Hey guys

In the past two days I built my first PC and downloaded Skyrim off of steam.

Initially when I started Skyrim my problem was horrible. It's hard to describe but about every half a second the video would freeze for a millisecond. It wasn't my computer struggling (will list specs below) and it seemed to be almost rhythmic as in not freezing a random intervals. At first I tried lowering my setting to as low as they would go but this didn't fix nor help the problem at all.

I've spent hours googling and tweaking game files and so far I have made the following progress:
-Disabled Vsync
-changed startup options in steam to "-window -noborder"
-removed mouse lag

Somewhere along the line (I think the first two things) the problem was alleviated significantly but the game is still doing it. It's now inconsistent and I played for a couple of hours smoothly before it started doing it again. Now the game will sometimes run smoothly, sometimes with a couple of random "stutters" and sometimes it will go back to the rhythmic stuttering.

specs:
===========
16gb DDR3 memory
NVIDIA GTX 570
750watt PSU
Intel I7 - 2600
OS on a 60gb SSD
steam and steam game files on my HDD
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Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've tried everything my friends and google have to offer. Thanks.

I don't know how many mods you're using or if you've got the Hi-Res DLC installed, but this sounds like either running out of video ram in certain areas causing stutter when looking around, or the stutter bug in the game where a flame limiter is required(such as the one that comes with MSI Afterburner.) Things to try would be...

Uninstalling all video drivers using a sweep utility and installing the latest.
Go with Vsync enabled and try the border-less windowed mode again.
Go fullscreen & vsync on, Install a frame limiter and set it to 1 frame less than your resolutions maximum(ie 59 instead 60.)

what @Eyeless17 said... For me, D3DOverrider's Triple Buffering, VSync on, AND MSI Afterburner frame limited to 60fps has got rid of my stuttering completely. Some find the simple borderless window mod helps too (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4), but it didn't for me.

Frame rate limiter.

So after playing some portal 2 it turns out the problem is with my graphics card or drivers. Which pisses me off because I payed top dollar for the [censored]. The 'rhythmic stuttering' seems to almost turn off and on depending what area of a map or area I'm in in the game. But it's not consistent, sometimes in Whiterun it will start doing it but it usually doesn't happen in whiterun.
I'm going to contact nvidia directly but if anyone knows a fix for the problems I'm having please let me know in this thread. Thanks.

@eyeless; my drivers are up to date [296.1] and I have more than enough RAM for skyrim. If it helps I can hear the GPU stuttering along with the video (well I think it's the GPU)
I feel as though I shouldn't need to limit the frame rate as my computer is more than powerful enough to run skyrim on max settings. and as I said the stuttering is just as bad on the lowest settings.

Thanks.

It's not a matter of how powerful your computer is. Skyrim has a bug where the framerate skips and becomes choppy, and it happens when the framerate "jitters" going over the specific resolution Vsync limit. Mainly, when I go into a cave and while walking through certain lit hallways my framerate becomes extremely choppy, yet when I check my framerate it appears that my FPS is jumping from 60 to 61 and back extremely fast during the choppiness. If i limit my framerate manually using MSI Afterburner to 59 and use the games built in Vsync, I then no longer get the choppiness. This also worked with the borderless windowed mod, however I run Crossfire and this requires fullscreen so I use a frame limiter. And just to clarify I was speaking of Video RAM, the GTX570 comes with 1280mb, so if you have the HD DLC installed plus a high grid range increase plus other mods, you could break that Vram cap and begin to stutter in large, demanding outdoor areas.