Hey guys, I've had skyrim for a while now, and after like 2 months of play, the game started lagging.
Every 5-10 minutes, the game will slow down to around 5 fps and stay like that for around 4 minutes, then go back to smooth 40+ fps.

Is there any way to fix this?

Thanks

My specs
Windows 7 64 bit
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 Ghz
6GB of RAM
Nvidia Geforce GTX 260M with 1GB of VRAM

Laptop?...

Why is everyone killing there laptops?

Sit it on a bucket of Ice...Better?

Seeing what this game can do to a Serious, "Gaming" Full tower PC, I have a real hard time thinking a laptop could compete.

EDIT: Just remembered after reading through some threads. The first thing you should do is remove any overclocking software you have installed. Some companies like ASUS supply overclocking utilities, and these are causing major problems with Skyrim. Do this first, then follow the list below if you're still having problems.

First, have you installed many texture mods?
Second, are you running Skyboost?

Third, have you tried comparing performance right now with performance after:

Turning off anti-aliasing, fxaa, anisotropic filtering, reducing shadow quality, etc.

Also, if you have the new nvidia driver, tirn off ssao. If you don't have it (the beta driver), download it, install it, then make sure ssao is off, and other settings are off or very conservative.

After you do this and see decent performance, you can scale the settings back up a little at a time.

If you aren't going to help just don't comment.

@omphaloskepsis Thanks, i'll try that.

Try alt tabbing or alt-control-delete which minimizes the screen. This normally works to instantly set your fps back to normal.

Also, I disabled all auto saving features and reduced my amount of saves down to about <10. This seems to have cleared it up for me, but it still appears every now and again.

Oh, also, if you haven't download the latest 290.53 drivers do so, it increases graphics performance in indoor areas which is where I was getting the stuttering.

Hope I can help you.

I wish i had your lags dude, cause my game crashes ....
And you can use this mod for your lags :

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2531

Put it in your skyrim folder where your exe is .

Sorry...

Reading between the lines.....Thought most people could to that....

"I said.....Why is everyone killing their Laptops..."

Read that as....The Game is extremely Hard on a System, most Laptops are NOT gaming RIGS. They get pushed too far and the result is they throttle down a clock or two to help with the Temps so it does not do any damage to the internals of your Laptop.

I said....."Sit it on a bucket of ICE"
Read that as..

You could Be overheating. Check and monitor your temps. Heat is a killer and again when a modern system nears a thermal threshold it will throttle the Clock down . Problem is the Temp goes right down so it throttles back up , its like riding a roller-coaster. Laptop video cards are not as good as their desktop counterparts, if your filling your Available GPU Vram it will Slow to a stutter as the textures are swapped out. Alt/Tab will clear about 200 MB of video RAM . Get and Use Skyboost. use a Cooler.

Also no sense of humor?..there were Smilies in the post for a reason...WTF.
Last person with a laptop I ever respond to..

Okay alright dude. I was just in a hurry to get answers. Wasn't trying to be rude.

I think I fixed the problem, but thanks for all the help.

I'm getting the same issue, and on a desktop PC. What resolved it for you?



Also I would like to expand upon the description given above. (Although after just having used CPUID's HwMonitor, I think that my 88-112 degree (celsius) GPU temps are to blame for the lag)

The lag does indeed happen every few minutes, and all screens except for the 'esc' menu lag (Inventory, Crafting, Character options, Spells, etc). When I press esc, the mouse moves normally again, and the lag is not present until I exit the escape menu. The lag doesn't stop for at least 1-2 mins, and seems to stop sooner if I enter the escape menu.

Again, I'm thinking that this is due to high GPU core temps now, but I've seen a couple of other folks with this issue, and no details of what resolved it for them.

(for kicks, here's my (edited) DxDiag System Specs in a spoiler tag:)

Use AntiFREEZE patch with FixGraphics=false in enbpatch.ini.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I found out why this was happening to me. Since the fan on my card had stopped, it was getting very hot under load. Adding oil to the bearing allowed the fan to spin, but not fast enough, so I have an excuse to get a better card. Now I just feel like an idiot, though. At least it's not a major game bug.