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Okay, first off, yes, I am a cop, and second, no, my problem has nothing to do with my profession. Admittedly, the title was simply designed to attract your eye without the usual attention grabbers (sex, RAGE, crying, etc…). But seriously, I am actually quite desperate for any assistance I can get. Onto the problem: Let me begin with my specs, as I am sure that those up to the challenge of solving this will need this information: Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe Motherboard Windows 7 Professional 64 bit Intel i7 3770k @ 4.1GHZ Geforce GTX 680 2GB 16 GB (2 x 8) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD (OS and Programs/Games) Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM HDD (Data / Utilities) Steelseries Sensei 5700 DPI mouse Razer Blackwidow Mechanical keyboard Asus VH236H 60Hz Monitor XFX PRO850W CORE Edition Power Supply Cooler Master HAF 922 Mid Tower Thermalright True Spirt (120) Air Cooling system Lite-On LightScribe 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dueal Layer writer Okay, I think that is it. Now onto my issue – Yes, this has to do with stuttering, though not your typical stutter, and I suppose that it is not so much a stutter as it is a hitch, a pause as terrain loads in game. Let me illustrate it as I experience it: I load a save game, and there I am, staring into the vast wilderness that is the homeland of the Nords. As I move my mouse to the right, my gaze smoothly pans over the mountains…. Until.. hiccup… the game stutters, or pauses, for less than a second, and then continues on. I turn back to the left, passing my initial viewpoint, and as I view the up-until-now-unseen terrain, hiccup, it happens again. However, now that I have ‘seen’ all of the terrain, all is well. I can move my mouse freely and smoothly with no stutters whatsoever. I now find the rocky road leading towards some major city… I move forward, smoothly gliding at a solid 60 FPS. Approximately 7 seconds in, as new terrain loads in the distance, I get another hiccup… a stutter. The visual effect of this pertains to what I am currently doing – If I am just running forward, then it is a small hiccup… if I am panning slowly, it is a bit bigger… if I am panning quickly, it is a hug gap. Then, all is well. Toggling the cell borders on (toggleborders), I notice that this mainly occurs as I cross cell boundaries, though it is not exclusive to this. It does seem to be connected to loading new terrain, particularly terrain I have not viewed before. This is, to say the least, extremely Immersion breaking for me. What have I tried in order to resolve this issue?: Updated my GPU drivers, installed the game on both my SSD and my HDD – no difference in stutter. I have tried adjusting all of the visual settings, and even at the lowest, this phenomenon is still present (although it almost seems as if it is lessened just a bit with lower settings). I tweaked a number of INI settings, including those that pertain to mouse acceleration, grids, exterior buffers, shadows, etc. No real change. I even wiped my entire system, reinstalling Windows from a freshly formatted SSD. On this fresh system, I removed every mod, including every piece of DLC from Skyrim (HD files, DB, HF, DG), so that I could test the most basic version possible: A new Windows 7 Installation without any programs, Skyrim running through steam in its most vanilla state. Again, the stutter, the hitching, persists. Solutions I have seen for others who described similar issues: I have found a few different people who have claimed to have a problem similar to mine (a stutter only when new content is loaded). One person mentioned that it was due to a program called “ASUS Gamer OSD”. Uninstalling this program seemed to fix the issue completely. Unfortunately, I cannot find any such program installed on my system. Secondly, I found at least two people that spoke of this as a GPU driver related issue. For them, if they updated their drivers, the problem would go away, however, as soon as they restarted their computer, the problem would return. If they reinstalled the drivers again, the problem would once again disappear. For one of these guys, a complete reinstall of windows cured the ailment. Unfortunately, I tried this. The problem remains. Connections / Facts: The problem definitely seems to be related to distant objects loading. Once they load, I can move about freely without any issue at 60 fps. Upon stuttering, I noticed (through fraps) that my FPS would dip to 59,58, or 57 FPS, Just for a second, then raise to 60 again. Running the game without VSYNC, I am getting around 120-145 FPS. When the hitch hits, it drops about 20 FPS, in the mid 90’s, then returns to normal. The problem is worse outside in the open than it is inside, I am assuming because most things have loaded. Cities don’t’ seem to make it worse, so it doesn’t seem to be connected to ‘lots of things going on’ like NPCs. I ran the program “Skyrim Performance Monitor” and watched all of the variables, to see which was fluctuating during the hitching. The variable ‘Disk I/O’ which was base lining at zero, would spike for a second during each stutter. It would spike, sometimes to 20 or 30 MB, reaching a maximum of about 144 MB. I though it may be a problem with my SSD, hence why I installed the game on my HDD, but again, no change. And so, I have probably put about 45 hours of work into fixing this issue. I just can’t seem to figure it out. Please, someone who is smarter and more experienced come to my aid and help me resolve this issue so that I can enjoy this wonderful game… Thanks in advance.