After patch 1.5 and before patch 1.6, my game was actually running very smoothly. It did have some stutters and low frame rate on busy areas but it would never be too much of a problem. But since the most recent patch I've been experiencing consistent stutters in my game. In between these stutters, the game runs smoothly, but it will stutter for a second or two quite often when I play. I made a completely new game, deleted the game data and the patch and reinstalled both of those, and still, in the first hour of that new save, the game will stutter fairly often. Why does it seem like I'm the only one with this issue? Before this patch people would always be vocal about these issues but now after the patch it seems like the PS3 version is fairly stable for most people (unlike me) since I barely see any complaints about lag and framerate anywhere on the internet.

my game also seems less stable after patch 1.7, even the very beginning of the game when ur on that cart lags for me, seems 1.7 made things worse.

Mine too.