Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Master]

In reference to this thread which I didnt want to necro since it's 2+ years old.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169186.0

Ever since the steam announcement I've been getting back into DF and RimWorld. But for the most part I generally play while watching something on netflix or listening to a podcast. But I want to shift from my computer room to the couch to spend time with my wife while she watches stuff.

I tried using my wife's ipad and Mifki's remote fortress ap but that really does not do it for me... Plus, I sometimes have to go out of town to job sites for work so it would be nice to run the thing locally on the machine.

So we are back to the age old question... whats the best/cheapest laptop for dwarf fortress. Needs a fast single core clock speed plus 16gb of ram and a large cache size? Is there really anything else needed?

Anyone have a laptop that DF runs well on?

[Jundavr]

The 16gb of RAM and large cache are definitely not requirements, and I doubt they'd do much to help the game's performance further than regular RAM size and cache. Fast clock speed helps a lot, though.

For most, your choice of device shouldn't depend much on the specs or on the game, but on how you plan on using it/playing.

Some things to consider:
* Keyboard with numpad helps a lot. I can't imagine playing without numberpad, but if you don't care this doesn't really matter.
* You can generate worlds on faster/more stable devices, zip it, then transfer to your laptop. I keep a lot of worlds in a pendrive for playing in different places.
* Assuming you haven't already, read this guide on maximizing performance (https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Maximizing_framerate). Changing your G_FPS configuration from 50 down to 20 or 15 is the most significant and the change in gameplay experience is barely noticeable (if at all). This is a must for playing in any device, for me at least.


Whatever you get should run DF just fine, as long as it's not busy running other stuff at the same time and the OS is well updated.

[anewaname]

DF needs less than 1.5 GB of RAM to exist fully in memory, so a 4GB machine can run DF faster than a 16GB machine if the memory moves info faster.

I know I am assuming Windows will take less than 2GB and that running other apps is unimportant, but what I mean is... don't get an older model because it has twice the RAM. Get the model with the newer mainboard and faster RAM. My opinon is that CPU single-core speed is important and CPU cache is important, but because DF will reside in RAM and because there is a constant switching/replacing of data in the cache, the rate at which data is transferred between RAM and the CPU will be the bottleneck.

[Putnam]

Large cache likely won't improve performance but only because the game's probably not super cache miss efficient.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Normal table computer on wheelbarrow, with solar panel, accumulator and inverter.

[T-362]

So we are back to the age old question... whats the best/cheapest laptop for dwarf fortress.

Check GPD devices. Its a 'small' Chinese electronic company, and they make pocket-size laptops and similar devices with really good hardware inside and x86/64. Sort of expensive but way cheaper and more powerful than some Microsoft Surface.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was a good 10 years of readonly for me

[Moeteru]

Have you considered just playing remotely using ssh X-forwarding, VNC, or remote desktop? If you have a desktop which supports Wake-on-LAN (most do), you don't even need to leave it switched on when you're away.
I imagine any proper remote desktop software would work a lot better than a mobile app for playing DF.