My system specs are below since I cannot post links or screen grabs of my specs.

The issue:
I have Skyrim: Legendary Edition and whether I play vanilla or with mods I get a CTD (crash to desktop) every 30-45 minutes like clockwork 99% of the time. When Skyrim does run I get 50-62 FPS average with only a few spots of below 45 FPS. I run max ultra settings and experience no issues until ~30 minutes in then I start to see wall or equipment textures turn bluish and plasticky looking. When I see that I immediately wait to auto save because a CTD is immenant. I just don't get why this happens. Skyrim absolutely looks and runs great with my rig. I do not have any issues with temperatures, the PSU, any other game, or the other computer components. This is a Skyrim only occurrence.

So am I missing something? Do I need to reinstall Skyrim? Any settings or tweaks I can do? If for some reason my video cards are causing it (which I doubt) I cannot afford to just simply buy new ones so I need to know how to set this up to stop CTDs and still look amazing otherwise I will stick to my XBOX360 with this game.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Series quad core 3.45Ghz
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
nVidia GTX 560 1GB GDDR5 (SLI)
nVidia GTX 560 1GB GDDR5 (SLI)
60GB Sandisk SSD [490/390 MB/s] <-- Windows installed here
256GB Samsung SSD [540/520 MB/s]
1TB Seagate Barracuda SATA [3.0Gb/s] <-- Skyrim installed here
3TB Samsung SATA [6.0Gb/s] <-- 12GB Virtual memory installed here
Antec DF-85 case
Corsair H80 water cooler
Windows 7 Home Premium
Acer X233H @ 1920x1080 (1080p, 60hz)

Maybe running out of VRAM since you only have 1GB. If you back down texture quality to medium, or overall settings to high or medium does it help?

SLI is almost completely worthless on your config because your monitor's resolution isn't very high (1920x1080). Turning off SLI may also help (at least its worth a shot).

ALso.....

Vanilla SKyrim? What are you doing to remove your mods? Texture mods need to be completely removed. You either uninstall them with NMM (which you should use) or rename the textures/meshes folders.

VRAM is possible. ALthough any overflow would go into system RAM. There's a program you can monitor it. Can't remember the name right now. Having to overflow into regular RAM can cause performance/stability issues.

Are you overclocking/overvolting anything? Just curious.

You should try to play without mods on ultra settings and see if get at the same time those CTDs.

It's difficult to pinpoint because you are using mods. It depends what mods you are using, so it could be VRAM related.

Nvidia SLI basically works like a dual core CPU. it splits the load into two. So, all the workload are divided into parts and sent to each of the GPUs for processing. When the second GPU is done with the processing,

it sends the output to the master GPU through the SLI bridge, and the master GPU combines everything and displays on your monitor.

However, ram is not divided. So if you have two 1GB Vram GPUs you have the same amount of usable memory, as having one.

It's like having two workers transferring the same amount of packages the same time.

So, if you have one worker you will do the job in X time. But if you have two workers, theoretically you will get the job done in X/2 time.

So you gain on time, on our example you gain on speed, but the quantity of the packages are the same. The textures are divided through your two cards.

In short, SLI does not increase the effective available VRAM, it only increases computational power. !!!

Also SLI cards need more CPU power, as your CPU must feed two GPUs at the same time.

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As Níeh?ggr stated, you will see a gain at very high resolutions, but on Skyrim the performance gain is quite small with Nvidia GPUs, and almost non existent on AMD Crossfire setups.

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Also you have a SSD drive that you not use at all, at it seems. (256GB Samsung SSD [540/520 MB/s])

Why you don't load Skyrim in there ???

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I see you have your virtual memory in another drive.

I see that, as kind of a last resort. The performance implications are negative. Putting it on another drive can help, but I would not use that as a first step to try and improve the system performance.

I would rather look at increasing my RAM to a reasonable maximum first.

My recommendation, if want to try to maximize your PCs performance, put enough RAM in it, so that you don't need virtual memory at all.

Also you shouldn't disable the page file as well. Doing so, can have bad results. If a program starts to use all your available memory, it will crash instead of swap out of the RAM into your page file.

This can cause problems when running software that requires a large amount of memory, virtual machines for example.

He has 8GB. Plenty of RAM.

For the mods I've deleted them from the Data/Load order screen. I wasn't aware that this did not delete them completely, but, having said that if they are completely removed from the load order wouldn't that then render what ever new textures/meshes useless since the game doesn't load them to begin with? The only textures/mesh mods I use were Immersive Amors, Immersive Weapons, and the Book reskinning mod so I didn't replace any of the default textures or meshes.

Thank you for the SLI explanation, it is completely new to me as a technology. Too bad it doesn't double total usable VRAM but I understand why it doesn't. Also, what is considered a "high" resolution? I guess I'm too old school because 1920x1080 seems high to me. I'm really about 7-8 years behind on computer technology knowledge.

My Samsung SSD is primarily for portable storage as it sits in a hot-swappable slot on top of my case. I researched online about using SSD vs 6.0Gb/s SATA and the performance gains on Skyrim were negligible if any at all. And, I do not want virtual memory either on the same drive as my OS or on an SSD. I would like to keep my SSD and all its data sectors healthy and not wear out the drive prematurely. They are not cheap, especially this Samsung. I've always found better overall Windows OS performance with virtual memory on another separate hard drive so that is how I always set that up. Though, I can be open to the possibility that I am too far behind technology and this is a flawed opinion. I do want more RAM and thankfully Newegg has my RAM for not much $$ so I could double it without breaking my bank. I agree on the disabling of the page file, that can have bad results. That part hasn't changed much in 10+ years.

So to summarize, this is either a VRAM issue or an issue with my Skyrim and or mod installation? So as I understand it my options are:

1. Completely remove and reinstall Vanilla Skyrim and see if CTD's happen

2. (if 1=false) Completely remove and reinstall Skyrim+mods and see if CTD's happen

3. (if 2=false) Move Skyrim (and thus Steam) on my Samsung SSD to see if CTD's happen

4. (if 3=false) Try more system RAM

5. (if 4=false) Buy a new video card (which I cannot do, no $$$)

6. Run Skyrim with lower settings (need more information on this option to better suit my system setup)

7. Play Skyrim on my XBOX 360 instead (and live without the DLC & console commands)

*edit*

I wanted to also ask if there was any tweaks to the configuration files to get better performance?

I would do step 1. Remember to manually delete the Skyrim directory after you remove local content. Mark has some good info for this.

I don't have time right now to link to it. We really need a good sticky for this. Just unchecking mods will ensure textures referenced by them aren't loaded, however the textures

that are simple replacers will still load. There are also resources such as scripts that are imbedded in your save file that \can cause issues whether the mod is checked or not.

Try Step 1 anyway.

STep # 2 you would just add the mods back in. No need to reinstall Skyrim again.

You don't need more system RAM. 8GB is plenty. However, are you using a 64-bit OS? I assume you are.

Disable SLI for awhile. You can certainly try running Skyrim in lower settings. Just click the low medium buttons in the launcher. This is just for testing purposes.

Not that you have to play this way.

It could be a background app/service causing the crash. Some info about the crash might be helpful. CHeck your event viewer. I don't have

alot of time right now to go into this. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/open-event-viewer#1TC=windows-7

Looka at the app/system logs under windows logs. Check for anything related to date/time of SKyrim crash or anything that mentions Skyrim (TESV.exe or something).

*edit*

I'm not entirely sure those specs for the 650 in the spoiler tag are for my specific video card now that I'm looking at them.