Saves and Increased Load Times Question

[silentcrow01]

I've noticed my load time increasing the farther along I get in my game. I have over 600 saves, from 3 characters, not including auto-saves. I never over-write my saves. Would deleting very early saves and early auto-saves reduce the load times, or am I stuck with it until I decide to wipe everything and start fresh?

[sweeker]

well... aside from the unofficial patch i wouldnt know a help.

might be there are some mods to further reduce savegame bloat but im totally not up to date with mods anymore :)

[Allelya]

Why would you keep every single save individually? Over 600 saves has got to be taxing on the game. I don't see a purpose to not over-writing. Personally, I keep about 3 saves to one character so that if I encounter an issue, I have three places to go back to.

[cfs111]

Also, you must remember that game will load all the thumbnail pictures for all those saves. If you must keep them then movevthem to a different folder as backup and only keep 3 or 4 saves in the \my games\Skyrim\saves folder.

[Stoob]

Locating saves from the load menu will take longer with lots of saves, as Allelya says - but I'm the same, I new save often when I change between characters. Though for clarity, the number of saves you have doesn't affect the loading time of an individual save.

Individual saves and their loading times could be for a host of reasons. Low VRAM if you're using a lot of HD textures and ENB, for example. Save bloating due to scripted mods. Uninstalled mods that have data baked into the save. etc. A save cleaner could help.

My loading times are quite long for most of the above reasons, though when I was on my GTX 660 (2gb vram) loading times were a hell of lot longer.

[sweeker]

Originally posted by cfs111:

Also, you must remember that game will load all the thumbnail pictures for all those saves. If you must keep them then movevthem to a different folder as backup and only keep 3 or 4 saves in the \my games\Skyrim\saves folder.

do those measures reduce the time to load the save itself, or is that referring to the loading up of the savegame list?
i always assumed the latter only, so didnt pay much attention to that.

actually maybe thats what the OP means the loading of the savegame list now that i think about it^^

[cfs111]

It can also increase loading on the save itself. If I am not mistaken I believe the game preloads the list for when you open the save or load menu from in game. I am going from memory so I may have it wrong.

Edit: fixed phones autocorrect stuff.

[silentcrow01]

Let me see if I can clarify a bit of what I'm experiencing. Loading into the game, as well as load time between two "zones" seems to have made a sudden jump. Everything was fairly fast until shortly after I finished the main quest line (defeat Alduin), and starting the main Dawnguard questline. Load times for start-up and transitions are slowly taking longer and longer. Even starting a new game takes much longer, and I use very few mods.
I know most only keep a few saves, but my obsessive save habits have saved my butt more than a few times when something went really wrong, and I had to go back a fair few saves to fix it. If removing some of the much earlier saves will help with load time issues, I'm more than happy to get rid of them, since they are far enough back to be of no use now. But, if the load time issue is not related to the number of saves, then there's not much point in my trying to nit-pick through them. At the very least, I need to figure out how to possibly reduce the issue in future play-throughs. If any other info is needed just let me know :)

[Black Album]

What are the size of the save files ?

Is there a point when they suddenly got larger?

[silentcrow01]

Where do I look to find the file sizes?

[Black Album]

Try documents/my games/skyrim/saves

[silentcrow01]

Largest single save is over 14,000 kb. The newer the save, the higher the number. Auto saves have 2 different types, .ess and .ess.bak I have no idea what that is, but there is one of each, marked 1 through 3. All other saves are .ess

[Black Album]

That's not too bad ... if it was 30,000+ we would worry ...

How many mods are you running with your game ... and do you use LOOT to sort your mods?

[silentcrow01]

I have my mods hand sorted. I'm using 9 mods, not including DLC or USLEEP. My first character only went as high as 6,000 kb.

[Black Album]

What level are you on for your main save ... have you been playing for a long time with it.

Even though it's only 9 mods ... they should still be in the correct order.
Could you list your mod order please?
Also ... are these Nexus or Workshop mods?

[silentcrow01]

First character is somewhere in the 70's, as is second character. A third temp character is only level 2 or 3. All mods are nexus. Load order is...
Dawnguard
Hearthfire
Dragonborn
USLEEP
Wyr's potion modification (a simple mod my brother made)
Shout CD
The Paarthurnax Dilemma
True Dragonblood Dawnguard
True Dragonblood Dragonborn
Run for your Lives
When Vampires Attack
AFT
AFT-No Friendly Spell Damage