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[Geltor]

hey.

i bought this new cpu in hopes of having to run df smoothly even up to 200 dwarves. is there anyone who plays on a 3x3 embark with 200 dwarves or more and managed to get more than 60fps? if so, are you undertaking any special care in overclocking your cpu or managing your settings? please share if you do.. because even oced to 4.5ghz i still cant muster over 60fps..

[helmacon]

i thought it was locked at 60 unless you change it in the raws. IDK, i havent really looked at that stuff in a while though. Check you int settings.

[Geltor]

Its capped at 100. Its just that when i get to 200 dwarves preformance unexpectedly drops. I was hoping the cpu would change that. Maybe i should get a new motherboard...

[Ghills]

Its capped at 100. Its just that when i get to 200 dwarves preformance unexpectedly drops. I was hoping the cpu would change that. Maybe i should get a new motherboard...

Motherboard won't have any impact.

DF is single-threaded.  i7 or i5 makes no difference, it's all in the clock speed of whatever core it's using.  There's nothing you can do.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Faster ram may help, but who knows how much. An SSD is useful according to some. Large Address Aware might help (I see no difference except that I can generate larger worlds without crashing when it's on).

Mostly it just comes down to managing discarded socks, dirt, blood, trees and paths.

Actually, the thing which will probably help you enjoy your 200 dwarf fortesses the most is turning off the FPS counter.

[Geltor]

Its capped at 100. Its just that when i get to 200 dwarves preformance unexpectedly drops. I was hoping the cpu would change that. Maybe i should get a new motherboard...

Motherboard won't have any impact.

DF is single-threaded.  i7 or i5 makes no difference, it's all in the clock speed of whatever core it's using.  There's nothing you can do.

Thats just not true.

While df is in fact single threaded, as the quality of the cpu go up so does its instructions per second. The clock speed is only second to that..

I believe a healthier mb will provide a better platform for communication between memory and cpy. I already have an ssd.

While i am no expert, i base this off a recent upgrade i made from a 4ghz i3 to a 3.5 ghz i7. It runs 60fps at 200 as compared to 30fps at 180 for the former.

Faster ram may help, but who knows how much. An SSD is useful according to some. Large Address Aware might help (I see no difference except that I can generate larger worlds without crashing when it's on).

Mostly it just comes down to managing discarded socks, dirt, blood, trees and paths.

Actually, the thing which will probably help you enjoy your 200 dwarf fortesses the most is turning off the FPS counter.

Faster ram may help, but who knows how much. An SSD is useful according to some. Large Address Aware might help (I see no difference except that I can generate larger worlds without crashing when it's on).

Mostly it just comes down to managing discarded socks, dirt, blood, trees and paths.

Actually, the thing which will probably help you enjoy your 200 dwarf fortesses the most is turning off the FPS counter.

Haha yes.i do have it turned off most of the time and its pretty unnoticable other than the fact that seasons change slower

[Ghills]

Its capped at 100. Its just that when i get to 200 dwarves preformance unexpectedly drops. I was hoping the cpu would change that. Maybe i should get a new motherboard...

Motherboard won't have any impact.

DF is single-threaded.  i7 or i5 makes no difference, it's all in the clock speed of whatever core it's using.  There's nothing you can do.

Thats just not true.

While df is in fact single threaded, as the quality of the cpu go up so does its instructions per second. The clock speed is only second to that..

I believe a healthier mb will provide a better platform for communication between memory and cpy. I already have an ssd.

While i am no expert, i base this off a recent upgrade i made from a 4ghz i3 to a 3.5 ghz i7. It runs 60fps at 200 as compared to 30fps at 180 for the former.

There are many explanations for what you observed, but that doesn't change the fact that DF is single threaded and that changing the number of processor cores will not make DF run faster.

Upgrading to a different processor version will have an impact (ex, Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge) due to changes in processor architectures.  Upgrading to a processor with a larger cache may also have an impact although it depends on other parts of the processor setup. 

Upgrading the number of cores does not have an impact on DF itself.  There might be a change because other programs can use other processors and so the processor that DF uses is free more often, but DF is completely single threaded and only uses a single processor core.  Any impact of freeing the core it's using would be unpredictable because it would depend on what else your PC is doing at that time.  The effect can be gotten just from associating DF with a single core on any processor and than setting up core associations so that other programs don't use that core as much.

[Geltor]

Its capped at 100. Its just that when i get to 200 dwarves preformance unexpectedly drops. I was hoping the cpu would change that. Maybe i should get a new motherboard...

Motherboard won't have any impact.

DF is single-threaded.  i7 or i5 makes no difference, it's all in the clock speed of whatever core it's using.  There's nothing you can do.

Thats just not true.

While df is in fact single threaded, as the quality of the cpu go up so does its instructions per second. The clock speed is only second to that..

I believe a healthier mb will provide a better platform for communication between memory and cpy. I already have an ssd.

While i am no expert, i base this off a recent upgrade i made from a 4ghz i3 to a 3.5 ghz i7. It runs 60fps at 200 as compared to 30fps at 180 for the former.

There are many explanations for what you observed, but that doesn't change the fact that DF is single threaded and that changing the number of processor cores will not make DF run faster.

Upgrading to a different processor version will have an impact (ex, Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge) due to changes in processor architectures.  Upgrading to a processor with a larger cache may also have an impact although it depends on other parts of the processor setup. 

Upgrading the number of cores does not have an impact on DF itself.  There might be a change because other programs can use other processors and so the processor that DF uses is free more often, but DF is completely single threaded and only uses a single processor core.  Any impact of freeing the core it's using would be unpredictable because it would depend on what else your PC is doing at that time.  The effect can be gotten just from associating DF with a single core on any processor and than setting up core associations so that other programs don't use that core as much.

you are writing this as if i disagree with you on the subject...  i know full well that more cores wont change anything regarding to df... if i have said that anywhere then i apologize.

anywho, i tried running df with 2400mhz ram, with no visible changes. guess df is only cpu dependant

edit: seems i was too fast to judge. being a bad overclocker that i am, it looks like as the game went on the fps went from 40 to 80s+ the longer the game is left running. i suspect it adds up voltage over time to increase performance, although its just a thought

[malvado]

anywho, i tried running df with 2400mhz ram, with no visible changes. guess df is only cpu dependant

edit: seems i was too fast to judge. being a bad overclocker that i am, it looks like as the game went on the fps went from 40 to 80s+ the longer the game is left running. i suspect it adds up voltage over time to increase performance, although its just a thought

It's very unlikely that you will see voltage spikes in the voltage given to the memory , basically if you use SPD or XML profile the memory should be ready to go at that velocity.
However if it's not made for 2400Mhz , then you will have to manually adjust both latencies and voltage to a set number in order to keep the memory stable and error free.

A cpu however might need a different approach when you overclock it , but now a days the software that comes with Asus and other kinds of motherboards are pretty easy to use and as long as you go slow with the overclock you will probably get a nice stable overclock without too much hazzle.

Personally I never add too much Voltage , in fact for cpu's I prefer to max overclock with a lower voltage than what the cpu is shipped with , then run several prime95 tests and other test to stress test the cpu to the max and look for discrepancies there.

Why do that? Well , once you get your cpu up to a pretty nice and stable speed you will be able to have more dwarves without seeing the dreaded fps loss in the early days...

[Putnam]

Its capped at 100. Its just that when i get to 200 dwarves preformance unexpectedly drops. I was hoping the cpu would change that. Maybe i should get a new motherboard...

Motherboard won't have any impact.

DF is single-threaded.  i7 or i5 makes no difference, it's all in the clock speed of whatever core it's using.  There's nothing you can do.

clock speed hasn't mattered in a decade

[TheBrisbyMouse]

Sacrifice some non-caged creatures to Armok and he will grant you increased framerates. Useless dwarves work too, virgin status not required.

[taat]

RAM performance is not only dependent on the clockrate, but also the timings.

Increasing clockrate increases the overall bandwidth, but (as far as I know) that doesn't really matter for DF. What matters is ram latency. besides bandwidth, it is also affected by the timings (numbers in their specs that say something like "9-9-9-24").
The timings tell how many clock cycles it takes until a specific operation is completed.
How exactly it goes is a bit long-winded but the gist of it is that if clock rate rises more (for example, 1600 -> 2400 for a 50% increase) than the timings (for example 9-9-9-24 -> 13-13-13-32 for a 44% increase) the latency will decrease, and vice versa
the difference between an average (1600mhz) and a top-tier (high clockrate) ram chip is really small, like 3%. For a not-super-high-tier more than ~1866mhz clockrate chip, the latency will actually usually be worse.

Processor cache helps offset the slowness of ram so a better processor should still help get better fps.

[malvado]

Well, I have been testing things out and in overall this is what I found :

*Cpu speed will indeed affect performance. Brand will also have a good impact. I just compared an AMD FX 8350 @ 4.3 With an Intel I7 6700K and the Intel one even though it has 0.3Ghz lower clock speed it is a lot faster than the Amd cpu in the same tasks. This included of course Dwarf Fortress.

*Memory can affect performance , but so did a fast SSD , conclusion : Get yourself a good SSD and fast memory (DDR4 or DDR3) , try also to buy memory chips with good (IE low) latencies.

*Memory seemed to improve performance compared to standard HD when used as a Ramdisk. So if you can use a Ramdisk (Ie you have the software) , have fast memory but not any good SSD I'd definitely advise you to use your memory. In fact it did seem to be faster than even just using an SSD and no Ramdisk.

[Pseudo]

I find your SSD comment weird. DF doesn't seem to touch the disk except when saving / loading... Or at least that's what strace is showing me. It will definitely help with saving / loading time, though.

Something that seems to help though is to pin DF to a core and tell the OS to not allow anything else on the entire physical core (not just logical!). Helps with cache contention. (In some cases you'll get marginal gains from more than just the single core - some processors share cache between pairs of physical cores as well.)

I'm not sure if there's any good way to do so on !Linux, however.