New AMD 7970m laptop possible issues in Skyrim?

Squidlove

Honorable
May 8, 2013
4
0
10,510
Okay so I'll keep this short. I just bought this Alienware m17x and decided to play Skyrim to test out what it's capable of. The game runs well on "Ultra". However, picking items up and moving them, or sometimes when I simply just strafe to the left or right, the framerate seems choppy. But it's strange because magic effects and my character always remains smooth like butter. Is there some sort of explanation for this weird anomaly?
to reiterate: All character movement is always perfectly smooth, including my own character (I often play in 3rd person view) but items I interact with and move are choppy as well as the environment when I strafe. It's like a subset of things have low framerate at times.
 

Squidlove

Honorable
May 8, 2013
4
0
10,510
Alienware M17X R4
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 7970M
3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3740QM
 
That should perform pretty well. Can you try running MSI afterburner as well as task manager while you game.
Look at GPU usage, clocks and temperatures and CPU usage.
What catalyst version?