Here′s what I′ve learned so far:

When dual wielding, your right hand attack and power attack amounts the same result in damage as if the left hand was empty.
The same goes for left hand. Verification needed how the perk which increases dual wielding speed affects if you dual wield, but attack separately.

When doing a dual wielding power attack (Both weapons power attack at same time) your left hand weapon determines the speed of the power attack and your right hand weapon determines the damage. The dual wield speed increase perk affects this for sure.
No information how the stamina or stagger chance is calculated when doing dual wield power attacks.

Weapon type affects several things: Damage, weight, stagger chance, attack speed and reach of the weapon.
The only things affecting stamina used per attack are weapon weight and the type of the attack. (Power attack costs stamina)

Dual wielding weapons both can be poisoned. Equip the weapon to your right hand, poison it, equip to left. Then get the other weapon to your right and poison it. You should be able to use a single dual wielding powerattack which will stack both of those two poisons.
You can use whatever combinations you can imagine.

My conclusion:
If full melee forward rushing character, in my opinion Two handed is better. But here′s pros & cons for both

- You are most likely not putting any points to Magika, and dual attacks cost more stamina than 2H so these stamina points could be used for HP.

- You cannot block when dual wielding

- 2H weapons have fairly higher stagger chance. If the enemy is blocking with a shield, 2H power attack mostly goes through when DW does not.

- When DW:ing , you can poison both weapons, 2 - handed weapon is just one weapon, which is slow swing.

- When DW:ing , it′s faster to change either one of your hands to do something else than it takes to unequip or equip 2 - handed ones

- When DW:ing , you can stagger two different axe bleeding damages with a single DWPA (Dual wield power attack)

- 2 - handed perk tree gets the "Sweep" , which will hit all the enemies in front of you (!!) I think if the weapon is poisoned and you sweep several enemies, the poison goes to whoever it hits first. However, It is possible to stagger or even break the guard of all enemies standind in front of you. Downside of the sweep is that for example: You′re trying to sweep those three enemies with a single swing, but the first one happens to block it, it staggers you. This seems to happen pretty rarely though. LVL 53 , Master difficulty, and Skyforge Stleelsword. I′d say I stagger a lot more than being blocked. I use 2H and power attacks only. On the top of it:

- My 2H sword has Absorb 19 stamina on strike, and only 1 stamina is needed to perform any kind of power attack.
If the attack is blocked, no stamina drain. It′s possible to run out if I miss or enmy blocks it. That′s why 2H to go through their block and stagger them to power attack again.

So, what do you guys think? I′ve put pretty much time thinking this through. Pull my sleeve if I missed something

Just a reminder: Verification needed how the perk which increases dual wielding speed affects if you dual wield, but attack separately.

If you are a rushing char you should definitely take up dual wield instead of two handed. You are much faster that way and if your weapons are good you will plow through the enemies

Ysgramor used a two handed axe. You think you're better than Ysgramor? Spoiler; You're not. Therefore, it makes the most logical sense to also use a two handed axe.

Dual wielding has a perk loadout that allows for more raw DPS than two handed, while two-handed gives you a bigger one time hit. It depends on how you play, if you like to rush in and have the health to take a few hits before dying then roll dual-wield, but if you dont have the health or damage mitigation needed to do that, you may want to load up on some health,armor, and two-handed and try whacking the enemy from further away.

Personally, I prefer dual wielding if I'm going for the berserker style character. Much faster, power attack is 3 hits and is much more likely it'll break the block, mentioned double poisons and it's much easier to change over to defensive/healing setup if needed.

Stamina doesn't really mean much for the same reason you mentioned, that you can perform it as long as you have at least 1 stamina. And you can also put drain HP and stamina on both blades instead of one, making it practically impossible to get killed or to be unable to do power attacks at any point.

Absorb Health and Stamina is definitely the enchants of choice, Paralyze is definitely up there

This will tell all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEdi2WzkLc&feature=relmfu

The thing is that it′s hard or atleast not likely to get a DWPA past a blocking enemy. If they happen to block, the attack will most likely be disrupted.
If so, you′re staggered and lost the stamina for nothing.

With two hand, even if the enemy is blocking, it will most likely break the guard and go through, staggering the enemy and leaving an opening for another power attack.
With this I′m only referring to one handed maces against two handed swords. Mace is biggest 1H staggerer, 2H sword the lousiest 2H staggerer. And still the difference is so that you can tell only by looking.

I feel that on higher difficulties two-handed and heavy armor have been my linch-pin, but one-handed, shield and light armor also work well for the manueverability aspect.

So... After read al your comments and given it a thought, could the conclusion be:

Dual wielding kills better if you know when to time your attacks?

2H is better for spamming power attacks, not caring if they block or not, just brute force?

I dont know if you are asking me or someone else, but I agree with your conclusions, at the end of the day, it all depends on the skills you have supporting your method of damage dealing dual-wielding with light or no armor on master early on is a recipe for disaster

I don't like the power attacks for duel wielding because you are forced to be stationary while preforming them causing many of the hits to miss oftentimes.
But roleplaying aside, duel wielding is more beneficial except for the power attacks, but really if you put roleplaying aside in Skyrim then what are you really playing? It's not like you're playing it because beating the game is prestigious in any way, it's an easy game and you should play it the way you want to, or the way you want your character to be.

Good that you pointed that out. Another point for the 2H For me atleast.