How to Improve Skyrim PS3 Performance and Avoid Lag Issues

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on the PlayStation 3 isn’t exactly the best kind of experience, as the game is plagued by massive lag and many freezes once the player’s save game files reach a certain size. In order to improve the title’s performance at least until a new patch arrives, Bethesda has now posted a few tips for PS3 owners.

Skyrim impressed millions of gamers from all over the world, even if it had quite a few glitches in its standard form. Sadly, new patches made the experience much worse, and still haven’t’ fixed the serious lag and freeze issues that affected the game’s PlayStation 3 version.

Bethesda acknowledged these glitches earlier this week and promised that, while the next patch, 1.3, won’t improve these problems, it’s actively working to eliminate them.

Until then, the studio posted a few tips for Skyrim PS3 players, which should at least alleviate some of the lag, so check them out below.

Turn off auto saves - This can cause temporary stuttering since the PS3 saves these files in the background. This is most noticeable with large saves when fast traveling to a new area or entering a new area that auto saves.

Clear space on your hard drive - Skyrim makes heavy use of the hard drive, and freeing up space on here seems to help many people. Hard drive speeds also differ in PS3 models. Some users have reported increase performance by upgrading their drives.

Waiting for time to pass - Many things are running in the world depending on what quests you've done or places you have visited. Using Wait or Rest options, passing time will clear up some of these. It depends how long you wait, it may take up to 30 days for some items. Saving, resetting, and loading after this will have the largest effect.

Bethesda’s Pete Hines also cleared things up concerning a statement from Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer, who speculated that the PS3 issues relate to Skyrim’s engine and the console’s split memory.

"No, it isn't true. He brings up issues we solved long ago. Josh Sawyer did not work on Skyrim nor this engine and his comments don't reflect how the current tech works," Hines mentioned.

Sawyer also mentioned that it would take a lot of work to make Skyrim handle better on the PS3, so if he was mistaken, perhaps Bethesda can eliminate these problems a lot sooner.