PC Requirements

[LanderCommander]

I bought FM21 during lockdown and have been enjoying it vey much. I have a decent laptop that should run the game very comfortably. The first few months the game even said my pc performance was 4,5-5 stars and my game speed 4,5 stars aswell.
A couple of week ago, my pc performance dropped to 2 stars? I haven't downloaded any databases, facepacks or/and logopacks.

Is there something I can do too get those stars back up? It takes minutes just to progress a couple of days.

[Brother Ben]

Have you accidentally added other leagues?  I've done it before whilst fiddling with the add/remove league function.

Just as a side note 2 stars sounds pretty good, mine is always half a star but then I do like a lot of leagues

[LanderCommander]

45 minutes ago, Brother Ben said:

Have you accidentally added other leagues?  I've done it before whilst fiddling with the add/remove league function.

Just as a side note 2 stars sounds pretty good, mine is always half a star but then I do like a lot of leagues

No I haven't. I have one save file and 5 leagues loaded. Even the game is running slow, while it used to run flawlessly.
I wanted to load an extra league because I wanted to move to that country. This is where I suddenly saw the 2 star rating, while it used to show 4,5 - 5 stars.

[Zapoleon]

What are your specs?

[LanderCommander]

15 minutes ago, Zapoleon said:

What are your specs?

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz

Video Card: GeForce GTX 1050

Video Card #2: Intel(R) HD Graphics 630

Operating System: Windows 10

RAM: 16 GB

[Brother Ben]

It's odd that both these things have happened.  Either the stars or the slowdown in general I could probably explain in isolation.

Did this slowdown happen all of a sudden or has it been gradual ?

[LanderCommander]

44 minutes ago, Brother Ben said:

It's odd that both these things have happened.  Either the stars or the slowdown in general I could probably explain in isolation.

Did this slowdown happen all of a sudden or has it been gradual ?

It suddenly happened. Which is really weird

 

[Brother Ben]

12 minutes ago, LanderCommander said:

It suddenly happened. Which is really weird

 

Its really odd

Go into detail level and put it down to minimum on everything

[LanderCommander]

14 hours ago, Brother Ben said:

Its really odd

Go into detail level and put it down to minimum on everything

I can't see those pictures. But I always play with the lowest possible graphics, except the player models. I use medium for that. I don't like how blurry my manager gets.

 

[Brother Ben]

3 hours ago, LanderCommander said:

I can't see those pictures. But I always play with the lowest possible graphics, except the player models. I use medium for that. I don't like how blurry my manager gets.

 

My fault, try this:-

On the FM menu dropdown where you find save/load etc there is an option called "detail level" towards the bottom.

go into that and change the two dropdowns at the top right to minimum

[LanderCommander]

6 hours ago, Brother Ben said:

My fault, try this:-

On the FM menu dropdown where you find save/load etc there is an option called "detail level" towards the bottom.

go into that and change the two dropdowns at the top right to minimum

I've done it but it stays on two stars :/. I even changed processors because maybe I was using the wrong one idk.
It seems I will have to do a factory reset :/

 

[Brother Ben]

5 minutes ago, LanderCommander said:

I've done it but it stays on two stars :/. I even changed processors because maybe I was using the wrong one idk.
It seems I will have to do a factory reset :/

 

It’s really strange, hopefully someone else here will be able to offer more insight before you hit the reset button

If you start a new save is it still slow?

[LanderCommander]

15 hours ago, Brother Ben said:

It’s really strange, hopefully someone else here will be able to offer more insight before you hit the reset button

If you start a new save is it still slow?

I started a new save with exactly the same leagues loaded, and it got worse. PC performance dropped to 1 star and Processing speed 1 star aswell.

[anagain]

I'm certainly no tech guru but that system looks more than good enough to run FM.

Few ideas.

1. Do you have a possible graphics card driver update? FM always asks me if I want to upgrade.

2. Have you started running another program in the background recently? I don't mean Steam because that's pretty low requirement. Lots of browser tabs can have a surprising effect. 

3. How far in to the game have you gotten? Have you hit a new season recently? FM is adding more and more players and saves will always get slower with time.

You do say you tried a new save and got the same stars. I wouldn't always go on the star rating. I get maybe half a star and it still runs well with a lot of leagues.

I would:

a) Clear cache in game. Open Preferences and there is a button bottom left. It is probably also in Preferences > Interface. I don't have the game open but clearing the cache can help.

b) Run a 'verify integrity of game files' check on Steam (assuming you're using Steam, of course. I guess you could not be). Right click FM21 > Properties > local files

You might need to submit a support ticket if none of that works. There are people on these forums that will probably know the answer to your problem straight away. 

[LanderCommander]

I recently updated all my drivers, but the result is sadly the same.
Usually I listen to some podcasts in the background, but as I noticed FM started to run real slow I immediately switched to listening podcasts on another device.

I've gotten pretty far in my save file and I also thought that maybe there were alot of new players being added. So I started a new fresh savefile with no extern databases, but the result didn't change.

On a different note; I noticed that alot of games were running slow. I think my laptop is capable of running Minecraft really well because I used to play it and I got very decent frames (120-145 fps) but because of the whole FM starting to run slow. I tried playing Minecraft again and alas, my fps dropped to 18-24 fps. (No shaders, optifine).

I have cleared my cache a couple of times, deleted my preferences.

I will however submit a support ticket. If that doesn't work out, I guess I will have to reset my laptop :/.

[Brother Ben]

• Check the power profile is on high performance in windows
• blow dust out of the fans
• download hw monitor and check to see if your laptop overheats and throttles when you play the game.  If it does this might indicate a cooling issue.

That said...

The most concerning thing for me is that the stars have gone down in FM.  I'm pretty sure they are a rough approximation done by the game based on what hardware you have. I don't think it would know anything about overheating or other programs running.  (happy to be proved wrong by SI on this).  I'm at a loss to what would make that happen to be honest.

[LanderCommander]

2 minutes ago, Brother Ben said:

• Check the power profile is on high performance in windows
• blow dust out of the fans
• download hw monitor and check to see if your laptop overheats and throttles when you play the game.  If it does this might indicate a cooling issue.

That said...

The most concerning thing for me is that the stars have gone down in FM.  I'm pretty sure they are a rough approximation done by the game based on what hardware you have. I don't think it would know anything about overheating or other programs running.  (happy to be proved wrong by SI on this).  I'm at a loss to what would make that happen to be honest.

I'll download it and see if it shows a cooling issue. Thanks!

[Brother Ben]

14 minutes ago, LanderCommander said:

I'll download it and see if it shows a cooling issue. Thanks!

Just did a bit of a google and it looks like the star ratings do account for current load (background programs) so it could be something is hogging resources.

 

[FrazT]

It is likely that a sharp drop in the star rating is due to another application or programme taking up some of the available resources. The fact that other games are also running slow would indicate that this is a computer issue rather than one specific to FM. Have a look at the startup processes and close down all but the essential ones and see if that helps

[Smurf]

The fact it suddenly happened means something else has happened to cause this.

Perhaps an update to something else. 

I can't vouch for the top 3 in this list but I tried Advanced System Optimizer for free myself just now.

Did a good job.

https://wethegeek.com/best-pc-cleaner-optimizer-tuneup-utilities/

It's a Free Trial - so you'll get some use from it - and if you find it good you can always purchase it.

I used to use CC Cleaner - but found it got a bit too much recently in terms of pushing other things on you.

Generally, computers can get filled up with 'junk' files - and you do need to clear it out once in a while. Especially if there was at some stage some software installed and uninstalled etc. 

I'm testing this now - so I'll let you know how it goes.

[Smurf]

Ok - after testing this now - it did a decent job.

I was able to clean up the computer. 

A bit annoying loading webpages that were already in memory - had to reload the pages, but a minor annoyance.

I could disable - but also remove items in the Start Up - which was great. 

Only other thing I had to do was verify the game integrity for FM on Steam - but not everybody will have the same experience I suppose.