So upon entering a new game there is just an insane barrage of awful stuttering. We're talking up to 15-20 seconds of frozen play while the music continues on in the background. It looks and sounds (hard drive) like stuff is loading, but I have no idea what since the game has only just started.
Also, takes about 5 minutes to load a game.
Does the same thing during battles. Say every 30 seconds or so there will be a ridiculously long pause followed by 50+ fps play as if nothing happened.
Weird thing is if I keep the game running for, oh, 10 minutes suddenly the stuttering is gone almost completely, like it's finally finished caching a bunch of textures or something. Returns during large battles, however. Stuttering is also almost absent if I quit and start a new game. Reboot the comp. however and the whole mess is back again.
Now i've got a gig of RAM in two 512 slots that're pretty decent, to say the least, and I'm looking at 10 second loads playing Oblivion with maxed out textures and texture mods. Don't understand how there could be so much loading going on in this game compared to that.
Could it be some kind of CPU clog or something? Something to do with the nature of the AI? I have no idea...
Any thoughts?