Thanks for your advice. Checked task manager when running it 800x500, lowest possible settings the CPU usage is about 90-95% RAM usage is about 1.75gb. With high settings at the same resolution, there's a very similar CPU usage and a slight increase in RAM to about 1.80gb. With no load the CPU is about 2-4% and the RAM is 1.38gb.

It seems like Skyrim isn't using enough RAM here? Obviously the CPU is bottlenecked and the GPU is fine, and yet this E5400 guy at 2.7ghz is playing completely fluidly. I'm not using a fantastic CPU (E7500), but in theory it should run at medium settings no bother, certainly according to the minimum spec requirements.

Thanks again.

The poor chap is getting some conflicting advice here, Five year old tech is not a suitable platform for a game of Skyrims ilk particularly after the latest 1.5 update which introduced grass shadows, that in itself has probably stretched the envelope of performance regarding dual cores & acceptable performance, I don't think it's right to say that his current dual core setup is fine when it clearly has limitations that are being obviously displayed.

@Andrew221, Yes it should play ok at medium settings but i think the latest 1.5 patch has thrown a massive spanner in the works.

So if the latest patch is the issue, would that imply that Echonite was probably running an older patch? I also completely disabled shadows and saw no improvement in CPU usage.

I'm just trying to figure out whether it's a CPU issue or game/driver issue & to help you out, As far as the CPU usage is concerned then it will be maxed out regardless of whether you disable shadows or not due to the fact that it' s a dual core CPU.
Skyrim will hammer both cores to near death, Although it's only a 2 thread(it will offload onto other cores if using a quad core) using game it will use 100% of each core leaving nothing left, Add to the fact that the E7500 in it's current state is at stock speed then i think that it's purely a CPU bottleneck going on, You cannot add any more cores to the E7500 & the only way to improve it would be to overclock it, That's a whole other ball game.

Regarding the 1.5 patch, It is certainly not making it easier on performance(for me) & the only way to find this out would be to rollback to the previous update, 1.4 or thereabouts, I certainly had better performance under the previous patch & i regret that i did not back it up.

@Andrew221, Just trying to help you out matey so you can enjoy the game, I hung on to my dual core E8400 for too long before upgrading it & have been in your situation many times.

Ok thanks, sounds like the CPU is suffering big time.It still baffles me how some can run this game so well with their duals. I'll probably find another game to invest my time in, and start building up funds for an awesome 4ghz i5 or something