I just upgraded from an ancient AMD rig to a shiny new i5 2500K based machine. Its been bliss... However, one of the main reasons I upgraded was simply for Skyrim and my experience has been absolutely awful for one reason and one reason only.... Stutter. My framerate is excellent, but with my new build I have experienced terrible stutter just about everywhere in the game. Ive spent days trying to smooth things out to no avail, and finally I came across this...
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2581
Its two files d3d9.dll and antilag.cfg. You just place them in your Skyrim folder and modify the antilag.cfg to your liking. There are some configuration options you can enter, but for reference my antilag.cfg file looks like this...
A few lessons learned from the school of hard knocks are as follows...
* If your using any screen overlay / sysinfo programs that display FPS or system stats while playing the game DISABLE THEM!
* Use a driver cleaner and try a different driver revision. For me, using the ATI 11.10 Pre Skyrim drivers yielded the best performance / experience... Go figure.
* If all else fails you can try playing the game in a window. This also cured stuttering issues for me, but was sub optimal due to differences in game / desktop resolution.
For me personally, using the fix above with a little fine tuning made a night and day difference with how Skyrim performed. I am now running perfectly without stutter and back to enjoying the game! Best of luck!
System Specs For Reference :
i5 2500K @ 4.8GHZ
ATI Radeon 4850HD 512MB 11.10 BF3 Preview Drivers
16GB DDR3 1600Mhz
Windows Vista Business x64 ( All Updates and latest DX installed.)
Skyrim is patched to the latest version with Skyboost R4