blehmeh

I'm only commenting here, because I thought T4 was an exceptionally nice person, and extremely patient, considering some of the outright rude comments that he very politely answered. I remember telling him I would have ripped some of these people a new one, if they had talked to me the way they spoke to him. It would have been better if he had stayed retired like he had initially planned, but he tried to fix some issues with textures or ENB interaction, I dunno exactly. Anyway, I'll miss his mods, but I'll make do with substitutes. I don't normally care if people leave or not, that's their right, I just liked his Majestic Mountains and again, he seemed like a nice guy.

I own Legendary Edition myself and have had no problem installing it and getting SKSE to run. Which SKSE are you using anyway? I know there's some alpha release out at the moment.

Does this happen on a new save as well? I guess you could go to Riverwood, and wait 2-3 days. If killed, guards usually respawn in that time. I don't know if that's what happened to the one in your particular game, but it might be worth a try.

I see it affects the floor, the hand, and the torch too. Are there any other mods you're using similar to that Gigantic FPS Patch? Performance mods, basically. Also, there's a setting in your SkyrimPrefs.ini called itexmipmapskip. It should be set to 0. Finally, how long have you been playing before this issue popped up?

A shot in the dark, but if you haven't already tried, run Skyrim under Compatibility Mode. Right click on the .exe, Properties, and it should be in the second tab.

You can crop the picture so it only displays Lydia or you can upload the full images to imgur and paste a url here. http://imgur.com/oljx8Qp I have no idea what that patch does in a technical sense, but I find it hard to believe it would affect the textures. Well, at any rate, let's see those screenshots in their full, uncompressed glory.

Gee, a 4 gig 770... I'd love to have that. Anyway, stuttering and choppiness comes with the territory, bro. If your life's falling apart because of "intermittent stuttering" in Skyrim, then lol indeed. You did the best thing possible. It seems like your personal expectations regarding price/performance are better met with consoles anyway.

Your temperatures don't look bad, at a glance. The GPU should be fine. The temperature for your CPU depends on what model of Core 2 Duo you have (E6600, etc). This site: http://ark.intel.com/products/family/79667/Legacy-Intel-Core2-Processor/desktop should have your model listed, and you can check the max heat in the Package Specifications section. I can't really say for sure if overheating is the cause of your problem. When I had a CPU overheat, it shut the whole computer down, not just close a game. So, I'm kind of stumped here.

ENBoost and Sheson's patch are really for pushing Skyrim with high res textures and numerous mods. If you're crashing frequently with a plain, unmodified, freshly installed Skyrim, I would say there is a deeper problem. Well, someone earlier mentioned overheating, so you might want to take a look at that. Download HWMonitor: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html It just gives you a little display of your hardware. You'll find both your CPU and GPU temperatures. Make a note of the Max value for both of them. Start Skyrim while keeping HWMonitor open, and play until it crashes. Check the Max value of your CPU and GPU temperatures again and see if anything was unusually high. If nothing is out of the ordinary, then I can only offer one last advice. Reinstall Skyrim in a different directory. Like, instead of C:\program files, try C:\Skyrim. I don't know if that'll do anything, but you're not going to lose anything but time.

Well, it's just a thought, but maybe those people only average 60 frames or less with the vsync off?

Don't quote me on this, but as I understand it, Skyrim's physics get wonky out if you're regularly going over 60 frames a second. The only thing I've experienced in my brief experimentation is my character occasionally using the swimming animation while running.

It may or may not mean anything. Could just be that Steam replaced your two .ini files. In any case, the only way to find out if that fixed anything is to run the game. Shenzi's advice is solid, but in your case, you really shouldn't need anything just to run an unmodified game without crashing. And if you have played it before just fine, then either the installation is screwed up or there's a hardware issue on your end. At least, that's how I see it. Could be wrong.

For starters (if you haven't already), begin a new game and play as normal. See if the save issue pops up.

Did you install any high resolution texture replacers? For example, Skyrim HD 2K: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/607/? If not, and you're crashing during a vanilla game... it might be time to consider backing up any save files important to you, and then uninstalling and reinstalling Skyrim. Or use Steam's "Verify integrity of game cache" thing to make sure nothing in your Skyrim installation is missing or out of order. Your hardware seems to meet Bethesda's recommended requirements (the 460 is 1 GB, I assume?). Aside from the CPU. You could try starting a new save on Low or Medium settings, and see if it makes any difference, just to make sure if it's a performance issue. Oh, and how much free space do you have on your hard drive?

You don't have a ton of mods, so just disable everything and start a new game. It's important you start a new game, as mods tend to "stick" to a save if you have saved with them active. If you're not crashing on a plain vanilla game, then it may be one or more of those mods. Save after Helgen, activate a few mods at a time, and try to narrow down what may be causing the issue. Also, it might be a good idea to get the various Unofficial Skyrim Patches.