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[Proudnerd]

There's still a fair bit of talk about DF not running that well. I'm curious what is everyone's specs? In a 100 fortress i get no noticeable lag i can't get the FPS option to actually display FPS though.


That machine is

Celeron 2.4ghz (or so)
4gb Ripjaws 1600mhz ddr3
GTX 560 Ti

Nothing special at all

My (not even a week old) netbook gets noticeable lag. The game probably runs at about 10FPS if that in a new fort. Mining takes forever. About to work though the Wiki's FPS boosting recommendations.

quad core 1.4ghz Atom
2gb DDR3 ram with apparently the worst timings ever 9-9-9-24 with no bios options to change it
32gb eMMC
Intel HD Graphics no idea what model the driver wont update and speccy tells me nothing.

If even my crappy desktop can run the game at a playable rate how poor are peoples pcs here? What do you have?

[Thief^]

Timings of 9-9-9 aren't unusual for DDR3! Pretty sure you Ripjaws modules are 9-9-9-24 (did you post the wrong ram timings?), although that is at 1600 MHz. Timings are proportional to the speed, so 9-9-9 at 1333 MHz and 9-9-9 at 1600 MHz aren't equal. Without you also posting the speed of the ram in the netbook, it's impossible to judge how good/bad the timings are. For high-end DDR3 2133 MHz for example, 11-11-11 is considered good!

Personally DF runs okay-ish on my very-low-spec laptop as long as I keep the fort size small. Check the ram usage when running DF, with only 2GB in your netbook you're fairly likely to run over and into page-file, which will cut performance drastically.

[Lightman]

What do you mean you can't get FPS to display? I haven't seen any issues with the FPS display.

"Noticeable lag" is pretty subjective and performance depends on many things - e.g. settings, population size, map size. You're bound to see a difference from when the game starts to when you have a large, busy metropolis but it certainly can remain playable.

I run DF in a VM with one 2.5GHz core assigned and 2GB of RAM (667MHz DDR2). My fortress has 155 dwarves, about 80 animals and 30 "Others". The map is a bit larger than the default. I've tried assigning two cores but it really doesn't make a difference. After all, this VM is dedicated solely to DF.

It's playable and the nice thing is that I can play from any computer, wherever I am. All I need is an SSH client.

[i2amroy]

Note, but you will get some small gains if you allocate a small secondary core and set the graphics to at least STANDARD (which you should do anyways) since that splits the actual rendering code off into a second thread. If you are running at any of the lesser graphics modes two cores doesn't make a difference (which last I knew might have been the default setting? I can't remember right now and I'm on my phone).

Also special note for mac users, but turn off spotlight indexing of the DF folder. DF creates and destroys a ton of files during normal playing, and you can get some rather large gains (10-20+ FPS) by doing so.

[mndfreeze]

My Home PC:

i7-3820 overclocked @ 4.5ghz
16G RAM  (Corsair Vengence)
Gigabyte Sandy bridge motherboard.  Cant remember the exact model.
2x120GB SSD's. for OS and all games, even DF.
1x2TB backup/storage drive. 
2x500GB storage from my last PC (all my movies and shows are kept here)
Nvidia gtx680 2GB

I dont start to get any noticible slowdown until I hit about 120 dwarves or so.  I still stay well above 30fps until I get to about 160ish then it starts to fluctuate wildly depending on sieges, caravans, pet explosions, etc..

However I play more at work then I do at home since I work graveyard and half my month is busy and the other half is locked down/in freeze and therefore slow. System at work is painnnnfully slower but I try to limit my dorfs and turn off temp and whatever.  Around 120 dwarves the game is still playable @ roughly 25fps but it starts to take FOORREEVVER for seasons to change and time to pass.

My work system is a core2duo with 4GB ram and an nvidia quaddro card.

[Lightman]

Note, but you will get some small gains if you allocate a small secondary core and set the graphics to at least STANDARD (which you should do anyways) [...]

Also special note for mac users, but turn off spotlight indexing of the DF folder. DF creates and destroys a ton of files during normal playing, and you can get some rather large gains (10-20+ FPS) by doing so.

Good point. There is some gain by having more than one core in a desktop environment. However, I play via text mode (which also minimises bandwidth) from a server. Sounds like you have a good tip for Mac users, btw.

[...] However I play more at work then I do at home since I work graveyard and half my month is busy and the other half is locked down/in freeze and therefore slow. System at work is painnnnfully slower but I try to limit my dorfs and turn off temp and whatever.  Around 120 dwarves the game is still playable @ roughly 25fps but it starts to take FOORREEVVER for seasons to change and time to pass.

25 FPS (during active play) is not too bad; it's definitely playable, I think. That's about what I get with my current metropolis.

Frankly, it might be good for things to slow down a little once you get over 100 or 150 dwarves. So much is going on, at that point!

[NukeACitrus]

My 2 month old computer:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit

System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: G1.Sniper Z97

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~4.0GHz
             Memory: 8192MB RAM

Display: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
  Display Memory: 7949 MB

Edit: Forgot a couple of raided SSD discs, about 3 TB all in all.

Edit 2: Playing normal game at 150 fps, noticeable frame drop down to 90 or so around 120 dwarfs, but the worst was circa 170 gnomes+waterfalls+3000 refuse+draining trap+pumpstacks+factories, etc, etc, etc (playing masterwork): 2 fps. That was a hoot.

[utunnels]

My years old computer:

Pentium D 915 (2.8GHzx2)
Some old DDR2, 2.5GB
Some old Geforce card, doesn't matter

I usually cap the fps at 50, but it usually drops to 20 when I have 140 dwarves.

By the way, when playing DF, the CPU is about on par with an E2180 (2.0GHzx2).

[mete]

I heard DF dont use threads (thats bad). So a 3ghz single core CPU is better then a 2.4ghz quad core.

Someone corrects me if I'm wrong.

[Lightman]

Edit 2: Playing normal game at 150 fps, noticeable frame drop down to 90 or so around 120 dwarfs, but the worst was circa 170 gnomes+waterfalls+3000 refuse+draining trap+pumpstacks+factories, etc, etc, etc (playing masterwork): 2 fps. That was a hoot.

Hmm, yes that's interesting. There are many factors. Has anyone made a benchmark save game? That seems like the only way to compare things - using the same scenario and settings.

[Xixity]

Ok. Just because this is an already started thread. I'm looking to but a new desktop as well. With these specs. I'm flexible within a few hundred on price, and don't know about the graphics card. This is what I was quoted. Help?

Cooler Master Elite 241 Chassis Black  56.24
AMD A4-6300 APU 3.7GHz [1MB Cache]  62.49
MSI A58M-E33 w DDR3 1866 ][GBLAN][ 7.1 Audio  74.99
Corsair 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz  62.49
Seagate 500GB HDD SATA3[6Gb/s] 68.74
LG 24x DVD-RW Drive [SATA] 24.99
ThermalTake TR2 430W PSU 62.49
Windows 7 - Home Premium 64-bit 156.24
Build - Setup - Configure - Update - FeatureFill [Firefox, Adobe,
Java] 65.00
GeForce GTX960 OverClocked Edition 289.99
GST on sales 5.00% 46.18
PST (MB) on sales 8.00% 73.89
$1,043.73

[mndfreeze]

That seems a bit pricey for that hardware list.   Where are you getting it built or who are you purchasing from.

[Lightman]

Ok. Just because this is an already started thread. I'm looking to but a new desktop as well. With these specs. I'm flexible within a few hundred on price, and don't know about the graphics card. This is what I was quoted. Help?

This thread is about what people are currently using. I think asking for buying advice is liable to hijack the content. You should probably ask this under "General Discussion" or "Life Advice" in the "Finally..." group.

[Xixity]

This thread is about what people are currently using. I think asking for buying advice is liable to hijack the content. You should probably ask this under "General Discussion" or "Life Advice" in the "Finally..." group.

Fair enough.

[Bearskie]

Up until recently I was playing DF on an ancient XP machine with Pentium Dual Core (3.2ghz) and a mere 512MB of RAM (Not even sure whether its ddr2 or ddr).  The thing would slow down to a crawl if i so much as opened 4 webpages simultaneously. 

Surprisingly though, DF was rather playable given the specs.  Usually started slowing down at about 60 dwarves; my main fortress, an utter shitload of projects, filth and dead stuff with 150 dwarves ran at 20-30 fps.

I just upgraded to a new machine this month:
Windows 8.1
i3 4150 3.5ghz
8G DDR3 RAM 1600mhz
Intel Hd graphics

It managed to run the same main fort at around 30-40 fps.  An improvement, but I was surprised by how little it was, given the obvious disparity between the specs.