Elof Valantor

I found that too. Radeon HD 3300. That's definitely where most of the problem is. The 128mb is only DDR3 (modern cards have GDDR5), and for any other memory it needs it's using your main RAM. Skyrim needs at least 256mb and I wouldn't be surprised if it needs the 512mb the minimum requirements ask for. To clarify, GDDR5 is faster than DDR3, and modern cards have massive bandwidth internally for doing stuff with memory. By needing to use main RAM for graphics you slow everything down. The motherboard doesn't have the same bandwidth as a modern graphic card. If your HDD is full that will also slow things down. If it's a 5,400rpm drive that's even worse. What's your FPS in game? What settings do you play on? You have got ATI video drivers installed (and not NVidia ones)?

It works against Dragons. I got attacked by a Frost Dragon yesterday and it was taking huge chunks out of my health (I had been using a healing spell in my off hand to fight Dragons up to this point). Equipped my shield (and used it, obviously) and the damage went down considerably.

What annoys me is when a game comes out with recommened specs of "quad core" and then it only really uses two...

Part of me wants to blame the game, and I think there might be some issue going on since I obviously meet the recommended specs, but lets face it, my computers over a year old now and it might be time for an upgrade. If I am going to upgrade I am going to do it right: I want to put the settings on max or near max and still get a good FPS. Have any of you done this, and what is your rig (and if you don't mind, how much would it normally cost/how much did you pay for it?) You're specs are fine. If it's lagging every few seconds I would guess it's your HDD that's doing it. A big open world game like Skyrim is constantly pulling data off the HDD. If your HDD is quite full or needs a defrag you'll get lag spikes when the HDD can't keep up. I noticed this a lot in Oblivion. My CPU/RAM/GPU were more than a match for maximum settings with texture mods but I got lag all the time. It was my HDD. It couldn't push the textures to the GPU fast enough.

Marriage is a bit... boring. At the moment all you do is put an amulet on, tell someone you like them and have a wedding. Then you pick a house and nothing else happens. I'd like to see: Courting: a date and/or some sort of quest to prove you're capable of providing for your spouse. Not too much because in Skyrim this sort of thing happens quickly. Wedding: invite friends (Jarls etc if you know them well enough), spouses friends. Proper wedding garments. Possibily a honeymoon. Life: spouse should do their own thing just like you do (adventuring/shop keeping/travelling, whatever). Should be able to take them out to the local pub or whatever. Have some quests relating to the marriage. Family: sex (who doesn't like sex?). Pregnancy/adoption (same sex can conceive thanks to expensive magic...). Babies, kids, eventually to a son/daughter you can train/adventure with. Bit like in Red Dead Redemption. Death: if/when spouse or kids die PC/other family should react accordingly. Funerals. The marriage/family shouldn't get in the way of adventuring. Would need to be flexible. No one wants to walk back across the map because the wife needs you to get fresh milk before the baby dies... As for potential spouses from what I've seen you can't get any of the adventuring types (but I could be wrong). I had my eye on one of the women from the companions for example. Would be nice to have more options. I am wrong :rolleyes: Did I miss anything? When you think about it a marriage mod could be potentially huge...

Something else is off there because I've got an i5 (at 4.2GHz) and GTX 260 (OC'd) and I'm running the game on High with 2xAA, 16xAF at 1920/1200 and it's mostly silky smooth. I have just got a new 500GB Sata3 HDD (and an SSD for Windows) though. Maybe you drive is a bit full? HDD are the real bottleneck these days. The more rubbish on them the slower they get...