Stupidly low framerate, even with all mods disabled

[spontaneite]

My computer is pretty much at the lowest level of capability that anyone playing Skyrim should have. It's 4ghz memory, intel hd processor etc etc. Nothing particularly impressive but surely not that bad. I was alerted to my horrible fps performance when I installed an ENB which told me it would reduce fps by around 5. Upon playing my game was immediately so laggy I really couldn't go on. Now, I had never bothered to check my fps before. I did then and was fairly convinced that the result I received was wrong: with the ENB, I was apparently working at around 2 fps. So I removed the ENB, and my fps went up to a range of 5-9. Usually 7. I then disabled all mods, and fps actually went a bit lower, never exceeding 7.

 

At fps 7-9, I don't notice any unusual lag in the game. For me, that kind of performance is normal, because now I have to assume it's what I've been playing since I installed, and it's what I've been playing for approaching 170 hours. I have gathered from various mod descriptions, news, etc that Skyrim is considered nice and playable when it's around 35fps. Clearly I am so far below this it's unbelievable.

 

Is this merely because I have a crappy computer, or is there something I could actually do about this? I'm certain it's nothing to do with my save game, because upon disabling all mods I made a new save to test fps, so I wouldn't horribly ruin mine.