So I've encountered an odd problem and was wandering if anyone ever had a similar problem and had any suggestions. Currently I'm running the game fine with Catalyst 13.1 drivers. There is the occasional crash, but nothing major. I figured I would try updating to the new 13.4 drivers that were just released as the I'm planning on playing Skyrim at some point in the near future. After updating them the game consistently crashes on saving no matter the save type. The odd thing is that saves don't appear to get currupted like normaly happens when the game crashes on a save, mind you I'm not using those saves just to be safe. I created a restore point just before updating as a precaution. Upon using the restore point and reverting to the older drivers the problem instantly ceases. Mind you I can live with holding off on updating the drivers until I'm done with FO3, but I'd kind of like to be able to play the game again at some point in the future without having to hunt down and find old drivers just for it.

System Specs:

Windows 8 Pro 64-bit

AMD Phenom X4 955BE

AMD Radeon HD6950 2GB

Memory 4.0 GB

More available upon request.

Then don't upgrade. The latest driver may not be the best for your system, sometimes a new version can have some bugs in it or not play nicely with your other hardware/software. So just hang on to what you have now until they release one that doesn't cause problems for your system. It's probably not going to make a huge difference in the performance for Skyrim, and you may even find that the new one causes the same problems with that game as well. It does have a similar engine I believe. I just recently ran into a similar situation with a GeForce driver. Once I upgraded, my system started to crash and reboot on me for no apparent reason. I've since rolled back to a version that never caused any problems for me, and I'll keep using that one until a stable, newer version comes along. I learned a long time ago that it's a good policy to keep my older drivers when I try upgrading so I can reinstall them if it turns out the new driver is buggy for my system, and to no use some automated system for upgrading, like Windows Update.

Excuse my ignorance but is that processor "AMD Phenom X4 955BE" Working as a dual core or a core 2 duo ? It seems by the X4 its saying it has 4 logical processors , but reading about it leads me to believe it works as a core 2 duo. So in essence you shouldnt have to edit the ini that limits the cores. Again I dont really know , but am wondering if you have done the ini edit for limiting cores? If you have , maybe you should get rid of that with your new drivers , or if you haven't then give it a try ???

However , the old saying goes ... if it aint broke dont fix it. Hence updateing your drivers broke it.

Exactly. There's usually very little performance difference from one driver to the next, especially for an older card like the 6950. So it doesn't always make sense to go and get the so-called latest and greatest. AMD is focusing on their 7000 series now, so there's only going to be minor driver improvements for cards that are older than those. If you're older driver was at least stable, you're better off just sticking with that, regardless of what game you're playing.