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[follower of nux]

large embarks are really awesome, i dont want to miss out on that =/ maybe ill install df on a friend laptop which has a sandy bridge

[krenshala]

This sounds like what I experienced one computer and a couple of DF versions ago.

Of course, I've gotten to the point where a 5x5 embark is starting to feel "small", even though I have a bunch of room for my dwarves to move around in.

[Echo51]

There is nothing you can do about it. Sure a faster CPU, eventually the sheer mass of "do this right now"-calculations will also cause stuttering for that. You can do nothing short of paying toady a lot of money to either spread the load out over more frames/ticks, or just be patient and wait for him to fix it on his own schedule.


(Does toady take money even? Anybody sure he doesn't deal in kittens??)

[wuphonsreach]

http://www.bay12games.com/support.html

The issue is probably one of cache sizes, newer CPUs have larger L1/L2 cache sizes then the older ones.

[Helgoland]

http://www.bay12games.com/support.html

The issue is probably one of cache sizes, newer CPUs have larger L1/L2 cache sizes then the older ones.

I approve of the link, but... it's not that kind of support. Could you explain how cache sizes impact performance? I'm going to buy a laptop in the next few weeks and DF is definitely a priority

[wuphonsreach]

Well, my old AMD Phenom Quad 9850 2.5GHz had: 4x128KB of L1, 4x512KB of L2 and 2MB of L3.  But I never ran embarks larger then 4x5 (and once in a while 5x5).

I can't give you details on the new CPU (AMD FX 6100 hex-core, 3.3GHz, 6MB L2, 8MB L3), because I've only run a 4x5 embark.  But I've had no issues with it.  I'd have to try out a 6x6 or 7x7 on it this weekend to know for sure whether that's enough.

So you'd have to find data points where someone runs a 6x6 embark, has no issues, and has more L2/L3 cache then you do.

And the main thing that the older CPUs have in common is less L2/L3 cache, which is why I'm hypothesizing that this may be your issue with the 6x6 embark (assuming that you're not running out of RAM).

[follower of nux]

well, that was some time ago..
anyway, my 1055t got as much, maybe a little bit more l2/l3 cache than most modern processors.
so i guess the whole cpu isnt suitable for this kind of problem
my i5 3210m can go to 6x7 without any of these issues until the late game.
im going to buy a haswell cpu in june (prolly 4570k or something) and comment on its performance on DF in general and that large embark hick ups issue.
until then, downwards!

[bluephoenix]

I don't think it is the hardware.
It is most likely due to the fact that dwarf fortress is 32bit instead of 64 and there is a bottleneck somewhere.
So no matter how much money you stick into your computer, large embarks will always stutter a bit until like today said himself he "takes the plunge into 64 bit territory which will have to be done sooner or later".

[mobucks]

I just experienced this exact problem from the OP after starting a 5x4 embark on a "thick" world I genned. Max (100) z-levels between cavern level 1 and ground level. Never had this problem before, and it was apparent immediately upon embarking.
I have a pretty old quad core, q9300 2.5ghz, 6bg ram, 64 bit vista. .EXE is large address enabled, high priority. Have played larger embarks without this issue, albeit on thinner worlds.

[chris_strain]

Exceeding 2¹⁶ tiles/z-level is insignificant, since map blocks themselves contain a lot more data than just tile types. Each 16x16 map block uses up 7560 bytes of memory, so a 6x6 embark would be using about 2.3 megabytes of RAM per Z-level. The main problem is likely the number of actual Z-levels present - if you're embarking in an island world (as is the default unless you use advanced worldgen) you've probably got a lot of Z-levels underground...

This is the answer to lot of the performance issues. The More zlevels you have after worldgen, then smaller the embark area you can handle before you hit issues. I used to gen somewhat shallow worlds and use 8x8 or 10x12 embarks. On deeper worlds I stick more to a 6x8 or 6x6 or else I start hitting fps issues.

[Zaroua]

I've been getting the problem since I upgraded my PC last year. My old PC was pretty much a piece of trash but it could run 6x6 embarks at 30 fps with 150 dwarves without the stuttering issue. Asus p8z68-v lx and an i5-2500k and I'm getting the stutter problem at 4x4 or bigger. Meaning I'm forced to play with 3x3 embarks - but my FPS has been sky high at least.

[Hurkyl]

http://www.bay12games.com/support.html

The issue is probably one of cache sizes, newer CPUs have larger L1/L2 cache sizes then the older ones.

I approve of the link, but... it's not that kind of support. Could you explain how cache sizes impact performance? I'm going to buy a laptop in the next few weeks and DF is definitely a priority

You know how having more RAM can speed up your computer, because it can hold more things in memory rather than having to swap some of them out to disk? Cache and RAM have a similar relationship to the one RAM and disk have.

The relationship between L1 and L2 cache, and between L2 and L3 cache are also similar, but IIRC the relative difference between them is much not nearly as drastic as between L3 cache and RAM or RAM and disk.