What increases FM2010 performance more...?

Faster processor (more cores?) or faster hard drive (SSD, maybe several in a RAID config)?

For normal games neither of these matter nearly as much as the Video card, but here I don't know what has more of an effect.

Don't want to play the game with small databases, but it's fairly sluggish for me with Large England, Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Portugal and Germany. Wondering if I should buy a Quad Core Processor to replace my C2Duo or maybe another SSD to RAID with my current one.

Well, from my experience, a better CPU would certainly do the trick.

Just upgraded to a new system myself with a quad-core CPU (AMD Phenom II) and 4GB DDR3 memory. The game really flies. I run all European, South American, and North American leagues, in full detail, plus large database.

Just a quick tip though, if you are going to be upgrading your system, make sure you have enough power to run it. You may need to upgrade your power supply unit in that case as well.

What do you mean with Performance? The player ratings, lol?

It largely depends on what your current setup is - a faster processor will generaly make the biggest difference, whereas a quad-core processor will have advantages on matchdays over a dual-core processor (if enough games are played at the same time).

RAM wise between 2-4GB should be fine - as long as you have more RAM than what your computer uses whilst loading the leagues you want - so if your system only uses 2GB RAM upgrading from 4GB to 6GB of RAM won't make much of a difference if any, but going from 2GB to 4GB would, whilst going from 1GB to 4GB would make a massive change. I don't know how much of a difference the speed/timings of your RAM makes but I doubt it would make much difference unless you were using really cheap RAM.

A faster hard-drive will make it quicker for the game to acess the temp files and save the game, but as long as you have a fairly decent or new desktop hard drive that isn't full and is defragged I doubt a SSD would make a cost effective difference. (Unless the rest of your parts are all highend).

Whatever your worst component is, is what it's worth upgrading first. (Apart from the graphics card if you have a dedicted graphics card thats a model or two above the min. spec then for FM it doesn't really need upgrading).

Yeah, I think my processor is my weakest link atm, it's a low end Core 2 Duo, although its overclocked to about 3.15 atm. Rest of the stuff is more then adequate (don't want to start listing specs). Looking to improve the processing time between my matches so I guess the consenus that a faster processor would help more with that.

I just ordered Q9550 since it won't require motherboard/ram upgrade like i5/i7 ones would. Thanks for the help guys.

My computer is rated as 5 stars on the computer specs rating however does this mean it is at its peak because in all likelyhood I will be getting an equally fast laptop or a better desktop next year

My computer is rated as 5 stars on the computer specs rating however does this mean it is at its peak because in all likelyhood I will be getting an equally fast laptop or a better desktop next year

Unless everything is loading immidiately there should always be room for improvement. It is however possible that at a certain stage any performance upgrades return diminishing results.

My HDD's are ®AID0 which has quite a healthy effect.

8GB of High End DDR2 and a 3GHz Dual Core go a long way too.

Use CCleaner and GameBooster.

I agree with most of these comments in that the CPU is the most vital component.

You don't need much RAM for the game to run fine. Nothing over 4GB will make much difference and 3Gb will be just fine, and if you are using XP then 2GB will be fine as well.

I agree with most of these comments in that the CPU is the most vital component.

You don't need much RAM for the game to run fine. Nothing over 4GB will make much difference and 3Gb will be just fine, and if you are using XP then 2GB will be fine as well.

Utter rubbish

Utter rubbish

Would you care to elaborate on why 5GB is better than 4Gb then?

Please back up your claims although spouting 'utter rubbish' is a good start.

OP make sure the system balanced there nothing worse to computers if there bottlenecks slowing system down.

Its aming how badly some firms build there systems mine was a bespoke from carera(sadly dont exist now)

I was queried dont you want this and that and said just build it. They tested it for five weeks they was amazed my smaller CPU machine was outpacing there best machine in benchmark scores. It opened there eyes that not always brute force is necessary the best way.

A good motherboard which can handle fast data streams with good quality memory and decent graphics/sound card. Will go far more than getting a cheap motherboard/ram and slapping a quad core cpu.

Another is make sure the CPU fully functioned chipset and not the cheaper OEM version. FM needs the 2D power which is often stripped from these gaming CPU's to cut the costs. Afterall a gamer hardly going to spreadsheet but FM works this way so needs the 2D power too.

Basically thumb rule do tour homework find the best motherboard and ram and what is decent in graphics(unless you play the 3d power games)

If you can afford the best CPU you will have a beast of a machine if not go down to the best full functioned CPU. Dont worry if its 1 to 2 years older the rest of the system will make sure it runs very efficient. Dont set up the system where CPU waiting because the poor motherboard slow at data transfer bottlenecks are machine killers of speed.

Would you care to elaborate on why 5GB is better than 4Gb then?

Please back up your claims although spouting 'utter rubbish' is a good start.

It doesn't need backing up. You said "You don't need much RAM for the game to run fine"

Now please see the umpteen hundred threads wherein SI, and those of us in the know, have advised people to add more RAM.

After you're done with this, you can retract your claim that you don't need much RAM for FM. It's vague, incorrect, and ill-informed.

Ram is important up to 4GB. but after that I think it's pretty pointless, better off saving your money. That's what Kickballz tried to get at

I had 4 stars so I restored my comp to factory settings, updated drivers and did that run msconfig thing and turned off everything in start up and all non microsoft services.

Got it up to 5 stars and it runs well, I would say better than last years with slightly more nations running (about 18). My comp is only a dual core 2.4.

SSDs will not make much of a difference as the game isnt importing huge files or multiple small files often enough (the best example of a game that utilises an SSD well is a flight sim), Raid is similar, you just dont need the throughput from the HD.

The game does however need good number crunching ability, so an i7 or an i5 is a good start.

I have an i7 and 6 gigs of really fast RAM, I have about 70k players loaded in about 40 leagues and it runs as fast as the large database in FM09 on my old Pentium 4HT.

For RAM, if your MB is tri-channel I reccomend 6, if its dual-channel then 4 is plenty, just remember to match speeds!

This is the problem i'm having with mine!

How do i update all the things? I only have half a star in each, no wonder it keeps cutting out!

Use CCleaner and GameBooster.

I also use CCleaner. It really helps a lot!

its amazing how well fm10 runs on my 5 years old dell with 2gigs of ram and a really old processor

also large database is fine, although i only load the one league

can only be because i maintain the pc very well cc cleaner e.t.c

The games from SIGA GAMES are very bad for the computer. Whatever you do, their games are the worst for the computer.

Now please see the umpteen hundred threads wherein SI, and those of us in the know, have advised people to add more RAM.

I'd like some links to these umpteen hundred posts please because according to posts that various SI staff have posted there's not really any point in having loads of ram in your computers because since the game is a 32bit application it apparently cant use any more than 2GB.

Well, from my experience, a better CPU would certainly do the trick.

Just upgraded to a new system myself with a quad-core CPU (AMD Phenom II) and 4GB DDR3 memory. The game really flies. I run all European, South American, and North American leagues, in full detail, plus large database.

Just a quick tip though, if you are going to be upgrading your system, make sure you have enough power to run it. You may need to upgrade your power supply unit in that case as well.

So you run 20-30 leagues?

How long does a season take for you?

Think about to get some fast RAM, 1333 mhz would be really good for FM. And also a good cache.

Guys, I want to upgrade my computer to quad core.

I have 2 options, go to I5 750 based system or PhenomII 955 one.

I5 will cost around $85 more than Phenom II.

My question is, in default clock, will I5 performs better than PhenomII in Football Manager 2010?

They are both superb.

The I5 will perform slightly better at default clock but the difference is not great. So if you want the fastest, go for the I5. If you were to overclock then the Phenom is probably the better option and is definitely better value for money.