Well, the latest patch helped a bit. Bethesda finally rolled out a patch that makes Skyrim aware of up to 4 gigs of RAM, and uses it. (Apparently better than the mod I had that did the same thing) I still get lag in certain places, like the Cistern in Riften's Ratway, and places that have a lot of running water, but it's far more tolerable now.
Also, I turned shadow quality down from ultra to high, and that seemed to help a lot. The game recommends ultra settings for my setup, but screw it. I'm not sitting there marveling at the quality of the shadows.
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