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Author Topic: System requirements?  (Read 2982 times)

Ranold

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System requirements?
« on: October 29, 2013, 02:21:45 am »

What are the system specs of those of you who reached the monarch milestone? Because so far even with several mod tweaks, my game is brought to its knees way before that, when immigrants fill up my halls.

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Zammer990

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2013, 07:01:36 am »

Windows XP
AMD phenom 8400
2.10GHz
2GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7700 series


If the game is running too slow, consider getting DFhack and using Fastdwarf, it makes the game playable even at 10-20FPS
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If your animals aren't expendable, you could always station a dwarf or two out there?

BoredVirulence

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2013, 08:55:35 am »

Vista
AMD Phenom X4 1.8 Ghz
8Gb RAM

I look forward when I get to upgrade. I'll have a 4.0 Ghz X8 processor, with initially 8Gb of RAM. That should be a decent upgrade, too bad DF is single threaded.
Honestly though, even with a pathetic 1.8 Ghz, I still get pretty decent results with 500+ dwarves. I don't typically have large pumpstacks and avoid rivers though.
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kahrkunne

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2013, 10:06:45 am »

Arch Linux
Intel i2 3.2ghz
16GB RAM
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kingu

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2013, 10:34:24 am »

I have 4gm of RAM. Will uppgading to 8 make a big difference? I dont really have any knowledge about how games run
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BoredVirulence

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2013, 10:51:00 am »

I have 4gm of RAM. Will uppgading to 8 make a big difference? I dont really have any knowledge about how games run
No, unless you mod the binary to be large address aware. By default, DF can only use up to 4Gb. If you have more than 4 Gb, and you make DF LAA, then it can use more. This only allows you to play larger maps and have more dwarves. It doesn't make it faster.

If you're running windows, theres an old trick where opening windows media player will make things a little bit better.
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Ranold

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #6 on: October 29, 2013, 11:20:57 am »

Windows XP
AMD phenom 8400
2.10GHz
2GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7700 series


If the game is running too slow, consider getting DFhack and using Fastdwarf, it makes the game playable even at 10-20FPS
I am familiar with various way to improve FPS, though its kind of beat the point of playing and experimentation when you have to cheat or start to debug your game to run smoothly...

My work laptop specs are 1.8MHZ CPU and 2GB of RAM, I tried to play smaller 3x3 embark, limited population, used a mod to reduce some items fluff and avoided usual suspects, still I got to a grind two years in, I think I hit the memory limit and the game grind because its shuffle the info the HD and back.

MY home PC is relatively new and much stronger, I had my best game on it, but it too ended at unplayable crawl.


If you're running windows, theres an old trick where opening windows media player will make things a little bit better.
???
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Quietust

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #7 on: October 29, 2013, 11:54:43 am »

I have 4gm of RAM. Will uppgading to 8 make a big difference? I dont really have any knowledge about how games run
No, unless you mod the binary to be large address aware. By default, DF can only use up to 4Gb. If you have more than 4 Gb, and you make DF LAA, then it can use more. This only allows you to play larger maps and have more dwarves. It doesn't make it faster.
You've got your numbers mixed up a bit - DF can only use 2GB of RAM normally, and LARGEADDRESSAWARE can increase that to 3GB on 32-bit versions of Windows and 4GB on 64-bit versions of Windows; the only way to get DF to use more than 4GB would be for Toady to compile a 64-bit binary for it (which could require a considerable amount of additional work on his part).
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It's amazing how dwarves can make a stack of bones completely waterproof and magmaproof.
It's amazing how they can make an entire floodgate out of the bones of 2 cats.

BoredVirulence

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #8 on: October 29, 2013, 04:31:44 pm »

I have 4gm of RAM. Will uppgading to 8 make a big difference? I dont really have any knowledge about how games run
No, unless you mod the binary to be large address aware. By default, DF can only use up to 4Gb. If you have more than 4 Gb, and you make DF LAA, then it can use more. This only allows you to play larger maps and have more dwarves. It doesn't make it faster.
You've got your numbers mixed up a bit - DF can only use 2GB of RAM normally, and LARGEADDRESSAWARE can increase that to 3GB on 32-bit versions of Windows and 4GB on 64-bit versions of Windows; the only way to get DF to use more than 4GB would be for Toady to compile a 64-bit binary for it (which could require a considerable amount of additional work on his part).
Thank you. I knew I was wrong, and probably should have added a disclaimer that I forgot to confirm it.

My work laptop specs are 1.8MHZ CPU and 2GB of RAM
Is that 1.8 Mega Hertz or 1.8 Giga Hertz. If its 1.8 GHz, then your CPU is pretty equivalent the same as mine (my 4 cores mean nothing to DF). If its 1.8 MHz then that's a problem.
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Ranold

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #9 on: October 29, 2013, 05:13:49 pm »

I am pretty sure that even the oldest cpu that is studied today in the engineering into is faster than that.(still 8086?)  Anyway, I am not certain that going by specs alone helps(a newer cpu aren't equal to several generation older cpus even if their clock rates are similar, same goes for memory).

What we do know that fortress FPS death is a very common, so I am trying to figure out a benchmark for recommended settings, to avoid people getting all excited and spending hours on the game, just to hit the FPS wall when things get interesting.
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madpraxis

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Re: System requirements?
« Reply #10 on: November 02, 2013, 09:10:45 am »

Q should of answered this, since I'm rather sure this is in the by now thousands of times asked category: Brute speed of a single core. (Well, bus speed too I guess.)

That's it.

Hell, I've had plans for years now to make a DF computer using an older single core chip overclocked to, what is the term, 'balls to the walls' speed that will live in a small tank of mineral oil. Because its dwarfy and, hells yes, we need more single core speed. And a way to shed insane amounts of heat from a small localized area. MUST MAKE DWARF FORTRESS GO FASTER.
Actually, come to think of it, with this laptop I'm using now I'm rather sure I've never seen DF get over 600-700 out of the 1GB of ram...Forget more ram, localize everything to other cores, make DF use a single core that nothing else is touching. Toady did (and still does) math. Much number crunching. DF loves eating your cycles. Memory overhead honestly isn't that important as compared to brute computing power.

More specifically, I think last time I got bored enough to hit monarch was on a 1.2Ghz dual core laptop with a gig of crap ram in xp...no, I lie, lubuntu. And a slowly dying hard drive that kept throwing read/write errors as it ate itself alive, so no paging file to keep it going as long as possible. I was down to...12-15fps? on a 3x3 with judicious cleaning up with trade/smashing. I also play with a rather low gfps (without checking, I think I'm running gfps 8 on this one) which I have found helps more then any other fps saving measure. Also, never used tiles or graphics sets or whatnot, so I have no info or idea on how/if they impact your fps.
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