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[Sokar408]

Whatup everyone

So I'm working on getting started, but I was wondering. With my computer specs, how large a world, and many dwarfs can I realistically expect to control before FPS Death becomes an issue?

CPU: Core i7 4790K
GPU: GTX 970
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD

[Terff]

Well I'm currently running on much lower specs and I'm running a medium or large world with 200 dwarves in my fortress and my fps is still pretty good.  Once you get past actually generating a large world you should have no trouble running a 200+ fort on one.

CPU: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB
RAM: 8 GB
Storage: HDD

Also theres a default soft-cap (that can be changed) on how many dwarves you can have in a fort, its around 200 iirc.  Once that cap is reached you (usually) won't get any more migrant waves or babies.

Its probably smart however to stay small for now because you are just starting. 

[Magnus]

Is it really worth even listing the GPU?

I'm planning on building a computer just for playing DF, and my plan was to skip the GPU in order to save money for a BEAST of a processor.

[krenshala]

Just remember that DF is a 32bit game, so memory above 4G is purely for the OS or anything else you happen to have running at the time.

That said, I'm happily playing in a 7x7 on a medium world with my 64bit Win7 with 16G RAM, an nVidia GTX 650, and an AMD FX-8350 8 core processor (4GHz if it matters).  I haven't gotten but a few years in any fort with this system, though, so I'm not sure how bad things get later on.

[Skullsploder]

DF is playable right down to 15 calculation FPS. Setting your graphical FPS cap in your init settings to 10 will seriously help your calculation FPS, without negatively affecting anything for you.

Also, core count is completely irrelevant when playing DF, at least past twin-cores. DF isn't multi-threaded, so a single core with a higher clock speed is much better than a quad-core with a lower clock speed per core, so in some cases an i5 is actually better than an i7. That said, multicores will shuffle DF from core to core as they overheat, which can mean better performance for long sessions.

[Sokar408]

DF is playable right down to 15 calculation FPS. Setting your graphical FPS cap in your init settings to 10 will seriously help your calculation FPS, without negatively affecting anything for you.

Also, core count is completely irrelevant when playing DF, at least past twin-cores. DF isn't multi-threaded, so a single core with a higher clock speed is much better than a quad-core with a lower clock speed per core, so in some cases an i5 is actually better than an i7. That said, multicores will shuffle DF from core to core as they overheat, which can mean better performance for long sessions.

My rig is built with OC'ing in mind (haven't OC'd though, been too lazy to spend the time it takes), so overheating won't be a thing

[Putnam]

a single core with a higher clock speed is much better than a quad-core with a lower clock speed per core

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1081&cmp[]=1955

No.

[Uzu Bash]

I'd say FPS decrease inverse to the fortress size keeps the game managable; the more you have to keep an eye on, the more time you could use to catch problems as they're occurring, and at least mitigate if not prevent them.

I have yet to find out how much pop this rig can take. My last fortress was on an older machine, and I had 250 and just raised strict cap to 300 before I reached an FPS death so final that my computer never woke up. I still haven't been able to get it working again. I would blame fluids rather than the population, though; I was running water and magma canals all over the place.