Hi all,

First post here, I basically registered here to get help. I'm sorry this is going to be a long post, but I am putting in quite a lot of information because I am desperate.

Skyrim is pretty much my all-time favorite game. I finished the game with my old rig and had zero issues, other than the poor FPS:

ASUS P5N-E
Intel Core2Duo e8500
4GB Kingston value RAM (4 x 1gb)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB

I am so in love with the game that I wanted to restart it with a different character, with an updated rig. I spent about 1K at boxing day and ended up with:

ASUS P8Z77-V Pro
Intel Core i7 3770K Unlocked
16GB Kingston HyperX Blue RAM (2 x 8gb)
MSI 670GTX OC Power Edition 2GB @ 1079 Mhz
OCZ Vector 256gb

Needless to say, I can run skyrim in ultra preset at very high FPS (sometimes above 150). I also played around with vsync and I prefer the smoother, more stable 60 FPS.

The issue:

I will be roaming around and all of a sudden, the screen stutters for a second. It may not sound like much for some people, but it's definitely disruptive for me and I almost felt like I had more fun with my old rig. It happens quite often, way too often, it disrupts everything I do, especially while fighting, and I just feel like I want to quit on this game now.

What then happens is that as I install mods, an ENB, or other goodies, the stuttering worsens, and ends up crashing to desktop.

It will happen randomly, every few seconds. It will happen in both first and 3rd person view.

Was running it on my fresh Win7 64-bit install, but I had installed a lot of new software such as Virtu MVP LucidLogix, MSI Afterburner (to OC the videocard), all of ASUS' software suite, had TPU on (auto. OC of the CPU), and a few of my trust Skyrim mods.

I have a video of the stuttering but the forum won't let me post links

Here's what I tried to narrow things down:

- I disabled all my Skyrim mods, same thing
- I ran BOSS, same thing
- I disabled Virtu MVP, same thing
- I uninstalled Virtu MVP, same thing
- Disabled TPU (switch on mobo set to off), same thing
- I tried with and without vsync, same thing
- I disable HT in bios, same thing
- Tried a mod on the Skyrim Nexus to fix the stuttering, same thing
- I made sure my nVidia drivers were up-to-date, same thing
- I did a clean uninstall of the drivers and installed the nVidia beta drivers, same thing
- Tried with and without mouse accel, same thing
- Ran DXSETUP, same thing

SO...

I said "fine, I'll try on a fresh Win7 with a fresh copy of Skyrim, with NO mods, and no other software.

And it went on:

- I took my previous SSD (OCZ Vertex 2 128gb) and installed Windows 7 again
- I installed the latest nVidia drivers
- I installed the basics for the motherboard
- I installed Steam and Skyrim vanilla, no mods
- Set graphics at Ultra

SAME THING.

What's worse? I was starting to think it might be my video card. I swapped it out for my old ATI card on that fresh Win7 install...

Guess what?

SAME FRIGGIN STUTTERING.

I think the only thing I didn't try is updating the BIOS, and perhaps also starting a brand new save game.

I mean I Googled it to death, read so many forums. I'm at the point where I feel I did more than my part, and Bethesda should take a look at what's going on because it's not me, nor my hardware. All my other games run GODLY at ultra (BF3, Far Cry 3, Borderlands 2, etc...).

Thoughts? Questions? Need more info?

Please chime in and help a desperate adventurer put the fun back into this game

It looks like you've ruled out hardware and driver issues. You mentioned that you haven't tried starting a new save game, that's what you should do. Start a fresh game and see what happens. At least it would be another thing you could rule out if your saves aren't causing the problem.

It seems like the only other hardware-related possibility could be your processor. Did you give it a try with your old processor to see if that fixed the problem?

Also, does your computer have any errors in any other programs? Or does everything run perfectly EXCEPT Skyrim? Try out other games and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, then it looks like Skyrim itself is the culprit.