Okay, so this problem occured as soon as the patch 1.4 came and I installed te HD texture DLC. After I launched the game, no matter what I inserted into the graphics options or even if I extracted the textures to Data directory from the BSA packs, it still looked like all the textures in the game were rendered into the lowest quality settings. I have *NO* mods, custom content or anything not purely vanilla installed. I also have the latest graphics drivers for my Radeon HD 5850.

Does anyone else have this problem and does anybody know a solution to this issue?

My settings are set to Ultra High Quality and it looks like this:

Please, if you can offer any insight on this issue please do. The game looks worst than morrowind and I really don't feel like playing it like this.Thanks!

Oh, yes and I'am using the PC version of Skyrim, not the xbox.

Here is a pic to see what I mean.
[img]http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc392/lautasantenni88/2012-02-08_00002.jpg[/img][img]http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc392/lautasantenni88/2012-02-08_00003.jpg[/img][img]http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc392/lautasantenni88/2012-02-08_00004.jpg[/img]


EDIT:
My PC specs are:
ATI Radeon HD 5850
8192 RAM DDR3
Windows 7 64bit
Intel® Core™ i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67GHz (4 CPUs) ,~2.7GHz
DirectX 11

Yes I have applied and unapplied the HD texture pack with no varying results.

fkrst lf all, applied the HD pack in the data files?

2nd, post PC specs!!!!!!

I am having the same problem. Similar PC specs. Tried deleting all local content and reloading, still super nintendo quality textures. Really annoying.

I don't know ... You have similar specs to my rig (the only difference is the amount of memory - I only have 4 Gb DDR3) but my game is fine, I can run Skyrim with a lot of mods and with 60 FPS with no problem...

However, I decide do not install (for now) the HD textures pack DLC from BGS until they can fix some problems with the DLC.

You have the 12.1 drivers for AMD, right?
And try to verify your game cache (verify game integrity) with Steam? If you do, first make sure you delete both the .ini files in My Docs>My Games>Skyrim to make sure steam will create new clean files.

My settings (default, I don't trust the anolysis the game give me) to give you a idea, is something like this:

Full screen

AA - 2x
AF - 16x
FXAA - ON

Texture Quality: High
Radial Blur Quality: Medium
Shadow Detail: High (VERY IMPORTANT, NEVER ULTRA!!!)
Decail Quality: Ultra

Water -All reflects ON, except Sky

Distances
Object fade - 15
Actor fade - 15
Grass fade - 7
Specularity fade - 12
Light fade - 35
Item fade - 15

Distant Object Detail - Ultra
Object Detail Fade - ON

i'm trying to replicate this issue but am failing to do so.

the only thing i can suggest is delete your skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini in the documents/my games/skyrim folder... then do a file intergrity check through steam for the game (right click the game in steam library, select properties, then select local files and then select the verify option.... let it do it's thing.. then proceed to start skyrim followed by setting the options and settings you want and then launching hopefully to proper textured skyrim.

I'v tried to reinstall the game 3 times now, no success(by removing weverything, from steam folder and MyGames folder. And no matter what I do, even custom textures are low quality. And to make my point, everything was fine before patch 1.4 so I really don't know what to make of this.

have you gone into the ATI Catalyst Control panel then navigated to the 3D/Game options and select "DEFAULTS" and applied the default options?

Have you checked to see if the ESPs are selected in Data Files? If they are selected, then unselect them and see if the game goes back to the look you had before.

I had the same issue before, just go to Catalyst Controler and change your 3D Settings -> Standard Settings -> High Quality.

Ok, so thanks to hillbillymoon, I managed to fix this. I narrowed it down to the tesselation option in catalyst control center. Make sure you set it to "application controlled" instead of "amd optimized". For some reason it defaults to "amd optimized" and messes all the textures in skyrim up.

Okay, fiddling with the Catalyst Control Center seem to have fixed the problem. Many thanks to you all!

Guess it is good I don't let CCC run on my machine.

i'm confused.....tesselation has nothing to do with this game at all.... no impact.... o.O this game doesn't use tessellation nor does it have anything to do with textures in that manner.... wtf

In another thread, I believe that option was causing performance issues. I think we may need to send this along to AMD. I think they borked the implementation or something. Anyone got a hotline to them?

i have questioned this and they are confused... either way... sounds like a registry issue or perhaps a bad driver install/control panel installation.

Appears that all the machines I've setup have amd optimised by default.... which works flawlessly.... using any override or forced setting has zero to no impact on the game with the HD5xxx and 6xxx series cards I've got here.

Odd. Still may be worth hitting them a line, though. Something just doesn't sit well in the back of my mind here...