After the patch the drops in frame rates was significantly reduced. I am a happy camper again. The thing I don't understand is, if it worked on my ps3, why didn't it work on other people's? Doesn't all ps3 units have the same hardware? I have the slim with 160 gig hd. That has always been my number one reason for console gaming opposed to pc gaming. The same hardware to write code for, should make it easier for good performance across the board. Or am I not understanding something?

it seems that after the patch running at max speed is not fluid

Are you a heavy explorer? Or have you gone through only a few dungeons and looted only want you want, rather than everything? The framerate issues are dependent on what you do in the game, and just how much memory is being used as a result.

It worked for me for a while-now i have to reboot after a few hours

I am a heavy explorer, I havent gotten the found 100 areas trophy yet, but I have found and explored many many dungeons. explored 6 of 9 hold cities and surrounding areas. did almost all daedric quests, did companion quests, got the 50 misc quests trophy, and bunch of side quests. So I havent been complacent in the slightest. MY save is 8.2 mb and my char is lvl 27. I havent had any issues at all other than very rare freeze on loading screen going into an area. I have noticed since patch 1.2 my save has only grown by about 250kb and I have done a LOT. SO the save file growth seems slowed by quite a bit. And it actually flucuates down when cleanup is performed. For me the patch seems to be working great. So Far.

I play for at least 4-5 hours a night and never have to restart to regain performance

My experience is exactly the same as yours. Heavy exploring without any issues. Just the occasional freezeup. But like I've stated in previous threads, I've had games other than Skyrim freeze up on me in the past. It svcks when it happens but it's nothing I haven't seen before. This is why I always save my game before entering new areas.

Out of curiousity, do you have tendency to get quest, complete quest, pick up new quest ... or do you have a lot of "started" quests which you haven't gotten back to? I know 99% of players have a bit of both, curious to which is more common for you.

My experience seems to be the same as "theseeker" so I figured I'd answer as well.
I do get alot of quest that I don't do right away (Hard to avoid unless you don't talk to any of the NPC's). But when I do decide to do one, I do it all the way through until it gets put on the completed list. I never half do a quest and then start another. After playing Oblivion and running into a few glitches in that game, I decided that jumping around is probably just asking for trouble.
Not saying that this is why I'm not having problems with quests but I definately haven't had any problem finishing quests and recieving the rewards that come with completing them. I also don't go on random killing sprees that could potentially mess up a quest where a specific NPC is needed for it. had that happen in Oblivion a few times. Couldn't finish a few quests because I had killed a particular NPC during the early part of the game not realizing they would be part of a quest later.

I'm a heavy explorer. I do every side quest I run across and have explored tons of caves and dungeons. It's not a perfect ride, I still get some frame rate drops but nothing to complain about. The game is massive and to experience occasional drops in performance, is normal I think.

question for thoose of you who have little to no lag, Do you guys restart the machine after a death or just keep playing through, do you fast travel, and when you start do you use continue or load???

Not all people have the same model of PS3

Not all people have HDDs loaded the same way.

Not all people play the same way.

There are a lot of factors to consider with these problems. Probably why they're so hard to correct.