I have seen at least one other person have this issue, and that is that the game is not performing well on mobile gpus.
My specs:
- Intel? Core? i7 2670QM 2.2GHz
- 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
- 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M

I have the game set to low settings and I struggle to get 10 frames per second.
I was wondering if there is a fix or something, because this is not a regular issue on my computer:
I can easily get 25 frames on Ultra settings on BF3.
Every game that I have installed runs well on very high settings as well.
Because I would be very displeased if I could not run this game that I just paid 60$ for.
Please, Bethesda help your mobile pc players out!

All laptops seem to be failing at Skyrim.

I have the same problem with my laptop.
My laptop is not as powerfull as yours but it should easily work on mid settings.
Instead its also like 10 fps.

My laptop works very well for me.

One poster had a nice graph showing CPU usage. The higher your ghz the better, and multiple cores doesn't really effect performance. So right now it's better to have a dual core CPU with high ghz then a quad with low ghz.

If you have a quad with high ghz your fine too. Seeing as you have a laptop your CPU is obviously not as fast as a desktop, add to that mobile gpus are a lot less powerful then there desktop counterparts, and your getting [censored] fps due to that.... most likely.

You Definetly should be able to play on higher settings though. A patch is what will fix this, until then try to lower everything, no AA or af, and see if you can tweak the ini.

Thanks I'll try that, all I can hope is for speed patches

Sent a PM to the admins.

My friends with Nvidia series mobile GPUs and Intel i series CPUs are having this problem too.

Yeah I must agree, Skyrim is a strange game. I have (laptop):

i7 920XM OCed to 3.0Ghz on all 4 cores (throttlestop)
2GB 6990M Slightly OCed
6GB RAM

Settings are Ultra with 0 AA, 16 AF, FXAA on, Shadows Medium, Distant Objects High and I get 65+FPS in the game world, 75+ in caves/dungeons

But like if I fast travel to Dragonsreach and look down from the top it drops to 30FPS =/ (feels laggy) and then 40-50 after I go down the steps... Weird

And if it only uses 2 cores at best shall I pump 2 of mine to 3.33Ghz or 1 core to 3.6Ghz and lower the rest?

It wasn't running on my laptop.
but thanks to this guy it does.

The game had some problems with my GPU.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1257758-nvidia-users-i-found-our-problem/page__gopid__19161968#entry19161968

Yup same set up as me and also having issues. Initially it failed to recognise my card and tried to use internal Intel HD Graphics, but disabling those via BIOS made it recognise. Still having low FPS issues though even on mid/low settings.

Hmm, that might actually be the issue...

I made a topic out of my problem, but this one seems more relevant. I hope the laptop community will be heard by Bethesda.

I got some unstable framerate lag at place where I don't feel their should. I disabled the Vsync it helped, but not that much. I also get an image skipping glitch it feels like its jumping for a couple of frame 1/4 of a second, but this is really annoying. When I raise my graphics The mouse lag is the biggest problem and the game is unplayable. I'm stuck to low with the lowest wide screen resolution... The game is only 100% fluid at 800x600 it looks like Morrowind hahaha... [censored] My Life

My machine:

XPS L501X
Inter Core i7 Q740 1.73 ghz
8 go of ram
win 7 64 bits
GeForce GT 435M

And this is why you buy a desktop for gaming.