What happened to my skyrim?!

[Flynnature]

Hi all,

 

 

Skyrim has become essentially unusable on my computer. Beforehand skyrim wasn't running particularly amazingly but it was definitely playable, and now it's just gone to utter s***. Gameplay is extremely sluggish, fps around 10, max 13, and it takes 5 minutes on a loading screen where before, well I don't know how long it took but it didn't bother me in the slightest, probably sub 20 seconds.

 

I've uninstalled all the mods that I'd put onto it ( I was using the mod manager so this was easy ) and uninstalled the FXAA Post process injector. I also removed the 4gb extension as I figured this was not needed due to the recent update.

 

I'm really confused as to what has happened. I haven't played skyrim in 2 weeks or so, may have occasionally loaded it up but never actualy played it.

 

 

I'm using: ( gathered this using Speccy )

 

Operating System

MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

CPU

AMD Phenom II X2 545 33 °C

Callisto 45nm Technology

RAM

4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 400MHz (5-5-5-18)

Motherboard

FOXCONN A7VMX-K (Socket 940) 40 °C

Graphics

SAMSUNG (1440x900@60Hz)

ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series (ATI AIB) 44 °C

Hard Drives

488GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AAKS-22V1A0 ATA Device (SATA) 36 °C

Optical Drives

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH60N ATA Device

Audio

AMD High Definition Audio Device

 

 

I know this is nothing spectacular but it used to work just fine for me.

 

 

I can't remember the exact settings but skyrim was running approximately on medium settings, a few things had probably been altered upwards with the AMD Vision Engine settings set to balanced.

 

Only major changes to my system as of late are removing Avast anti virus and replacing it with Microsoft Security Essentials. This has sped up my system in general so I don't think it has contributed to this problem.

The save I was using comes up with a warning how some items may not be present due to the feature not being present anymore. I guess this was related to uninstalling a mod but I hadn't installed any mods that altered gameplay or objects in the game.

 

 

On a side note I've been considering updating my graphics card. I'm no mega-serious gamer, and it would probably only be used for Skyrim and hopefully Guild Wars 2 if they decide to release it. Respectable is what I'd aim for, not outstanding, but any recommendations would be appreciated. Or if other hardware needs to be updated, same applies.

 

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks