Short backstory: I owned 80gb "fat" PS3 since it came out, and it just died 2 days ago (with Skyrim inside). Bought new slim PS3, dissected Skyrim out of old machine, and started all my games completely from scratch again... including my level 33 guy here on Skyrim.

Performance: Now that I've seen how my dying fat PS3 was performing compared to a brand new one... I'm convinced that some of your PS3s are getting close to their life span. My old fat PS3 would have a really hard time rendering and loading new areas and expansive scenes in the game. It would be choppy, hesitate, etc. The brand new slim PS3 (straight out of the box, system update, install skyrim, patched, play) has only experienced stuttering ONCE (dragon battle). Now I've only made it to Whiterun and I'm level 9, it will truly be put to the test when I get to Markarth. I can tell you with absolute certainty, that my newer PS3 is operating sooo much better than the old one. Sure it was hardware fatigue, but I'm not experiencing nearly the same amount of hardware "glitches" I thought that I had before.

I thought this was worth posting.

I have a brand new ps3 Slim. My game is still broken. This is surely not the cause.

It still should run well on both old and new(unless it outright dies). I have afat 60 gig machine, it doesnt have memory card slots, it runs everything else fine.

Someone apparently can't read information provided from other topics. The issue is from the size of the file, not the model of your machine. The problem is on gamesas's end, not yours. Can we get any clearer?

Yeah, big deal. I have a 1 year old PS3 slim and everything was just nice and dandy until I reached about 16 hours. At that point it began lagging in major cities and now it's nearly unplayable after 20 hours. Stop trying to mask the problem! I will not put ice on my PS3, restart it after every hour, or buy an Xbox! I paid 60 dollars for a broken product. It is not our responsibility to fix it or find a way around it. Bethesda simply needs to patch the game because they were the ones who had 5 years to get this game right but didn't. That is all.

Ta-yo:
Whats your save file size right now? On your lvl 9 char.

My 250 ps3 slim is within a year, Mine is having issues. Clearly not an age issue.

Especially seeing every other game I have played runs fine.

Aye. My PS3 Slim is only 2 years old, and has run every game just fine up until now. I highly doubt it has anything to do with console age.

Just want to give a bit of comfort to old / fat PS3 owners: I have a brand new Slim and am experiencing all the same lag / fps problems everyone else is.

I have an Uncharted 3 Bundle PS3 Slim (So two weeks old) and the problem very much exists.

people!! its not because of a playstation!!! type!!! unless its really about to die lol!!

the reason is because of a design fault, the system saves to much, look at the save files ,, your playstation.. NONE of them can take that, they are working on it!

and for the guy who posted the thread the sole only reason for your character not lagging is because its only level 9, and way before atleast 5mb, +- 20 hours of gameplay!

My save files are 4.1-4.5mb. I'll report back when they hit the fabled 6mb marker.

To those of you on the offensive, my character on my old system (level 33) had file sizes that were of course larger... but don't forget that at one point in the recent past that same character was but a wee whelp like mine now. I'm comparing apples to apples. I know that my old system was hurting, independent of the game file size. Also to be noted, I never disowned your theory of game file sizes, so don't disown mine mmmkkaaayyy?

I had the "old fat" 40gb PS3, and I played the game to level 35 with over 7mb save, and I have been to whiterun, winterhem and Markarth, experiencing occasional lag, no big issue.