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[G-Flex]

My old computer ran it just fine. It was seven years old, took about ten minutes to boot up and when I looked it up, I found out the processor was about three times worse than the i5 I have now (which has been tested to run a 90+ dorf fort perfectly).

My computer from seven years ago has a single core and runs at 2.7Ghz while my any of the four cores on my laptop have a maximum clock speed of 2.5Ghz. Needless to say, they both run DF at the same speed.

This thread is falling for the megahertz myth pretty hard, here.

[krenshala]

My old computer ran it just fine. It was seven years old, took about ten minutes to boot up and when I looked it up, I found out the processor was about three times worse than the i5 I have now (which has been tested to run a 90+ dorf fort perfectly).

My computer from seven years ago has a single core and runs at 2.7Ghz while my any of the four cores on my laptop have a maximum clock speed of 2.5Ghz. Needless to say, they both run DF at the same speed.

This thread is falling for the megahertz myth pretty hard, here.

Actually, clock speed plays a huge role in how well a CPU can handle DF.  This is due to the insane amount of individual calculations that need to be done each tick, especially if temperature is on and changing (e.g., during winter freeze, spring thaw, or when magma is flowing around).

[jasonwill2]

FYI you will most likely die a very slow FPS death in any kind computer, even on a super quantum computer.

A quantum computer would have no lag as it would already know where everything is stored, so you wouldn't actually need any ram essentially if I understand it right.

[Mistercheif]

I want to know how a 1600 x 900 display counts as "HD+".

Technically, 1280x720 is "HD", with 1920x1080, the HD everybody considers HD, is Full HD, or FHD.

But you should be fine.  How fast can Turboboost bring your processor up?  I have an 17-3610qm, which can overclock up to 3.3GHz when overclocking only one core, and single core performance is what helps you with DF.

And just out of curiosity, what graphics card is that?  I've never heard of it.

[Zarat]

My old computer ran it just fine. It was seven years old, took about ten minutes to boot up and when I looked it up, I found out the processor was about three times worse than the i5 I have now (which has been tested to run a 90+ dorf fort perfectly).

My computer from seven years ago has a single core and runs at 2.7Ghz while my any of the four cores on my laptop have a maximum clock speed of 2.5Ghz. Needless to say, they both run DF at the same speed.

This thread is falling for the megahertz myth pretty hard, here.

Actually, clock speed plays a huge role in how well a CPU can handle DF.  This is due to the insane amount of individual calculations that need to be done each tick, especially if temperature is on and changing (e.g., during winter freeze, spring thaw, or when magma is flowing around).

Yes, but even when you compare a 2.5gbz processor from 2005 to a 2.5 processor from 2012, the 2012 one will be faster because of pipeline improvements, etc. One clock tick != one instruction.

[Tharwen]

My old computer ran it just fine. It was seven years old, took about ten minutes to boot up and when I looked it up, I found out the processor was about three times worse than the i5 I have now (which has been tested to run a 90+ dorf fort perfectly).

My computer from seven years ago has a single core and runs at 2.7Ghz while my any of the four cores on my laptop have a maximum clock speed of 2.5Ghz. Needless to say, they both run DF at the same speed.

This thread is falling for the megahertz myth pretty hard, here.

Actually, clock speed plays a huge role in how well a CPU can handle DF.  This is due to the insane amount of individual calculations that need to be done each tick, especially if temperature is on and changing (e.g., during winter freeze, spring thaw, or when magma is flowing around).

Yes, but even when you compare a 2.5gbz processor from 2005 to a 2.5 processor from 2012, the 2012 one will be faster because of pipeline improvements, etc. One clock tick != one instruction.

Actually, you're completely wrong. They've just been gluing cores together for the last 10 years.

[Zarat]

My old computer ran it just fine. It was seven years old, took about ten minutes to boot up and when I looked it up, I found out the processor was about three times worse than the i5 I have now (which has been tested to run a 90+ dorf fort perfectly).

My computer from seven years ago has a single core and runs at 2.7Ghz while my any of the four cores on my laptop have a maximum clock speed of 2.5Ghz. Needless to say, they both run DF at the same speed.

This thread is falling for the megahertz myth pretty hard, here.

Actually, clock speed plays a huge role in how well a CPU can handle DF.  This is due to the insane amount of individual calculations that need to be done each tick, especially if temperature is on and changing (e.g., during winter freeze, spring thaw, or when magma is flowing around).

Yes, but even when you compare a 2.5gbz processor from 2005 to a 2.5 processor from 2012, the 2012 one will be faster because of pipeline improvements, etc. One clock tick != one instruction.

Actually, you're completely wrong. They've just been gluing cores together for the last 10 years.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or genuinely believe that, but that is definitely not the case.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2006/04/core/2/

Detailed docs are available from Intel (and AMD of course) if you want them.

The simple explanation, for people who don't know or care about microarchitecture, is that instructions do not take one clock cycle to execute, nor is one instruction executed per cycle. The microarchitecture makes a huge difference - one core of my 2.8ghz i7 would run circles around, say, a 3.4ghz Pentium IV.

EDIT: Found some nice benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/x86-core-performance-comparison/benchmarks,128.html

They ran several different generations and models of processors with a single core, normalized to 3.0ghz, etc. A modern Core i7/i5 annihilates a P4, by which I mean it is 2-3x faster.

The same architecture issues mean that overclocking isn't actually speeding things up by, say, a factor of 1.5x if you overclock by 1.5x.

[darkrider2]

I'm no expert but I am aware that there is a multiplier to the megahertz clock that has an affect on processing speed. If coretemp is correct then the clock multiplier on my CPU scales with the hertz clock speed, but it might be some other number coretemp is showing.

[GoombaGeek]

I'm just glad that my secret mission to turn this thread into a long-winded argument about processors was successful. Mwahahaha.

[Dibuk]

CPU + mobo > all else, when it comes to DF.

I dare say my i7 x980 hexa 3.33GHz, made my Dwarf fortressy shenanigans much more enjoyable.

[Maklak]

I have access to Pentium 4, Core 2 Duo and i7 2600. They all have around 3GHz, give or take five hundred or so. When it comet to running DF, Core 2 Duo proves to be almost four times faster than Pentium 4 and i7 can run at 100 FPS a fort that is barely playable on Core 2 duo.

[Zarat]

I'm just glad that my secret mission to turn this thread into a long-winded argument about processors was successful. Mwahahaha.

Well, it is relevant for the purposes of the poster (and anyone else interested in DF specs): you want a Core i5 or i7, even if you come across a P4 and Core Duo or whatever else that has a higher clock speed. If you don't have that option, get a Phenom II. These are all multicore chips.

Beyond that, you want lots of fast memory since that's usually a bottleneck, and the OP seems to be doing fine there as well - although I think unfortunately DF isn't written to take advantage of it all, not that it usually needs to.

I'm no expert but I am aware that there is a multiplier to the megahertz clock that has an affect on processing speed. If coretemp is correct then the clock multiplier on my CPU scales with the hertz clock speed, but it might be some other number coretemp is showing.

I think you're talking about this.

[krenshala]

DF is a 32 bit app, regardless of what your OS happens to be.  This limits the amount of memory it is able to address, so the game is limited to at most either 2 or 4 GB of RAM (can't remember off hand which is the "per allocation" limit right now, still sleepy).  Playing on a 64bit system with more than 4GB of RAM has the advantage of no needing to page anything out because DF is running, which is very handy, just as multicore is handy despite DF only really using one core for its tasks.

So, optimally, you want the newest 2+ core CPU you can find (though not necessarily the fastest), at least 4 GB of memory to avoid swapping to disk (more is, of course, better), a higher memory speed (for data transfers to/from the CPU), and a 64bit OS that supports running 32bit apps.

[i2amroy]

Playing on a 64bit system with more than 4GB of RAM has the advantage of no needing to page anything out because DF is running, which is very handy, just as multicore is handy despite DF only really using one core for its tasks.

Actually as long as you are playing with an OpenGL graphics mode (STANDARD, PARTIAL:<number>, ACCUM_BUFFER, FRAME_BUFFER and VBO), then it will actually use slightly more then one core since the graphics code is multithreaded. I believe about the highest I've ever seen it go on my comp is about 112% of processor power (with 400% being the max) on an Intel i7.

[Kibstable]

My old (8yr) laptop with 1.6 processor and 500mb ram runs DF34.11 on winXP, although I find switching between therapist and DF takes a while. - Not sure why anything newer would have a problem at all.