help please, skyrim freezes

[mimejuice]

I've done a lot of googling and forum browsing but nothing seems to help, so I figured it was time to ask.

Alright so I just bought an MSI GT70 0N3 to replace an ancient macbook pro... lol

specs as follows
Windows 8 64bit
Intel Core i7-3630QM
Nvidia Geforce GTX 680M 4GB
16GB RAM
HDD 1 TB + 128 GB SSD

it should run Skyrim just fine, but whenever I start up, it freezes on the Imperial seal, also freezing the in game Steam UI.
The only way to remedy this is to ALT+TAB out and back in, but the problem persists, freezing the game UI and Steam UI every 5-10 mins.
My audio is set at what the fix apparently was, two or so years ago, 48k? I have 7.1 Surround if that matters.Realtek audio drivers are up to date.
My NVIDIA driver is 306.14, and I'm wary of updating because 314.22 gave me considerable drops in frame rate. IDFK why but its been soured to me.
As far as I know I have DirectX 11.
I've deleted the .ini files and fixed the Skyrim cache.
The game is up to date via Steam, with all three current DLC expansions.

I have removed all mods and the issue still persists.

I have a Corsair Vengeance M65 mouse installed. Drivers up to date, if that makes a difference.
Otherwise it's all clean.

I'm not a tech expert or nothing, so that's about all the ideas I've got or found online.

Suggestions? I'm about to tear my hair out.

 

[mimejuice]

there are the results
most of this is over my head by now

I've got freezes happening in other games too, Bethesda and non
tested so far on Oblivion, Dead Island, and ME2
everything is only recognizing my Intel HD card and not my Geforce
I've done a few more test runs of Skyrim, the major glitches seem to have stopped, but I do still get load screen and bethesda logo freezes (also on Oblivion, it crashes at the logo)

IDFK what to do, if setting the GeForce to global messes me up
I'm nowhere near experienced enough to go into BIOS

 

[mouse24]

Interesting... Your core clock rate doesn't seem to increase past 324 in furmark, though that doesn't really say much as it could be done on purpose by nvidia. Its been done before...

As much as I hate to say this, do you still have the warranty? I would chat up there support and see if they have anything to try out. You can get rid of optimus entirely, though that would require you to reformat with different disk. (not the one they send you) though your code should still work on it and its free to download. (no its not pirating) From what I have heard, optimus is tied into the windows installation.

Though I don't know if that would void your warranty so wait until talking to support.

Since its still crashing in games and we have tried everything we can think of, I think it might be hardware related.
Thats a very nice laptop and shouldn't be giving you these problems.

This is assuming you can live with the shipping back and forth and potential shipping costs.