New drivers underperforming?

I was playing Skyrim on max settings just a week ago with the HD texture pack installed, no problem. I had an overclock going, yes.

I updated my nVidia graphics drivers when they were released...I figured hey, what's the worst that can happen right? But for whatever reason, I'm experiencing FPS lag on it. And not slight; it's very, very noticeable, and it makes the game almost unplayable. I haven't done any other PC gaming yet; I'm kind of afraid to try. The only thing I can think of that this might be caused by is the fact that the drivers updated. Anyone else have this problem?

EDIT: Now I'm almost 100% positive it was the drivers. I reverted back to the old ones; the 285.62; and everything runs fine again.

EDIT 2: I left Skyrim to do some screenshot tweaking and make my first edit; now I come back, and Skyrim isn't picking up my GT 555M.

 

mwf3 def got better with the update.

ive always had fps drop on skyrim with high/ultra settings...i havnt gotten a chance to play since the update, hopefully it doesnt make it any worse than it already was.

 

For heaven's sake , there is already a Driver discussion thread for this Nvidia Driver , please don't start induvidual threads for every small thing. Please,

 

By new driver I assume you mean the 295.73? Then that's weird because you're the first to report that the driver actually make it worse because most of owner who have the driver update (incl me) are report that the driver really improve the framerate. However, I have to ask have you whitelist the game .exe (TESV.exe & TESVLauncher.exe)? And another is that if you do, turn the Ambient Occlusion off because for me I try to have it on to see what different, and the different is not much, just the shadow and lighting stuff have been greatly improve.

Before I have the Ambient Occlusion on, I play on High with some tweak on texture and reflects and my average framerate was about 50 ~ 65, but when I have the AO on, for unknown reason the fps dip down to about 25 ~ 30 which is unacceptable for me. So I just have it off and the fps return to normal, by default the AO will automatically use the global setting which is off but just to be safe select the Off option instead. And for the Ambient Occlusion, I notice that only driver starting from 290.53 are have it available (on some specific game that support it).