Hey guys, I'm trying to improve my FPS. The majority of the time I am getting over 60fps, though when exploring Riften my FPS can go as low as the mid 40's.

My specs are:
ATI Radeon 7950 3GB
i5 2550k 3.4GHz
12GB RAM
1920x1080
Windows 7 64-bit
750w PSU
Latest ATI drivers (12.8 I believe?)

I'm quite frustrated because I'm using a mix of both Medium and High settings, surely I should be getting higher FPS?

Anti-Aliasing is completely disabled, shadows are on medium, object (etc) distance is 1/3 way through the slider.

I'd appreciate all the advice I could get. It's literally been almost a year and I've barely played this game. I've already upgraded my PC once before.

This strange, I would have thought you could have had 60FPS with AA at 4x at least and everything on ultra with the GFX card/RAM/CPU you have.

Have you tried an FPS limiter? that stopped all the fluctuations for me

I limit my frame-rate to 64fps. This way I don't get any of the bugs associated with having an uncapped frame-rate, but I don't get screen tearing either.

what's your monitors refresh rate 60? if so limit it to 60 and see if that's any better

Already tried multiple different frame-rate caps, to no avail. Any tips on improving FPS? Capping it wouldn't necessarily help it, would it?

I used to have varying FPS from 45 to 25. I capped it off at 35FPS and I didn't get any stutters or FPS drops.

Can you please provide us with some screenshots (with fraps showing the fps) of some of the locations where you're not getting 60fps. That way we can go in and look at the exact location where you're having trouble.

I'll post my specs, results and video settings when you do. Hopefully we'll be able to see if there's something else at play here.