I'm not running any mods.

Occasionally I experience missing diffuse textures on models, typically armor and sometimes a dragon. The normal map is still being rendered as I can see details and a purple/white looking skin, but the diffuse texture does not render. Shut down Skyrim and Restart is the usual fix but sometimes it goes away if I change cells.

The other bug I get is where half the scene isn't rendered at all. Like I walk into a shop or something and I see sky and half the scene is missing. A characters head is gone but their hood or helmet is still there. The shop walls are gone but objects in the room are still there.

I'm running a high end rig 12 gigs of memory, windows 7, ati 6870 i7 processor. Steam updated my video drivers automatically a few weeks ago so I'm assuming I have the latest drivers, and Skyrim 1.3.

Other threads here have suggested the Catalyst 12.1 drivers, so try them: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst121Previewdriver.aspx
But also there are texture issues associated to the low memory from default lack of LAA (4GB) support, so try out the 4GB Skyrim if you haven't already: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013

Another texture related issue is the use of "SUPERSAMPLE" for AA and/or Anistropy. Try using "MULTISAMPLE" or AdaptiveSAMPLE or AssistiveSAMPLE or EnhanceSAMPLE. (Same if you have a setting that says only {SPEED or QUALITY}, or {PERFORMANCE or QUALITY}. You want the latter adjustments, so the card is not "cutting corners" on rendering.)

This can only be adjusted in your graphic-card advanced settings.

SuperSample is an old method used to try and speed-up the process so the computer could sample more objects. Part of the speed gain, results in textures that just fail to be processed, thus, fail to be drawn.

It is not a cure-all solution, but it is part of the problem with flickering textures and disappearing surfaces. Also resulting in quality that seems stuck in a lower level. (It is attempting to sort textures by distance or angle, and failing to sort them correctly. It thinks those textures are farther away than they actually are. Thus, keeping them as a lower quality sample.)

Thanks for the info. I'll try that driver.

Isn't a Bethesda patch coming in January going to do the 4GB+ stuff?