My laptop's about a year old, but I bought it at quite a high spec then so it's still fine. When I first ran Skyrim, it chose the 'high' graphics setting. At first, the game plays very smoothly, however after a few minutes it starts to slow down, and after about 5 minutes or so the game is unplayable (<5 fps).
Quitting Skyrim completely and reloading it seems to solve the problem, but only for another 5 minutes of play. I've tried turning down the graphics options to their lowest setting, but this doesn't seem to help. Is there a way to diagnose what the problem is, and fix it?
Best Answer
Have you checked your operating temperature? It could be that your GPU/CPU is overheating, and underclocking itself to cool down, especially if it goes away after a few minutes of waiting after shutting it down.
Does it happen with other games? If not it might just be an issue with Skyrim in general (give their support line a message in that case), but if so, make sure your system isn't choked with dust and that you have proper ventilation just in case it is an overheating issue. It goes without saying that you should try to avoid multitasking when you're playing as well, in case something in the background decides to start eating CPU cycles as well.
Honestly, though, there's not a lot to diagnose on. Check your temperatures when running, maybe have a CPU/GPU monitor handy to see if anything obvious is redlining.
P.S. For those who think overheating issues take a long time to dissipate, properly ventilated stuff can cool down pretty fast, especially if it isn't generating any more heat.