I recently purchased The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from Steam. One of the first things I do when I purchase a new PC game is scour the Internet looking for tweak guides in an effort to optimize performance. Below you will find links to many of the guides I found useful.

I should note that I am using an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560Ti from EVGA, so most of this information will not be useful to those with AMD/ATi GPUs.

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Tweak Guide
• Five Fast Skyrim Tweaks Guaranteed To Make Your Game Look Better
• Optimal Playable Settings for NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs
• Skyrim Tweaking for Dummies
• Controller Interface Fix by Danny Warren - Allows you to remap controller buttons without breaking the interface menus.
• Weird interior shadow glitch (not shifting shadows, but that sucks too)
• Fix for flickering shadows.

I realize that most of these links are to geforce.com. If these resources don’t work out, you can expect that I will update this post with alternative links.

Update: I added a link to a post on Reddit regarding a shadow glitch. One of the comments suggested modifying fShadowBiasScale and iShadowMaskQuarter in SkyrimPrefs.ini. I did this, and the glitch was substantially reduced. 

Update: I added a link to a post on the Nexus forums that contains information on how to adjust the interval between light source movement.