I have logged more than 120 hours into Skyrim and up until recently the game has performed just fine. I am now experiencing sudden freezes in game that require me to perform a hard reset of the game and lose any unsaved gameplay. I have no idea as to why this has started happening as I have made no modifications to my computer hardware. I did install the latest versions of Nvidia's drivers for my GTX 570 and I also downloaded the enhanced textures provided by Bethesda. Is anyone else experiencing these problems? Is there a way to fix these issues? Does anyone know if Bethesda is addressing these issues in a later patch?

I have a pretty equivalent version of the ATI card that you have and while I don't have this problem since 1.3 (was just the good old CTD no error before that). I prefer to not use the Beth HD texture pack. It will take a decent chunk of VRAM up so if you were on the line or even close before I can see the Texture pack causing that. I don't know about the new Nvidia driver someone else will have to weigh in there. Have you tried playing with it disabled? I should also note that I do an uninstall reg clean reinstall after each patch. I always run into something strange after one....I attribute this to AMD and their fail driver releases however.
Since 1.4 I have logged a solid 100 hours and have never had a freeze CTD hang or TESV has stopped responding. I also run the game in steam offline with overlay disabled.

Bethesda needs to fix this game. Its unplayable in its current state. There is no reason this game should be crashing like this. If their texture pack does this to an Nvidia GTX 570 then they should not have released the pack. The 570 is a powerhouse card for Skyrim.

You say it only started happening since around the time you installed the DLC and the new drivers, could you post a dxdiag in a spoiler tag please? There sounds like something is up there.

And the DLC is just a texture pack. It's not like it has any coding of its own. If one can't handle it, then they shouldn't use it just like any 3rd party replacer. Just thought I'd toss that in there to cover that point while I was at it.

What OS are you using...32 or x64
What size VRAM is that card??

The vanilla game could fill a 1 GB Vram card if played on Ultra. Add in the HD DLC and can go as high as 1.5 GB VRAM...

UP Ugrids to load (Ugrids 7) and with the HD DLC, HD 2 K Full , Vurts flora and trees, and a few more misc HD stuff and I can fill 2 580's up to 3 GB on both cards. And play for hours on end. The Game can and will push a RIG.

I am running Windows 8 64bit. My card is 1.25 Gb Vram. If I were to purchase an additional GTX 570 would that improve my VRAM or just give me better FPS performance or both?

I was having a lot of BSoDs. The cause turned out to be the use of nVidia's latest betas and whql drivers in SLI mode with a pair of GTX 480s. I had to back off to 285.xx drivers. But I went the other way and replaced the 480s with 580s so I could use the latest driver. No more BSoD crashes in either win7-32 or Win7-64.

I would give serious consideration removing any VRAM stealing mods though.

I don't know if I am correct in this but I add the VRAM on both cards together to give me a theoretical 3GB VRAM. As for that driver (295.73), it should be fine. Will two cards help with texture mods? IDK, but I sure hope so.

Better frame rate with two cards? Certainly. Having gone down this dual card route, I could not go back now.

I'd say try it on Windows 7. Windows 8 is still not ready for prime time, so I wouldn't use that as a basis.

Better FPS sure....More VRAM nope...

Cards in SLI do not stack/add what ever the VRAM is for one single card it will be the same, even if you do Quad SLI...

4 1 GB cards is still 1 GB
2 3 GB cards is still 3 GB

Try using WIN7 instead of 8

Ok Bethesda, please correct your game! I have logged around 140 hours and now I am experiencing game crippling crashes. I have lowered the settings from Ultra to High, I still have the texture pack that Bethsda released as the only mod installed. I have a GTX 570 graphics card, Intel I5 processor, 8 gigs Corsair Ram, Corsair SSD....basically this system should be able to handle this, otherwise its a serious issue from the texture pack which should have never been released if it's causing machines like mine to crash.

Please Bethesda don't make me stop playing your game so that I can finally play Uncharted 3....I don't want to stop playing Skyrim but at this rate, I'm going to have to!

So you still have these problems on Windows 7?

You are ridiculous if you are complaining of issues while using an unstable pre-release OS (Windows 8).

I'm using Windows 7 64bit professional.....I see what you are looking at and did not realize I put Windows 8.....I did not know you could even get windows 8

Ya there is a test version out of some kind well then that changes things.

Actually Thoth, my system is almost identical to yours. Except I have 8 gig of ram and a GTX 570

I had a few TESV has stopped responding but only during the last Beta patch. I do a total reinstall (back up only my saves) after every patch as something seems to break after each one.

Thank You Bethesda, it appears that the 1.5 patch has corrected the crash bug on my system

Awesome news

The newest upgrade seems to have made my system worst.

My computer specs (I'm running Windows 7 64bit professional)

I've recently upgraded My graphics card driver so it should be current.

From my system specs I should be able to handle the Ultra settings just fine. Lately when I play skyrim I get freezes where I have to do a hard shutdown on my computer. I've been getting A lot of "Not responding" errors when my computer monitor turns black during playtime. The only way for me to get back to the desktop mode is by pressing control alt and delete keys on my keyboard to find out that skyrim is not responding.

Skyrim is a great game but it should've NEVER been released as it's quite obvious that this game is still in beta, and not in finial.

The government spends wad loads of our tax money to make strict legislation laws to protect the software companies against piracy but theirs just not enough protection going around for the consumers. Who do we go to report broken software? Skyrim is definitely broken and unplayable since everywhere you go has a bug.

Come on, I know it's frustrating (I have the same issues) but that's going a bit far. Skyrim worked just fine on release, didn't it? I didn't have a single CTD until the first patches came through (and I started using mods!) The more complex a game becomes, the more there is to go wrong, period.

Still trying to resolve mine so I can play again...

Meh idk played a lot of Betas and on release that is what Skyrim felt like......post 1.3 potentially a different story.