unable to play in ultra settings after fresh install of windows

[whao92]

hello.

 

i have just installed windows home server 2011 on my computer. i have all the latest drivers etc. but when i go to play skyrim, i can only play on high. (not like its that big of a deal to me to lose a little quality, i just want to figure out why its happening.) every time i set it to ultra, it boots to the game, i select continue/ new, and my computer starts to lock up and the screen freezes and flickers. i have a multi monitor setup, and have my task manager in my other window. ive never had more than 30-35% CPU usage at any one time while playing the game, and there is only about 5-6.5 GB of RAM total used out of 8 GB at this time (guessing right now...). since the server install wiped my whole hard drive.. (thank you M$... -__-) i had to redownload all my mods. i only have some downloaded right now, and they are all turned off. (not uninstalled, but disabled). theres less than 40 actual mods, i believe, and maybe 50 or so .ESP's in the mod list. (that are all disabled right now.) i can play just fine on high, but cant even start a new clean game on ultra.

 

heres what i have

 

i just updated to the 1.6.89.0.6 patch.

 

hardware thats relevant:

 

AMD FX 8150 8-core OC'd to 4.2 GHz

Gigabyte Radeon HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 not OC'd

8gb DDR3 RAM

 

my computer can handle ultra, i know, because i was playing it on ultra long before i re imaged my hard drive.

 

 

it could be a compatibility thing with WHS, but i think it did this with the new patch before on Windows 7.

 

any help?

 

will post mod logs if requested, but i didnt include them because i am not using them right now?

 

thanks!