When I open Skyrim and it checks my hardware it says that I should be able to play on the highest settings, but when I try and play I am getting 10-12 fps. Also the load times are 40-45 seconds from when I press continue on the game menu screen.

What I have done so far is un/reinstall Skyrim, defragged the hd, when I turn the video settings to low I will get 14-15 fps, when I change the resolution to the lowest I will get 30-32 fps, installed Razer Game Booster, updated all windows updates, updated the video drivers, removed all mods, I have no DLC, formatted my HD, used a SSD HD and only installed drivers Steam and Skyrim, turned off shadows, I have all Skyrim updates.

HP Pavilion HPE h8-1320t Desktop PC

? Windows 7 Home Premium [64-bit]

? 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-2320 quad-core processor [3.0GHz, 6MB Shared Cache]

? 6GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM

? 1TB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive

? 1GB DDR3 AMD Radeon HD 7450

For any halfway modern game, you MUST have a better GPU than that terrible thing you have now. Poor game performance is the best it can offer!

Skyrim Minimum Requirements

* Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
* Processor: Dual Core 2.3 GHz C2D or equivalent CPU
* 3GB System RAM
* 6GB free HDD Space
* Direct X 9 compliant video card with 512 MB of RAM (and
sufficient performance to actually put that VRAM to use)
* DirectX compatible sound card
* Internet access for Steam activation

An HD 7450 isn't even as good as the better integrated video solutions in the latest high-end AMD and Intel processors.

Meaning i need a better video card?

correct