For how long have you been playing ?

My game went quite smoothly for about 200 hours and then the crashes started. About 10 - 15 CTDs from 200 to 300 hours of gameplay, mostly near Riften.

After about 300 hours the CTDs started in earnest and now the game is in fact totally unplayble.

The worst gaming experience ever.

11 hours

Oh my, this time they really have done it.

And 1996 I thougt Daggerfall was the most bugged game ever.

Hint : take a break and try this again after some monts, usually they come up with a solution given time (or some third party does, as in Oblivion).

Do not waste time with this, now.

950? memory or core clock? my 6970 core clock is 880 and non xfx brands come stock at 870.

???? Excuse me ... but what are you trying to say ?

GEForce 550 ti o/clocked to 990/2250

seems like that is way to overclocked

From Nvidia:
GPU Engine Specs:
192CUDA Cores
900Graphics Clock (MHz)
1800Processor Clock (MHz)
28.8Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)

Memory Specs:
4100 GbpsMemory Clock
1024Standard Memory Config
GDDR5Memory Interface
192-bitMemory Interface Width
98.4Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)

I have never had a 550ti and those speeds vary based on who made the card but those speeds seem quite high for an overclock.

Hi,
As a few have already asked for a DX I will also ask for you to Post your DXdiag. not to worry there is no personally Identifiable info in it.(unless you used your real name as the Machine name) in that case delete that line before posting. All anyone can do is guess , getting bits and peices from the OP is like diging for a needle in a haystack.(actually thats not that hard ...use a really strong magnet) but you get the point...

MY guess.....you have 4 GB of RAM and are using a 32 BIT OS (so reality is you have 3 GB) and the game is just asking for more RAM then you have . =crashfest

A DX can end the guessing game.

My GTX 560 FTW+ are at 931Mhz core.

Not saying Overclocking isn't OK but if your game is crashing and your reference is 100 Mhz below your current clocked speed....well lets see first easy step is to downclock to your stock speed. It's this simple if you OC and your software has issues you can't just blame the software. On top of that what in the heck do you even need to overclock that high for Vanilla Skyrim? Answer: You don't since it will run your CPU harder than the GPU.

I started playing about 6 week back.On a windowsXP Pro 32 system with 4gb of ram.Only way i could play was in window mod That would CTD may be two or three times a hour.I just upgaded to Windows 7 64Bt with 8Gb of Ram.And have played on High seting for a week with no CTD.

yep 64 bit Win 7 get there......

Dude, chill:
A: I am more than well enough aware of what the problems are, and they are not in this case it would seem, with the software.
B: My card is overclocked because I play a heavily modded version of Oblivion - I hadn't changed it back because it wasn't a problem, I have since downclocked it and made a number of other changes to the ini files and the GPU driver.
C: I said the game was crashy, which is a fact in the context I said it in - I didn't blame the software I was simply surprised, at the time.
D: I've seen documentation of 550s clocked to over a Gb on a decent rig - I have not, hitherto, had stability issues with it - I'm now running it at 950, but I am running a 32 bit system, so...

I'd like to thank you for your input, but I am not a child so please - Thoth - don't treat me like one. I really like Skyrim and I want to get the absolute best out of it, to that end I am deliberately trying to keep it as vanilla as possible, yes I am/was thrashing my card - now I'm not. Lesson learnt, we move on.

I was responding to the other genius's that clearly didn't read the entire thread.

Bethesda is gonna have to change the Specs for the game. they gave us LAA because the game can and WILL,cross the 2 GB line (IN Vanilla form). Now that we have the HD DLC it can cross the line even faster.

Only way to Fix this is to move the line. The line is the 2 GB barrier of a 32 bit system. (Of any single process). So now that Skyrim is allowed past the line..(LAA) while fine for anyone on a 64 Bit OS, its not for anyone still using a 32 bit OS. The other limit imposed on 32 bit is it can only address 3 GB of System ram. So when ...

OS gets 1 GB
GPU gets 1 GB

See where i am going with this..? Yes a lot of people are going to be able to fully enjoy the game on a 32 bit OS. specially if only on a 512 VRAM , that will allow for more ram to the game. In Vanilla form, the game consistently crosses 1.5 - 2.2 GB on the EXE for me. In its moded form I can see 2.5 - 3.3 GB ram used just by Skyrim. That is more than a 32 BIT OS can even have.

Try a clean boot, ....Lower settings, and bet you can play for hours.

New Spec for Skyrim.....64 BIT only!! (now can we also get a x64 EXE) ??