Todd Howard: "The world that you see, you have all this art. But then there is another version of the world, a more simplistic version than the Artificial Intelligence in the game, the AI that the characters use to maneuver. So there are actually two worlds, one that is drawn, and one used for collision and navigation, "I am an artificial intelligence, where can I actually walk?" Because the resolution of what is being drawn on screen is so complicated, that if the AI had to look at that it would be too slow. So we actually have a whole other version of the world running as well. We did it in Fallout 3 as well. Oblivion didn't do it to the extent we did in Fallout and Skyrim. Skyrim does it the most because the world is so much more bigger than Fallout"

From here: http://www.fastcompany.com/1794290/skyrim-todd-howard-elder-scrolls-bethesda

Must be adding to CPU load (along with shadows, etc.) And may help to explain the FPS slowdowns/lag/game freezing...

Interesting. Nice to know regardless that it may not help directly in making the game playable for us having issues.
I still do not understand how everyone is having so many issues with the CPU being pushed hard, i am running everything on High settings including shadows and i am only using roughly 38% of my CPU, I only have a I3 Mobile as well.

I'm going to say no. Are you suggesting that it's "calculating two versions of the world" that's slowing it down? Because as that quote explains, the entire point of having them both is that it would take immensely more CPU if the high-detail version were also being used by the AI instead of them having a separate, simpler version. This is the reason current computers CAN calculate it, not some extra thing they're being asked to deal with. Reread the quote.

Also this is true of the game at all times, so it wouldn't do a single thing to explain sudden slowing down or freezing. If it were somehow making the game slower instead of faster, it would just always be slow. This effects the base speed of the game, not weird cases where something specific has changed your speed from what it was earlier.

There are two problems with this theory.

1) the CPU isnt being fully utilized
2) the GPU isn't being fully utilized either


It seems to me that if the CPU was bottlenecking then there might be a reason why the GPU was underperformaning. But if neither is, then it's clear that Bethesda designed the game for Xbox hardware (shared gpu and cpu memory) and that is what makes it run crappily on high end systems with discrete components.

I have an AMD 6950. My FPS was shocking on Ultra like a slide show plus a couple of crashes

I turn AA off and checked the FXAA box in the advance menu, now the game run really well.