I personally think the video is accurate (to that specific save/copy only) and not necessarily relevant to all copies of the game.
There have been videos taken at the start of the game that record abysmal FPS in comparison to the video- and some take framerates
from saves that progress long into the game itself. I've had 0 FPS when starting a brand new game (after deleting game save data,
rebuilding database, etc etc) and I'm not just talking about the part where they lower the drawbridge.

That said, I don't see anything wrong with the video other than it might give the implication that the lag "isn't that bad". But the problem is that
there is definite proof of it being MUCH WORSE under the same play times and virtually identical conditions. I think that may be the reason why
people take issue with the video. I could be wrong though.

I own both the PS3 and the XBOX version of the game. The XBOX version experience FPS drops the same as the PS3. I'm not denying their footage, but it's not happening every time. Sometimes the XBOX gets amazing FPS drops while the PS3 don't. It's seems, to me, that it's very random.

Yes, the Xbox version experiences some fps drops as well... no, they're not as bad as the PS3's however. It's just wrong to claim otherwise. Framerate drops of one kind do not automatically equal framerate drops of another kind. The 360 version's average framerate is superior and doesn't suffer from consistently sub-standard results like the PS3 version's does.

Well, I think it's just as sub-standard. And I play them both. I don't have any huge problems on the PS3 version of Skyrim so. To me, the Xbox and PS3 is almost the same. Xbox can be somewhat better sometimes. And the Xbox 360 version's average framerate being superior is something i disagree with, based on the fact that they both are very mediocre.

You're mistakenly equating two separate framerates, neither of which being fully satisfactory, in terms of degree of negative impact simply because neither is perfect. One may dip to 25 on occasion while maintaining something closer to 30 most of the time while the other may end up usually at something around the 25 mark with dips into as low as the teens, but just because neither manages to stay at a perfectly smooth performance doesn't mean they're equally as poor. The Lensoftruth and DigitalFoundry comparisons are accurate and the reality is that the PS3 version struggles very tangibly more than the 360 version to maintain a stable framerate. That's just a fact. It's not an opinion-based subject, it's objective performance of the two versions in comparison to one another. The 360 version's framerate is better.

Maybe I didn't explain myself properly (english is not my native language). But I have clocked in many hours in the Xbox version now and I can say that it is better than the PS3 framerate. Is it something to complain about in reference to the Xbox? No, absolutely not. The Xbox framerate is sub-par as the PS3 and is not close to being satisfactory. I have experienced horrible FPS drops on the Xbox and about the same frequency as the PS3 ( I have not measured it in any way, it's just my experience ). And according to the videolink I originally commented on, I would say that it is a false representation of the issue as the Xbox version can get just as bad framerates and just as often as the PS3 version.

I play on both as well and I have no where near the fps drop on my 360 as I do on my PS3. It seems we have totally different experiences and I'm not suprised, it seems to happen across both platforms.

What model 360 do you have? I was reading in the 360 forum that Beth said to have 10GB free on your HDD as Skyrim using an aggressive cache system on the 360. People with the 4GB flash memory on the 360 S have more fps probs than the 250GB S model.

I have the 250GB S model. Only games on there is Black Ops and Skyrim, so I have plenty of space.

Ah well we have completely different experiences on the same model *shrug*

Not surprising. This game seems to be very random on how it works, lol. Ironically my PS3 version is smooth as hell right now.

We've already established this. As you well know its an error in understand that has since been corrected by someone with more inforimation than just....no.

I would just ignore it completely.

Wow I played 150 hours on ps3 and now I have it on xbox and I have litterally notice 2 times in my first 12 hours that the game has stuttered for a split second. Otherwise my framerate has been perfectly smooth. The only time Ive ever seen ps3 play without frame drops at all is in breezehome. The xbox version runs at a constant framerate no matter where I am. Im only 12 hours in so that could change but on ps3 the first fight i got into the game started stuttering. Those digital foundry and lens of truth videos were very helpful in helping me switch versions and Im very happy.

The biggest difference I noticed is the archery. Right from the get go with the archery on ps3 I found the frame jitters killed my aim. Now I use he bow all the time and i can hit moving targets and I can also hit targets while Im moving and its either to track the arrow and see if it hit the enemy because of the constitancy of the framerate. And no its not 60fps OMFG I CANT BELEIVE HOW GOOD THAT LOOKS but after playing ps3 thats how I feel. Forget the ultra 0fps lag I might get that again on xbox im told Im talking about the day 1 new game half hour in performance.

I think the biggest difference is probably v sync. I used to be a pc gamer and turning off vsync immediately meant higher fps. The xbox 360 does tear a frame here or there but in my whole 12 hours there was only one point that I actually noticed the top ad bottom completley split in 2. The ps3 barely runs this game. Just to be fair I don't beleive the ps3 cant run this game I just think it was a sloppy port. In fact they probably just amde this game on pc and ported it to consoles. The xbox is a pc pretty much so it was fine and ps3 needs special attention and didnt get it. Is ps3 hard to program for If john carmack the daddy of modern fps engines says so than yes...yes it is. Is that an excuse for developers?...no....no its not.

Well, people have different experiences with it I guess.

They really don't. Some people might not care much or might not notice the difference between framerates and stuttering too much, but it's there. We're all running on the same, exact PS3 and/or 360 hardware with machines running on the same, exact PS3 and/or 360 APIs, therefore differences in inherent, base performance are impossible. This game is a poor port to the PS3 that rarely runs at 30 fps while the 360 version, while not always, tends to stay up at there. You're not experiencing anything different, it's literally impossible unless somebody has a defective GPU or CPU in their platform or have illegally modified it in currently-unknown manners (don't think it's possible at all to switch out hardware in either console in any way and still have them working, with the exception of HDDs or, in the PS3's case, SSDs).

It all depends on how you play the game, what you do in it etc. It's very possible. I'm capable of noticing FPS drops and such. Almost everyone is. It's not a matter if I care about it or not.

Different people do notice framerate drops differently... the problem being the PS3 version is so constantly sub-par that it doesn't have framerate drops so much as the rare framerate spike to 30...

Differences in playstyle can certainly affect this long-term issue people are having with memory complications, but right out of the box (as noted in the two prominent video anolyses comparisons) yields the truest base performance. Aside from that, you might obviously notice a difference between, say, exploring the tundra and exploring the fall forest as one is relatively barren while the other is full of foliage that just destroy performance at least on the PS3 version. If you're comparing the fall forest on the 360 version to the tundra on the PS3 version, the difference might not be too noticeable, but comparing the fall forest on the 360 version to the fall forest on the PS3 version? That's a different story. To a degree, yes, playstyle can accentuate what one notices in performance considering which regions you tend to inhabit more and they can certainly affect long-term, variable complications, but put in the same, exact situations, the 360 version will outdo the PS3 version in every way except some screen-tearing.

I'm just gonna stop it here. After I read that sentence it's clear were not going to come close to agree or convince the other. The PS3 is sub-par but so is the Xbox IMO. No trolling or anything rude intended, but we're never gonna agree on this

Then I will leave you be.

That's not the only reason though. The 360 have a better development tools and hardware that is more suited for games, thanks to their multiple general cores, a slightly more powerful GPU which is blessed with some embedded RAM and a unified RAM that is shared by both the CPU and GPU.

The advantage of the PS3 hardware are the SPUs, which are blazing fast at what they do. But unfortunately there isn't really much game related stuff they can do, so in the end it's not much of an advantage. What the SPU is really good at, is to decode and play video streams, it could probably play hundreds of high quality videos at the same time, but that's pointless to do in a game.

Anyway, clever people have been able to use the SPUs for other things than just videos, fortunately, there are physics calculations, collision detection and postprocessing effects like MLAA (as seen in God of War III or Soul Calibur V to mention a few) and motion blur (as seen by moving the camera fast in the Uncharted games) that the SPU can do most of the calculations for, but that's kinda it.

Physics is the big SPU thing as far as Skyrim is concerned I'm sure, as there is no doubt Bethesda used the PS3 SPUs for physics calculations, thanks to Havok. But I'm not really sure how much else Bethesda would be able to move over, without spending a year or two trying to port as much of their general code to SPU code as possible. Just me guessing though, obviously.

But to port a game that is designed for two general cores to one general core and SPUs is not a walk in the park. We have plenty of evidence for this, as a great number of games have failed with it; Baynetta, Red Dead Redemption and many others, where the 360 version is clearly superior. In the past the Namco fighting games been vastly better on the 360 as well, it's first with the recent Soul Calibur V they managed to make both versions even.

Oh, and the blu-ray drive is completely irrelevant here, seeing how Skyrim is less than 6GB anyway. Even the 360 disc is far from being filled.

Don't think I'm biased towards the 360 either, I don't have one, but I do have a PS3 and I am pleased with it. I'm currently playing Way of the Samurai 3 on the PS3 (when I'm not playing Skyrim on the PC), which is quite buggy and quirky, but still a lot of fun!

It's OLD NEWS that with Bethesda games

PC >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> XBOX >>> PS3

This is NOT NEW, we do not need to even talk about this anymore. It's a known fact.

Im not sure why you think the SPE are inferior for processing. That seems to me baseless.

btw, its SPU is just the processing unit of the SPE, which is generally accepted to be treated as the processing units in the cell.

There is a pretty widely accepted paradigm to adopt for coding great games for the PS3. I recommend youtube search for 'the last of us'

As for what do you do with the cell? Well you can have basically two hardware threads in the PPE core, so one for hardware thread for simulation and one for rendering. Then you give one more SPE to rendering. One SPE to audio.

PS3 uses one SPE (the reserved one) for running the OS.

That leaves us with 3 SPE for the odd jobs. I think there is plenty of memory, and plenty of processing power in the PS3 to run Skyrim. It is a matter of WILL that Bethesda does not have to refactor their code to work better on the architecture.

All systems have intrinsic limitations based on architectural decisions, and the PS3 is no better or worse than the Xbox, it is simply different. It certainly can be more difficult to optimize for, but the results when done properly (4J studios I'm patting your back here) are awesome.

Yeah, "The Last of Us" Looks pretty sweet. As far as Skyrim's FPS on PS3, it often every 20 minutes or so depending on how far you are, where you are, and what your doing, goes down to 0.0 FPS (no joke)

Yep.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-ps3-skyrim-lag

It's true. Most of the time, even when starting new games, prior to patches or not... game play has always been sluggish. Very... very sluggish. Most of the time I'd stay it's around 22-26fps, but it frequently dips below that when wandering in forests, caves, using spells or fighting mages. Pretty much all the time. That crap about "the eye sees at X frame rate" is rubbish. There is a significant difference between 22fps and 30fps. 30fps stable, is okay. Thing is, the less frames there are to see, the more noticeable frame lag is, the higher the frames the harder it is to see. Really at 45fps, you start getting to the point where higher frames don't yield any smoother results. 30fps truly is the bare minimum.

I can't stand companies who say "30fps" which is code word for: "it reached 30fps when looking at the floor, once or twice out of several days worth of testing...".

I know many other people say it, but I've been waiting more than playing, an even if this game is fixed or not, I'm not going to buy another Bethesda game. Mostly because the games are very similar (outside of the Elder Scrolls titles), but also because they can't actually make games that work, without having to rely heavily on patches (yet even then it's hit or miss as to whether it's ever going to be fixed)

I have very little optimism that the patch is going to do anything, but we can always hope. I've always said in other threads that I don't want Bethesda just assuming that the frame rate is all to do with the bug, because it isn't. A stable frame rate is just as important wandering the forests or caves, as it is combating 3 or 4 enemies at once. Stability is key, I don't care if that means toning down graphics (regardless of what the babies might cry about), but fluidity and game play are always more important than graphics! Always.

Oh well, fingers crossed I guess.