Why is my game running so slowly?

I put this in the Bugs forum originally, but maybe this is the better spot.

Here are my specs:

Pentium 4, 3.20Ghz

3.00GB RAM

Game is set to:

Medium database

8.0.2 patch

England (L2&up), Germany (1st Div), Italy(A&B), Spanish (1st).

I am sure I put in about 6-7 entire countries like Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, etc.

So, with those specs, should my game still seem pretty slow at times? I would think those specs would be pretty good.

Because at times, it is like molasses. Especially, big Euro days, etc. I could walk away for almost 5 minutes.

Any insight and thoughts would be appreciated.

Do you notice this slowness right at the start or are you several years into a game. If you are quite a way into a game then the slowness is inevitable im afraid as the size of the game would be huge after a few years. If this slowness is right at the start then have you tried going into task manager and disabling as much as you can or checked to see exactly what is using all the memory.

Well, I am pretty sure that it was slow from the start.

Also, the task manager says that WSM is using about 97% of the computer usage. Not even sure what that means.

Don't have a lot of other things running.

Virus scanner? Put FM to its exceptions if you have a heavy virus scanner. Put the detail level on minimum. The game should be fine on your pc, but it is still a heavy processing game. Also, make sure you select 'threading' in the preferences menu so it uses hyperthreading.

do you have your FM files compressed?

If not then go into preferences and make sure they get compressed from now.

how much free space is there in your hard drive?

@Pim - Threading cannot be clicked for some reason on the General Pref screen? What do you mean by detail level? Where?

@Arsenal - I clicked compress save games on the Gen Pref screen, is that correct?

@ths - 101 GB at the moment.

Thank you to all for help. I hope this helps some other folks, too!

try to defragment your hard drive, it usually speeds things up also do checks for viruses and spyware

good luck

Did you mean you retained players&staff from 6-7 countries, or just that you selected the leagues as viewable? If it's the former then I think that's the most probable reason it's slow. That's an enormous amount of people which the game has to keep track of.

Also, when you add leagues from another continent you also get a lot of extra cups added that the game will have to calculate. I.e. if you add Brazil, not only will competitions in Brazil be calculated, but also Copa Libertadores, copa sudamericana, etc.

Originally posted by Rio_V:

@Pim - Threading cannot be clicked for some reason on the General Pref screen? What do you mean by detail level? Where?

I thought Pentium 4 pc's above 3 ghz had hyperthreading, maybe yours doesn't. With hyperthreading the processors acts like it has two processors which enchances performance. Like the current dual-core processors, with the difference that those have two real cores. By selecting threading the game uses both. If you can't select that then you may not have that kind of processor.

Detail level can be selected when you start a new game and in-game in the top menu. You can set it at minimum so it processes less game matches in full detail.

Originally posted by Pim1984:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Rio_V:

@Pim - Threading cannot be clicked for some reason on the General Pref screen? What do you mean by detail level? Where?

I thought Pentium 4 pc's above 3 ghz had hyperthreading, maybe yours doesn't. With hyperthreading the processors acts like it has two processors which enchances performance. Like the current dual-core processors, with the difference that those have two real cores. By selecting threading the game uses both. If you can't select that then you may not have that kind of processor.

Detail level can be selected when you start a new game and in-game in the top menu. You can set it at minimum so it processes less game matches in full detail. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Cool. I fixed the detail level. The "threading" box is not tickable (spelling?). I guess that means I can't do it. Or, perhaps you have to set it that way when you start a game?

@eple - Yeah, I added entire countries, so that might be it. But I am trying to have the most places to coach available. What other way can that be accomplished?

Originally posted by Rio_V:

@eple - Yeah, I added entire countries, so that might be it. But I am trying to have the most places to coach available. What other way can that be accomplished?

just add the leagues, retaining all the players wont do the trick

The reason is simple. Your computer is slow. FM is the most demanding game on the market when it comes to CPU power. Try to play with fewer leagues loaded.

As others have said you can lower the detail level, but apart from that your only option is upgrading to a nice new quad core

Have you set the virus checker not to check the FM folder or the Application Data/FM folder?

Originally posted by jakobx:

The reason is simple. Your computer is slow. FM is the most demanding game on the market when it comes to CPU power. Try to play with fewer leagues loaded.

As others have said you can lower the detail level, but apart from that your only option is upgrading to a nice new quad core

He should still be able to run this game with reasonable speed with his set-up, although not threading slows it down a lot.

A dual-core processor is fast enough for some time, quad-core is not needed. A lot of games don't use the four cores effeciently and dual-core processors are often as fast, or faster.

Originally posted by Pim1984:

He should still be able to run this game with reasonable speed with his set-up, although not threading slows it down a lot.

A dual-core processor is fast enough for some time, quad-core is not needed. A lot of games don't use the four cores effeciently and dual-core processors are often as fast, or faster.

Reasonable speed on his setup? Impossible. He might get away with barely tolerable speed on medium DB and one country only. I had a comparable Athlon (still my backup pc) and i know how slow those old pcs are.

While many (most) games arent any faster on quad cores compared to dual cores, this most certainly isnt true when it comes to FM.

My old pc was a pentium 4 2.8 ghz, with 1 gb of ram and I could run 5 nations, 10 leagues without much problems in FM 07.

It is much faster now with my amd 6000+ dual-core processor. If FM indeed can use 4 cores in a good way already, then the more cores the better.

I still reckon virus checker. Yarrrrrrr,

Rio_V... i had the same problem, but on a very low end system (256 RAM, 2400 Mhz)...

I disabled the graphics (player faces are not appearing anymore), and selected that compressed game option from preferences. Also, i cleaned my system by reinstalig windows, and now it works very well (i'm in 2025/2026 season). Also, i've noticed that the game is working much better if my computer is not connected to the internet.. don't know why, maybe because is such a weak machine.

Turning your anti-virus also works, this has been tested of course by me, before I turned it off it would take hours for me to get from 19th June to the 10th of July when my anti-virus was turned on, but when I turned it off the processing time only took 40 minutes max.

Of course don't use the internet during this time.