Hey everyone,

I'm having pretty bad graphics issues with Skyrim on PC. There is severe graphics "tearing" on a lot of objects and characters. It comes up randomly and usually I can get rid of it by closing the game and restarting it. It always comes back up though, and I already have my CPU overclocked. Is this an issue with my graphics card (it's a little old) or CPU/memory? I am getting a new quad core CPU and 4 GB of memory and I am hoping that those will take care of these issues.

I have attached screenshots of the issues I am seeing. The third screenshot is a crazy discoloration problem that I see every once in a while.

http://i.imgur.com/XiGuR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0n7VQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NhWIn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/RQfI6.jpg

Thanks for any help.

Computer specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Dual Core - 2.6 GHZ (overclocked)
2GB RAM
NVIDIA 7900 GTX 512 MB Memory

That looks like GPU artifacting, which happens when your graphics card overheats. Could you check your GPU's temperatures while playing? (Install a tool like CPU-Z, which will report your GPU temps.)

It is running between 55C and 60C according to CPU-Z... which I understand to not be high enough for the GPU to overheat.. unless I'm wrong?

No, those are fine temperatures.
You only see this issue when the card is either underpowered (Which is a power supply problem), overheating, or the drivers you've got installed are bad/need to be updated.

So, since it's not overheating, try downloading the latest available drivers for your graphics card.

EDIT: I meant the HWMonitor program that the CPUID company provides, not CPU-Z, but you seem to have figured that out. Sorry!

I think you may be asking too much of your GPU. Have you tried backing down on the video settings in the game? What OS are you using? And, as Datashocker noted, be sure you have the latest GPU drivers for that card.

Hey thanks for the help guys.

All of my video settings are on low except for antialiasing which I have on 4 samples to help with... this problem

My video driver is up to date and I am running windows 7 64 bit. I am thinking about actually rolling back my video driver, I have read that since this card is a little old the new drivers will not work well with it. I will do that and see if there is improvement.

Honestly, I think it may be the necessary time to just update my gpu... think my top-tier 2006 gaming rig is not cutting it any more can anyone recommend a good $100-150 graphics card?

Thanks again

I've seen others reporting similar graphics issues that seemed to have pretty good rigs. The NVIDIA 7900 GTX 512 MB meets the minimum requirements also, although the OP doesn't list what settings they are playing the game on. It could be too much for the GPU to handle. Still, I've seen those bizarre graphics glitches in situations that weren't related to power issues (a 1500W power supply is more than enough) or overheating (liquid cooling + bay slot air conditioning). I think updated drivers are the most likely to help, and ensuring the game's graphics settings are not too high for that GPU. The RAM seems a bit low though for that system. Windows isn't going to be leaving much for apps, but then I don't think that would be causing the OP's present issue.

/bump

after seeing the minimum requirements for hardware, I've realized that although my graphics card is towards the bottom of the list, it should still be able to play the game on the low settings. Could this be caused by a bad GPU or does it really just not have enough processing power?