This is a video of a much newer sawmill, but it's still a water powered "up and down" style and cuts the same way as the game's sawmills. Needless to say, the game's version is rather optimistic about the rate of cutting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dnxwrZqs1w

That's pretty impressive. It would be interesting to see if the timescale being faster in Skyrim has something to do with the speed of the mills and if you set it to real time, would you get something approximating what you see in the video.

More importantly, would you want to sit there for hours while it sliced wood?

Ours cuts about 1 foot per minute, at least in this soft wood. I'm sure other mills are faster or slower, but 1ft/min at least puts you into the right order of magnitude. And yes it's remarkably tedious in real life. Though, we remind people: If you think this is slow, your other choice to make boards in this time frame was to use a hand saw.

Wow the graphics are so realistic what game is it from?

Real Life but since you did not know the title I guess it is banned in your country or it took an arrow to the knee

Real Life hay, I might give it a try one day. I heard is has about 80 years of game play but no replay value.

Hur hur wood....

I play it right now, it's a bit dull and tedious. There are amazing locations but there's no Fast Travel and it tends to cost a lot to move around. Also you only have one life, so that limits adventuring a lot.. the Choice and Consequence element is well done however. The game also makes you really feel like you're only a part of it instead of it revolving around you..