I haven't played Skyrim for the PC for quite some time. Lately when I start the game it runs perfectly, at least for the first 5 minutes at about 60-70 fps. However, once I have played beyond 5 minutes my fps drops down to about 15-20. It happens pretty much anywhere from dungeons, towns, cities, to the open world. It's quite annoying and I have nothing major running in the background. I play on a gaming rig that can support Crysis on very high settings with no drop in fps. Here are my specs.

iBuyPower
5.4 Windows Experience Index
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ 3.00 GHz
4.00 GB
64-bit Operating System
NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT

I have never had any problems like this on other games that have much better and detailed graphics. Does anyone know what is going on?

What are your thermal monitors recording when this is happening?

I don't quite follow. Sorry, I know some extent to the properties of a computer, however I have no knowledge of a thermal monitor recording.

Computers can get dirty, cooling fans can fail, hardware can be poor quality, and unable to cool itself properly. So you obtain and install something to make sure such bad things are known of before they cause damage. Major Geeks has a good collection of useful programs of that type.

^^ This. Whenever performance degrades over a short period of time in a game you can be sure there's a heat problem somewhere. Personally I like nVidia inspector but as mentioned above, there are many tools to check this. Also, with a card that is already a few years old the odds are good that it needs to have its thermal paste cleaned off and redone. The same holds true for the CPU. However, unless you know what you're doing I suggest getting a techie to assist.

I was going to suggest an overheating condition as well. It could be something else, but since I don't know what, that is something I would check first.

I removed the clear panel on the side of my computer and checked the inside and made sure there were no signs of dust or anything strange. It's as clean as a brand new car. I put in Crysis today and was playing just fine on very high settings with 65 fps. I later put Skyrim in and ran into the same problem again. I doubt it's an issue with my computer. I took the time to google the problem and found that LOTS of people with gaming rigs far better then mine using DX11 and such have been having the same fps drop as mine. Could it be a problem with the game possibly a bug?

You need to monitor your cpu and gpu temperatures. While overheating is not guaranteed to be the cause of the problem, the others are right in this thread in looking at cooling first, IMHO. If nothing else, this needs to be looked at before digging for more obscure causes...the likelyhood that this is a game bug is low given your description.

RealTemp, gpu-z, cpuID...these programs will help you look at temperatures, and you should look at those temps against googled 'safe' temps of your cpu and gpu (although I'd be looking at gpu first). But at least, report back with those temps during the fps dips.

The only crashes I get in Skyrim (version 1.4) are due to the inadequate cooling on one of my GTX 580s; I'll get it sorted at some point!

You said you are getting over 60 fps? Is v sync disabled? If not what is the refresh rate of your display?

^^ what i was thinking. also, if the heat turn your fan speed up.

Turning off V-sync also makes your GPU work harder, get hotter. V-Sync puts a limit on it, so it doesn't work as hard.

But the overheating suggestions are surely getting annoying to you by now. Just saying, for everyone's information here. Protip

CPU 35c
HDD 29c
SYS 41c

My computer displays the temperatures on the front of it. Very convenient =).

My computer doesn't seem to be hot either. How to I increase the fan speed by the way? I even went as far as lowering the graphics and viewing distance and fading of objects and other terrain features and this didn't work either.

More frequently than CPUs, it is the GPUs whose overheating status must be considered, and our OP is dancing around the subject as if it would cause physical pain to actually get involved in the guts, as it were.

Not sure what you meant by the dancing around comment. People are asking me to look at all kinds of things in regards to what could or could not be overheating. I'm not too knowledgable when it comes to computers. Explanations would be appreciated on how I might go about checking up on half the stuff you're asking for such as GPU overheating status, changing the speed at which the cooling fan spins, or whatever V-sync is.

I just want to figure out what the problem is, fix it, and get back to enjoying the game. You guys keep telling me that it's a possible overheating problem. I fail to see how that can be the problem when I play MW3, Fallout: New Vegas, Oblivion, Crysis, and World of Warcraft all on max settings and get no lag or fps reduction at all. Skyrim is the only PC game I have that is having FPS problems which is why I assumed that there is a problem with the game and not my computer.

Here is a link to which many other people are experiencing the same issue. This from what I understand occurs when I transition from one place to another such as entering an inn or leaving an inn. My FPS will be great before entering or leaving. But once I have entered or left, my fps drops dramatically. Outside inn is normally 60-70 fps depending if I was outside when i started the game. My fps runs smoothly when i start the game. It's only when I transition somewhere else that my fps drops so much. Most of everyone in the link below has described their issue in such a way that I can relate it to mine.

http://forums.techarena.in/video-games/1441371.htm

just going through process of elimination. start with the most obvious, and work from there. in this case your playing a game and after a period of time your frames drop. Why? heat, faulty card, voltage, driver trouble...

if you have a heat sensor on front of your comp. run the game for awhile, and watch the heat. core temp (app) will tag your highest heat while in use try that. the fan on your gpu can be accessed through your cards interface usually(whatever gforce is using) im sure some else can point you to a good program to use with that.