game stalling, crashing

I am having a terrible time trying to play. My game keeps freezing, then skips forward as though its been playing. Taking an age to complete a task, especially cooking.

Tonight i had to give up and switch off because it has become unplayable. It hasn't crashed to the point of being unable to be recovered...yet but its threatening it.

I don't use mods or cc and have every pack, laptop it top gaming spec so I've no idea why its not playing. I've got great internet speeds not that it should matter but thought I'd mention that everything seems top except the game. I specifically bought the best laptop I could so i could play seamlessly but it's just not worth playing at the moment.

Any advice would be appreciated, but please dumb it down for me because I'm not very good with computer talk :)