FM 2011 saving games, any speed improvements?

I've read through the latest news and blogs for 2011 and I didn't see this noted anywhere.

I'm sure as many of you know that currently if you are playing a game it saves all the data in the leagues that you are playing. After a while saving a game becomes more and more drawn out as it's much larger file; this takes a long time to save. I love playing football manager until all the usual players are gone from the game and I've dominated England, Spain and Italy leagues in about a 30 year span. But the save game takes ages, especially as I have a large database and a lot of leagues running.

I know that the reputation of leagues can improve in FM 2011, so who knows I may want to have the current top leagues loaded, but also start in a much lower reputation league. After many seasons this will inevitability lead to very large file sizes.

What I want to know is - are there any improvements to how data is stored - perhaps archived rather than building up the data in one game save?

it already archives, you can only view stats back to a certain date and its why retired players history etc disappear. It may be your pc speed too, im in 2051 and it saves just as fast as it did on day 1 with a custom db that is running about 30,000 more players than the large db, i have a custom built pc that is very high spec and only 3 weeks old but still, id say that pc speed (not necissarily in your case) would contribute quite a bit to it

It will definitely be more on the hardware side, I only have a 7200rpm HDD but the game loads and saves extremely quickly. I can certainly agree with aussieant in that the game saves swiftly, even with over 120,000 players at the start and now like 7/8 years in my game still saves perfectly fine and fastly.

You will see huge improvements in loading and saving speed if you upgrade your computer with a SSD (Solid State Drive). Huge.

You will see huge improvements in loading and saving speed if you upgrade your computer with a SSD (Solid State Drive). Huge.

This. Quite expensive though.

Well I play on a PC. I'm a graphic designer and my PC is fairly high spec. My brother plays on a Mac and that's fairly hi-spec too and he experiences the same speed issues with saving.

I'm aware of the archiving that already goes on. But the speed from day one saves about 3 seconds. I'm about 10 seasons in and it takes up to about 40 seconds a save.

I played a game before with about 20 nations all fully functional and large database, and I was about 60 or 70 years into the game. The save time was about 2 minutes.

I do notice a massive difference in the save time from the start.

I just think that a lot of what is saved is fairly much just data. So was thinking it would be a good idea to archive this data into another file that can be accessed by the saved game when needed.

I won't be buying a new computer to play Football Manager 2011. Or buying SSD just yet. Maybe in the future.

I know that the guys at SI collect game data and specifically stats about the computers that are using the game. This is where they get the average data for screen size which accounts for the lousy use of screen real estate with the GUI.

But I think that if they are finding that some computers are still using 15 inch screens then they should be realsing that not everyone has the latest and greatest computer either. Surely if I and my brother, on two different platforms, notice a time lag when saving games way in the future, surely this is something that others are experiencing too?

i cant see how your PC is 'high spec' when it takes 40 seconds to save, as i said im 40+ seasons in and its still just as good as season 1, post your specs as im sure there is an explanation

What computers are you playing this game on?

No matter what computer I've ever used for Football Manager saved games always take longer the further you get into the game?

Whover is getting good speed with their saves and is a fair bit into the game please post your specs so I can compare to my own...

This is the specs of my computer

http://www.dabs.ie/products/hp-elitebook-8730w-core-2-duo-t9600-4gb-320gb-vista-business-xp-pro-17--64J3.html?refs=50220000-51220000-425080000

My friend (PC Tech) built it and it really moves, from memory its got an I7, 8GB Ram, 3.8ghz processor, 2GB dedicated graphics card, 1TB HDD

What computers are you playing this game on?

No matter what computer I've ever used for Football Manager saved games always take longer the further you get into the game?

Whover is getting good speed with their saves and is a fair bit into the game please post your specs so I can compare to my own...

This is the specs of my computer

http://www.dabs.ie/products/hp-elitebook-8730w-core-2-duo-t9600-4gb-320gb-vista-business-xp-pro-17--64J3.html?refs=50220000-51220000-425080000

Your laptop should not be a problem in itself, it was one of the best you could have 2-3 years ago ... you could try to add more memory, of course - but it could also be a multitude of other things - settings, other programs or processes running, your virtual memory settings ("swap" or "page" file). You running Vista or XP? Vista has better memory management than XP, but Windows 7 is much better. I could suggest to you, that you download a program called "Vista Services Optimizer". (Freeware) With that, you can not only disable running services that are not needed in general, but it also has a specific "gaming mode", that temporarily shuts down any unneeded processes and services, while you are gaming. You can let the program do it for you automatically, or you can do it yourself, manually.

Other things to do; check your machine for malware, viruses. I recommend Malwarebytes Anti-malware. It's free. Defragment your hard drive.

However, I'm into season 2024/25 with a huge database and all leagues in play, and I have not seen any significant slowing down of load or save speeds, or game speed. I have a Intel Core i7 920, 6Gb RAM, and my FM is installed onto a SSD. I suspect I can thank the latter for keeping my speed close to what it was when I started the game, because the speed of a SSD is so much better than any spin disks, that workloads that would put a spin disk in trouble, hardly affects a SSD at all. It's a Intel X-25 G2 160Gb drive; highly recommended, and it's the best present you could give your computer. I put my OS and all my programs on it, and use an extra regular spin disk for archiving purposes. And I would never go back to using a regular spin disk now - it's the best upgrade I have ever done to any of my computers, and I have done quite a few over the years. And it's fairly easy to do, even on a laptop.

Well I did buy this computer about 2 or 3 years ago. And even in todays market it's quite expensive to buy brand new.

My point is it's always been like this. Even in FM 2008 and FM2009 and FM 2010. Saved games always take longer the further I'm into a game.

I've played on a Desktop PC before and have similar results. FM 2009 and FM2010 the first times on a laptop.

Overall I get great results in speed and performance. I just thought this Saved game thing was an issue. Obviously it's not.

I can see how having an I7 processor, ssd and 8gb ram how you'd be quite comfortable playing.

But do the majority have a computer that high in specs? Am I the only one experiencing the save game time issue?

im sure your not, but 40 seconds sounds like the extreme end of the scale, there is meant to be something you can download to make your pc stop everything running that isnt needed while you play, cant remember whats its called or if its safe though, some other may have used it and can shed more light than me

I'm not going to be installing any programs to stop things running on my computer.

None of the responses here have answered my question either. But thanks for the replies. Clearly the 64 bit machines are handling the running of the game a lot smoother.

what was the question? You asked if game data is archived etc and i said no, they remove certain data from the game after certain amounts of time to help it run/save quicker

I was asking if anyone knew of any improvements to the way saved games are saved.

I appreciate your replies. It's nice to know the info you gave me. I'm strongly considering your suggestions.

ah, sorry. No have not seen anything about it, you can compress your save file, not sure what it does though

I'm sure compressing the saved game would take even longer, and also take longer to open.

Well, you just have to wait and see if FM 11 makes things better for you. I'm sure none of us knows, yet.

Guess so. Thanks.

hard drive is the weakest link in FM gaming, you can look for RAM disk software if you have 4Gb, if you have more it is a must !

even if you allocate 1Gb for ramdrive, you can make some .bat files to backup that single save file located on ramdrive to hard drive

only problem is eventual power failure, which is not a problem if you have an UPS or you have a laptop

laptop hard disks are slower than desktop in general, SSD drives are a bit faster, but only when it comes to small files - when reading temp files while building the save file

if you are power 'FM' user you can:

- spend hundreds of euros for SSD to get 15% improvement to saving speed

- buy ramdrive software for say 50 euros and get 500-1000% improvement to saving speed, I'm guessing that if you are power user, you already have 4+ Gb ram

I was asking if anyone knew of any improvements to the way saved games are saved.

Defragment your Hard Disk. Everything will be a lot faster.

I'm sure compressing the saved game would take even longer, and also take longer to open.

True

Yeh I could give that a go. Doubt it will do much. NTFS drives need much less defragging than the old FAT32 system, with NTFS having master lookup tables for stored information. I doubt a defrag will do much good. But no harm in trying I guess.

Yeh I could give that a go. Doubt it will do much. NTFS drives need much less defragging than the old FAT32 system, with NTFS having master lookup tables for stored information. I doubt a defrag will do much good. But no harm in trying I guess.

Wrong. It'll be a hell of a difference.

I'll record it for you and you can see for yourself.

Wrong. It'll be a hell of a difference.

And I really don't think I'm wrong LOL

And I really don't think I'm wrong LOL

Link 1 - Toms hardware forum

Link 2 - Virtual Dub

Link 3 - Windows IT Pro Article

Link 4 - Computing Forum

Yeh you should give those a read.

My laptop is slightly worse than yours. Probably takes about 5 seconds to save on day one. Thirtyish seasons in that's only gone up to about 15 seconds. Gamebooster is the program that stops things running on your computer. I use it, never done anything wrong as far as I can see, seems perfectly fine, and speeds things up slightly but your choice if you want to use it or not. And obviously the save time goes up as time passes, but I've never seen it at around 40 seconds after 10 seasons

Yeh you should give those a read.

Claims that NTFS file systems don't need to be defragmented are hype.

Yes, NTFS does fragment just much slower then Fat 16 or 32...

Diskeeper (Lite or full version) is the one most recommended to use.

I do believe this third party software is the one Microsoft even licenced to use with W2K... (not completely positive on that)

Either way - we use it here at my work, and it does make a noticable differance if it hasn't been done for years especially...

All tested system configurations showed significant performance improvements from NTFS defragmentation. Contrary to what you might expect, the faster system configurations benefited more from disk defragmentation than the lower-powered systems.

no ntfs still benefit from defragmenting.

It still benefits just not as much as clumsy old FAT partitions.

Actually, NTFS tends to fragment more than FAT32

Well I expected that LOL.

Look - I went to defrag the computer last night - and it was already setup to Defrag once a week.

So that's not the problem. I knew it wasn't the problem before.

So let's get off this defrag thing once and for all.

And besides - I tried saving the game last night after a reboot and it took about 10 seconds. Which was great.

So I'm thinking after a long day of playing FM it's a system resources thing that slows the performance of the computer, thus the saved game appears to take longer.

I guess I shouldn't play online scrabble and FM at the same time

Thanks for all the thoughts and replies. I'm feeling a little better now. I will work on freeing up my system resources.

Yes, NTFS does fragment just much slower then Fat 16 or 32...

Diskeeper (Lite or full version) is the one most recommended to use.

I do believe this third party software is the one Microsoft even licenced to use with W2K... (not completely positive on that)

Either way - we use it here at my work, and it does make a noticable differance if it hasn't been done for years especially...

Loved the way you bolded some of it but not the most important piece

And the last one is completely untrue lol - so I don't rate that source at all

Actually, NTFS tends to fragment more than FAT32

Loved the way you bolded some of it but not the most important piece

Glad you liked it .

And the last one is completely untrue lol - so I don't rate that source at all

Cool

To the OP. No idea why this is. I have a fairly decent system (3ghz dual core, 6gb ram) and game takes a few seconds to save with a large database and 35 leauges running. 20 odd seasons in and the time it takes to save is just as quick as in the first season.

Thanks Dave, I'll have to dig deeper into the root of this problem.