Okay, well I can't be sure if this is a steam problem, a Bethesda problem or a video card problem or a combination of the three, but I'm having a flurry of issues with not only Skyrim, but all of my steam games. I'll make a list:

• Grey pixels during gameplay in random spots (Skyrim only)
  
• Slowed video (All of my games)
  
• Red triangle surrounding my Skyrim character and making her armor go missing
  
• Bethesda title screen sound skips (Skyrim)
  
• Save screen objects are sometimes replaces by this red and white polygon thing.
  
• Has an issue loading recent games, as in it won't load at all and the game stops responding (Skyrim)

I have an AMD ATI Raedon HD 6870 graphics card updated with software version 12.3.

From my experience other people are having graphical issues such as the grey pixels as well. I'm annoyed that this is happening with the rest of my games as well, and I'm thinking it's most likely a graphics card issued, however I'm not going to do anything until I can have someone diagnose this issue. With so many variables as to what it could be, I don't want to uninstall anything I don't need to.

Rollback to 12.1. 12.2/12.3 are bad drivers.

Rollback worked for me.
(Radeon 5970)

Okay, tried the rollback, but the game still looks like it's being played at half speed. I also don't have that face to face dialogue screen with NPCs when you initiate a conversation with them.

Sounds like your card is crapping out how old is it? what brand? can you RMA still?