I'm also getting really long save times where it's 'Freeing space for save'. A few days ago (I think before the big 2.6gb one) the saves were really quick.
I'm using a Radeon 5770, i5-750, 4gb DDR3 RAM @ 1333mhz and a 120gb SSD with 30gb free space. 32bit OS Windows 7. Granted it's pretty low end now, it was much better before the recent patches.
I'll try disabling Windows Aero and trying again.
