Any of you following Asuka's thread about using an SSD will know that I have decided to take the plunge and install a SSD in my PS3. I have jumped through 100000x hoops to get this working. During this process I might have figured something out which may help game play. Before I backed up my system I deleted ALL of the content from my old HD except save game files. This left me with around 6gb on the disk (before installing skyrim). After I backed it up, I couldn't get my hard drive to work because I had stripped the screws. It was 1am so I had to wait till the next day to go find a new HD guide (I have the really crappy model guide which I guess breaks a lot and they don't use anymore). I had nothing to do so I re-installed the game data on my hard drive and ran around abit. The game was running VERY well. Much better than it had been. Since there was no point in completing objectives as I would be using my backup the next day I went to Solitude and Whiterun and other mega-lag zones. I proceeded to basically kill the entire town. I was having instances of me fighting 5-10 NPC at once in the town with very little lag. This makes me think that possibly cleaning up your HD and reinstalling the game data may be a temporary fix. However, I only played for about an hour so this is rather inconclusive. I can tell you though that before I cleaned up my HD and reinstalled the game data I wouldn't last 5 minutes in those cities with 5 NPC chasing me around, regardless of how long I had been playing.

Hope this helps. Trying anything at this point. I got my SSD up and running, installing Skryim now, and I will keep everyone posted. I plan on playing for a very long time to "sweat" my system. Worst case scenario I have a nice new SSD for my future PC.

Edit: I'm at about 10MB save file with around 60 hours. The lag had been crushing till I cleaned up my HD.