FiftyTifty

SLI/Crossfire is renowned for it's micro-stutter. Try running optomizer textures. Also, try setting Skyrim to use four, then two cores.

I'll just chime in my support; If you need any custom heightmaps (I.E, pre-made terrain for islands, continents, etc.), I'm willing tae make you a couple. Also got a bit of experience with Maya, so I could send you .obj meshes, should you need any made. Don't know if that is of any use, but if you plan on making an X-Mas island of sorts, that is where my expertise comes in handy.

If you have an AMD card, get Ati Tray Tools. The texture and mipmap settings allow for some serious FPS gains.

You'll need a new CPU. TBH, as far as value is concerned, the 965 BE is fine @ £80. The i5 2500k is only 25% faster, and costs £160.

http://dxtory.com/ Yes, it is free.

Troubleshooting? What!? There is no problem. He just wants it to run better. Non-Skyrim-specific tweaks: Download FancyCache, install, set aside 2-3GB for Skyrim Download Razr Game Booster. Use it when launching Skyrim. Download CCleaner. Let it run. Get Auslogics' disk defrag. Choose 'Defrag and optimize' Skyrim-Specific tweaks: Download this, this, this, and this.

Add a condition 'GetIsRace', or something to that effect, to the dialogue.

It's a pay-for DLC. You need to buy it. Though, if you've searched for hours and not found it, your clearly looking in the wrong places.

DXTory is a good one. The fps limiter is really helpful for recording gameplay.

Aside from working on my own worldspace, I found that adding a bigger trees mod and lusher grass made everything an adventure. I get lost all the time, places look completely different and new, you can take cover behind the flora, etc. Really changes the game for the better. Imaginator allows you to change the colour scheme, which is nice. Adds quite a different atmosphere to the game, should you choose a particular direction. Nerfing yourself is also fun. It gets boring when your the bandit-killing-dragon-slaying-werewolf-eating-dragonborn rather fast. Becoming the guy that needs to use strategy and/or run away is much more fun than mindless hacking and slashing.

Bottlenecking a PCI-e 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot is impossible. Even with the GTX 690 and HD 7990. Sata II's bandwidth is topped at 300MB/s. Only a few high end SSDs even come close to saturating that bandwidth. Unless you plan on doing RAID, ofcourse. But then you'd be paying too much for something that won't have any perceivable difference in performance. The Q6600 beating a 965 BE? He must have had cool 'n' quiet enabled. The 965 BE trashes the Q6600, and is neck and neck with the Q9650, whilst pulling ahead by a fair margin in certain tasks, such as gaming.. Benchmark here. But really, your processor is good. My 965 BE only reached around 70% load with 32 dragons and 25 draugr attacking me. Your really just better off getting a new graphics card. If all you play is Skyrim, the AMD 7000 series is your best bet. They don't perform that well in DirectX9 games or older, but they tank in DirectX11, which Skyrim utilizes. 7750 GDDR5 if your budget is £80, 7770 GDDR5 if your budget is £90.

No. But 'Flumfy Toastmonger' will. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say. Or as he says, 'Out with the old.'.

I'll assume that your either: Foreign. A kid far too young to be playing Skyrim. Or both. I'll pick foreign. Make sure your placing the .esp, .bsa and the folders (Meshes, Textures, Sounds, Shaders, etc.) in your [DirectoryWhereSkyrimIsInstalled]\Skyrim\Data folder.

Your late to the party. Nearly a year since Sunnie posted on this thread.

It amuses me. You say you want better performance, since you added mods that affected your framerate. You don't even post your specs, nevermind the mods you've got. Come on man. Think a little.

For disk de-fragging, Auslogics has the best de-fragment-er. Also, try downloading FancyCache. I've had no stuttering on Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas when using that program.

Actually, the best nude mod fer the females, is this'n: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/1161 Best mod fer the males: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/1947 No mesh changes, no beauty bodies, etc. I use both the mods. Adds quite the creepy-factor to the windhelm murders. And some fap-tastic pictures on one of 'those' days.

Make sure you've placed the NPCs above the ground. Otherwise they'll fall through it and/or glitch out if they are even slighty 'in' the floor.

@People complaining about performance with large map: Low-polygon models. Render-fog. Transitional borders. ...Don't have anything else to contribute.

This just sounds like general computer maintenance. Methinks that your hard drive ain't fully plugged in, and/or your RAM needs to be reseated. Take out yer RAM, put it back in, making sure that you hear a clicking sound on each end. Unplug your HDD's Sata/IDE connector and power connectors. Plug them back in, pushing them afterward to ensure they are firmly in place. Mayhaps you should de-fragment as well. Gamebryo has this weird 'failsafe' that whenever something isn't fully loaded (whatever that means. Documentation on the engine isn't very technical), and it gets referenced, it freezes/crashes/CTDs. Make sure you haven't got any outdated SKSE plugins. I found that I was crashing all the time with no indication as to what the problem was, as I had the newest SkyUI skse .dll's alongside the .dll's from the first version. Removed the old .dll, crashing stopped. You could also have a slow hard drive. Also, when you press ctrl+alt+delete, do you just get task manager, or do you get a menu? If you get task manager, change it so that you get the menu. I've managed to escape many hard-resets by getting task manager through: Ctrl+alt+delete -> Menu -> Task manager, then ending the offending game.

In the SMAA config, make sure that where it says "DEFAULT_PRESET_LOW", you change the "LOW" to "HIGH", or whatever setting you want. I made that mistake myself, didn't notice I was typing in lower case.

8x MSAA? What!? There is no difference between 8x and 4x MSAA, and barely any between 2x MSAA and 4xMSAA, at resolutions 1280X1024 and above. Heck, at 1080p, you don't need any form of AA, supposing your screen isn't 50". SMAA is a shader based form of AA like FXAA, but the performance impact is much smaller than FXAA, which has a performance impact many times smaller than MSAA. In order of performance, from least taxing to most, it goes : SMAA -> FXAA -> MSAA if you REALLY want AA, get SMAA and turn it to medium. If you just want edges to look a lil' less jaggy, setting it to low will do just fine. Me? I don't bother with AA, though that is probably because I have a 6670 DDR3. I game at 1156X864.

I'd say the 7850. It's quite the improvement over your 560. Benchmark here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=543 More than double the fps in Skyrim, between 40-60% difference in other games.

Depth of field. Blurs things that are in front of the crosshair. ENB does the best looking one, but it takes a good chunk out of your FPS. Dynavision is the worst looking one, but with no hit to your performance. Me? I say it's awful. No likey.

The camera is animated inside NIF files, if I remember correctly.