have also turned off AA and Anisotropic filtering.
At the main menu the dragon logo is purple, and if I select New Game - I make it through the cart scene up to the first execuation. At that point the woman and the imperial both have purple faces and before they execute the first prisoner the game freezes.

System specs are:
Operating System: Windows 2.6.1.7601 (Service Pack 1)
CPU Type: Intel? Core? i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz
CPU Speed: 3.12 GHz
System Memory: 3.98 GB
Video Card Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
Video Card Memory: 10.5 GB
Video Card Driver: nvd3dum.dll
Desktop Resolution: 1680x1050
Hard Disk Size: 465.66 GB
Hard Disk Free Space: 423.54 GB (91%)
Download Speed: 1.07 MB/s (8.9 mbps)

Additional Video Card info:
Display adapter type: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
Total available graphics memory 2807 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 1024 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1783 MB
Display adapter driver version 8.17.12.8562
Primary monitor resolution 1680x1050
DirectX version DirectX 10

The only thing I can think of is that nVIDIA has a brand new (Beta) graphics driver that supposedly takes this game into account. Why not try that? (No, I don't know its ID, I've given up on Geforces for now because of drivers).