I know the save file size has been what most are blaming on the lag and I agree it is a portion of hat is happening. However, Bethesda made a statment saying they don't think its the save files and it may be the fact PS3s have so many different HDDs it's causing an issue... When I first heard this I thought it was the dumbest excuse ever but I think there may be some truth to that statement. Here is why.

I have an 80gb reverse compatible PS3 that i recently upgraded with a 7200 rpm 500gb HDD. I have played the game for around 41 hours and have little to no problems whatsoever. Whiterun is a little chugtastic at times (I am willing to blame this on the layout of the town since you can see more of that town at once from several areas than any other town) and once in a while I will hit weird framerate slowdowns (very random when they occur and not very often probably not related to the lag issue at all) My save file is around 8MB and I have joined the companions (done no quests just up to and stopped at the quest line where you find out their secret), have started the beginning quests for Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood, and am about 60% through Mage College quest line. I have done 5 of the main story quests 20 side quests and about 65 miscellaneous task quests. I have also slain about 9 or 10 dragons.

After all that I have yet to experience this game breaking lag. Though I do fear the day I do run into it I really hope I have somehow escaped this fate...

Mine only started showing slight lag at 8mb, and I have a very old 40gb PS3. Wait till you're at 10mb, then see if you've escaped it. 8mb is where it starts for most people.

The HD holds little to no fault in this. I have a brand new 160( 110 space left) giga HD, and i even did a system restore to seek for corrupted data before playing. Still lagging like crazy after 70 hours of playtime. Just keep playing and you will notice it after the save reaches 10 mega. Besides, if this was the HD fault, the game would lag in the beginning too. Not only when the save reaches a bigger size.

I have a samsung 320GB HDD. So no it doesn't have anything to do with the HDD it's bethesda's coders that are the problem.

well File size is obviously not a consistency in this issue. So all of you people who jump to that conclusion seem to be missing something. I will not deny it may be a small part of a larger problem. However just in this forum no one can agree on a consistent number.

"...you will notice it after the save reaches 10 mega"
"8mb is where it starts for most people."

Originally it was 5mb then it became 5.5mb and now i am hearing 7, 7.5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13. There is obviously no consistency in this theory and I believe it may only be a small part of this bug or completely unrelated. It is something the average user is doing (maybe caused by some common action or main quest in the game) and it is a game breaking bug but i don't think save file size is the game breaking problem i think it is something else.

Someone claimed it was the file size and it kind of stuck as the reason but there isn't enough consistency in this theory for it to be the definite problem. And you can't claim "but everyone who has a big file size is having the issue..." yeah the file size is big, because they played the game awhile and the game save grows as it accumulates data... Doesn't make it the culprit.

maybe

We know that it starts at different points for different people. That is completely to be expected, considering that everyone's game world is different. For example, some objects in the world might take up more RAM than others.

The one thing we do know is that for people who experience problem- and this appears to be the majority- the lag gets worse as the file size goes up, and is cured temporarily when the game world passes a month and the objects in the game world reset. There is no question that this is a RAM issue.

Agreed I can make no argument about that

I'm not a coder, but this doesn't seem like it's necessarily true. It would seem that the deeper you go into the game, the more statuses and quests you have that will be continually referenced. So it would make sense that the more of these that you have, the slower the game is going to run.

Ok then, lets think with logic. So, from all my games, why does ONLY skyrim lags and freeze? All beth games for that matter. Fallout 3/NV/ oblivion. I have over 20 games and none of them stutter or freeze. If this was my videogame or the hardware, i think i would notice something from the other games too.

Well because there's a bug in Skyrim that is causing the lag. Why do all Beth games lag? Because the PS3 is difficult to develop on and for some reason Bethesda haven't researched on how to deal with it. That's what irritates me at the moment.

If this was their first game to show these signs I'd be forgiving.

Maybe because Skyrim was poorly coded or because of something unique in the way that Bethesda does things? If you want to say that it's not your hard drive's "fault" then I'm not going to argue with you. But if you want to say that the hard drive plays no part in this, then the facts seem to be against you. Because people who have swapped out their hard drives have reported improvements in Skyrim and in other games such as Gran Turismo as well.

The reason the save file size contributes to the lag is because of how much more information Skyrim is tracking. It appears that Skyrim is storing lots of data in memory and not purging unneeded data. It doesn't lag in the beginning (new game) because it isn't keeping track of many things. However, as the player obtains new items and discovers new locations the game tries to keep information about them in memory and fails to clear it. This is why when you enter a new area it lags so bad. The game doesn't have any left over free memory to account for the new area (render it) so it just stutters.. This is from what I gather and I could be completely off.

I noticed this too, when I first started reading about this bug everyone was saying it would kick in around 5 mb, the number keeps going up. I agree that it is probably being triggered by a specific event, item or corrupt quest file that somehow corrupts the entire save. Whatever it is, I hope they find/found it and fix it soon, I haven't been affected yet but it still makes me nervous.

"Bethesda made a statment saying they don't think its the save files and it may be the fact PS3s have so many different HDDs it's causing an issue... "
Do you mind telling us where exactly did you see that statement?
Misinformation is worse than the lack of information.
Stop spreading BS. They never said that and if they ever did they would be mocked by the rest of the gaming industry.
Let me make it crystal clear:
The "lag" issue has nothing to do with HDD sizes, types, speed or playstation model! It has to do with code, memory or maybe even decompression.
The game should be working exactly the same in all PS3s!

Yes, the save file thing is very inconsistent, but you do raise a good point. It might help things if the people who have the issue, would share everything they've done in the game. Which would include:

-Quest completed, and taken.
-Perks taken
-Items in your possession, or in your storage, including spells and shouts.
-locations visited.

How do we know this isn't a quest or item related issue? No one has asked this question before that I know of. Everyone immediately jumped on the save file/memory/caching issue, after abandoning some of the other theories, because the save file is the only thing that seems to be in common. Correlation is not causation.

There was a poster in the Xbox 360 section, who was experiencing lag issues after picking up a glitched key, and the issue was resolved when he got rid of the key. It was linked in one of the threads here yesterday.

Now let's assume what Pete said on Twitter yesterday is true, he vaguely hinted that the next patch is aimed at fixing this issue, and also added we won't have to start a new character if it fixes it. Could it be that these issues are simply related to glitched items, quest, perks, etc? And the general bug patches can fix this? Also when Pete was asked about the issue earlier this week, he said they didn't think it was related to save files, but they would look into it.

I've been here admittedly nerd raging myself about this, but I'm still not 100% convinced it's a save file issue. It could just as likely be glitched quests or items, it could be a manufacturing issue with the game discs. I don't believe it has anything to do with PS3 hardware, because people are reporting the issue with different console models, different hard drives etc. All we can really do is wait and see what this next patch does.

There was a post made earlier in these forums talking about this issue. Here it is, it was far more detailed. There is a temporary (costly) work around. I have purchased an SSD and can verify that using one rids the game of any frame rate drops and lag. Here's the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1276175-solution-solving-the-lag-issue-warning-costs-money/ in question.

mine now is at 12mb ... i'm using an old 40gb fat ps3....

after playing 1 hour or more...the lag is unbearable......so frustating....can't play...

still wait for the patch...if the patch can't fix the problem..i'm gonna sell my ps3 copy and get the xbox one...

I was in a situation similar to yours. Although I did not plan on selling my PS3 I was looking for a quick fix to this issue. I went out and purchased a Solid State Drive and it seems to have solved all my problems. You can read more about it http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1276175-solution-solving-the-lag-issue-warning-costs-money/. Depending on the size of your current hard drive and how much data you need, I'd advise you to simply buy an SSD.

I'm currently playing on a ~8MB save file and can confirm that getting a SSD dramatically improves gameplay.

Quote: "I'm currently playing on a ~8MB save file and can confirm that getting a SSD dramatically improves gameplay"

Just wait untill i enchanted my SSD with lag -35% and improved it to legendary.
A legendary SSD worth renaming to gameplay improver.

It does not improve gameplay, it improves fps. Which i quite doubt tbh.

As you can probably deduct, english is not my native language. Luos, I haven't yet made a side by side comparison of FPS/load times but from what I can recall, my game was unplayable before getting the SSD. I can see virtually no lag which some consider to be at ~30 FPS. I'll do a side by side comparison when I've got the time.

I think there is truth to the HDD issue. I finally experienced the bone crushing lag this evening.. On my bedroom PS3 which still sports it's original 80GB 5400rpm HDD. My living room PS3, which after 10megs and 60 hours I still have no lag on, is sporting an upgraded 500GB 7200rpm HDD.

I only used my bedroom ps3 this evening as my wife wanted to watch something on the bigger television, and low and behold, lag city on the [censored]tier HDD. You should all upgrade to solid state drives and your issues will be solved.

I have already tried to explain why upgrading your HDD to the faster one improves game performance. I just copy and paste it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/nov/18/elder-scrolls-skyrim-ps3-problems?newsfeed=true

That article is where i got the info about the HDD thing. Now please stop spreading your BS opinion as fact.

EDIT* This Solid State HDD thing irritates me I wasn't sure if the PS3 would accept the Solid State HDD that's why i got the 7200rpm 500gb i was debating getting a solid state and i decided not to because i had doubts it would work in the Playstation damn damn damn

Did you actually read the article? The only thing that Bethesda is quoted on in the article is that "Most users aren't experiencing these kind of issues on the PS3," and "We are investigating the issue further as to why some folks are seeing this." Terms in bold are ambiguous and opened to interpretation. It is also worth mentioning that a few lines after, The Guardian mentions the fact that Sony manufactured different model PS3s with different hard drives.

I am pretty convinced that the hard drive isn't playing nicely with the game. Sure, some issues can be resolved with a patch but for now, grabbing a SSD can allow you to play the game the way it was ment to be played.