Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tamren]

My old pc died on me    So I have been designing a new one to replace it. Since DF is one of my favorites I figured I would make damn sure I could run it well.  

For df, multiple cores over 2 are not really that useful right?  I first picked the Intel C2d e6750 but was later reccomended the newer e8400. The chip is a Wolfdale not a Conroe and picking a motherboard is rather hard. I read that e8400 can be OCd to 4.6ghz but those are so called "suicide clocks" and not fit for anything other than record breaking. My best bet seems to be an Asus P5k but the selection is HUGE and confusing, any suggestions?

Going with that is 2 gigs of PC2-6400 ram. Apparantly thats more than enough until you hit Vista. Apart from worldgen does RAM capacity have any effect?

The GPU is going to be something in an Gef8800. If the GT512 can handle maxed out Crysis at 20 fps then DF aught to be a walk in the park. Or even less, more like a finger twitch.

Apart from those two, theres not much else to bottleneck up. I can post the rest of the specs If you guys are curious.

[Capntastic]

Processor is what I've been told.   If you have multiple cores, you want to give DF its own core to play with.

[Hyperturtle]

I have been reading these system building threads and I think you guys are taking this way out or proportion.

Get a fast CPU, preferably a multi-cored processor chip.  As mentioned, DF can run on one core and you can do whatever with the rest.

Overclock it to a comfortable level.  I have a E6600 I think it was called, dual core, running at 3ghz per core.  They come stock at 2.4.  It was able to run on the standard heatsink and fan well enough, but I bought a big copper heatsink and faster fan since I was OCing it and wanted it to last.

If it worked well enough for Oblivion and Bioshock, it'll work well enough for DF!  Of course, it was only rarely that oblivion's frame rate dropped so much it got choppy...

I don't think high speed memory is going to help DF much, or a high end video card.

[Deon]

I have dual-core computer and I have no troubles while setting the DF to realtime in the init.txt.
But if I run another instance of game (usually occasionally) my computer dies =).

[THLawrence]

Multi cores are nice once you FPS starts to drop. I won't prevent it from dropping but it means you can do something else at the same time. Such as reading these forums. From what I've heard RAM is the big kicker. Looking at the front page it seems that the biggest in minimum requirements is RAM. Of course I have virtually no knowledge of computers.

[Tamren]

So dual core minimum for sure. Do quad cores really have any bonus for gaming purposes?

And does anyone have experience with a Wolfdale CPU?

[Capntastic]

Why do people think dual core is good for DF? I've constantly heard the opposite.  I merely stated if you happen to get dual core, you'd want to set it up on one core.  

I've got a 3.4ghz single core and have never had problems with DF's speed.

[slackingest]

I've had some issues when my old computer died and I got a new one, mostly because I've got an intel 950, which has patently terrible opengl support. I imagine that if you've got something more reasonable (which should be easy if you're building a desktop rather than buying a laptop), you'll probably be fine.

[Kagus]

A dual core is nice (I assume) for DF because you can dedicate one processor to Dwarf Fortress exclusively, while the other one handles whatever other processes may be running.

A quad core will have no beneficial effect on performance, since it's only using the one core anyways.  Do you really need three cores to handle basic system processes? (If you run Vista, the answer is: Yes).

But yeah, I heartily recommend snatching up as much RAM as you can get your grubby little hands on, and stuffing it all in.  The more the merrier, as they say.

[MoonCabbage]

DF does not have multi-threading capabilities therefore having a double-core or quad-core don't mean a thing unless you plan on multi tasking ur computer. The speed of said cores matters. Ram is also equally important.

If you plan on building a computer your memory and cpu speed are the two important factors in making your computer DF tolerant.

[Metalax]

More ram is definitely a good thing with DF but remember 32 bit os won't recognise more than around 3.5 GB. Multi core cpu also help as has been said, by allowing one core to be dedicated to DF. A fast HDD would help reduce save/load times.

[Sean Mirrsen]

If you have a 2GHz single-core, the entirety of your system and DF will run on the same core.

If you have a 2GHz dual-core, the main DF thread will take up one full core. You have to remember than DF also uses sound and video. The sound and opengl library threads take up to 15% (as per my Process Explorer) of a 2x2GHz Santa Rosa CPU, with DF taking up 50% in later stages.

Bottom line - you WILL have a speed increase with a dualcore CPU, no matter whether you multitask or not.

[Leerok the Lacerta]

quote:Originally posted by Metalax:
<STRONG>More ram is definitely a good thing with DF but remember 32 bit os won't recognise more than around 3.5 GB. Multi core cpu also help as has been said, by allowing one core to be dedicated to DF. A fast HDD would help reduce save/load times.</STRONG>

3376196k of memory, to be  more exact.
3.2GB, to be more human-readable.

I ran into this upper limit myself.

One excellent thing about playing DF in Linux is that one can place the entire game into RAM and run it from there.

[Keldor]

Actually, the EXACT number is 3221225472 bytes.  More simply written in hexadecimal as 0xC0000000

[Hyperturtle]

So for you windows users, how much RAM have you seen DF take up?

I have a population of 144, 0 idlers and a frame rate of perhaps 23, and DF is using less than 200 megabytes (it overs in the 190s).  all options are turned on.    My fort goes down maybe five or six levels on a 6x6 tile.  I forget the elevations, but about four z levels above the outside river is the entrance to the fort.  It's the 9th Grainte, 1070, Early Spring... plenty going on.

The core it runs on is running a full load.. I don't think anyone needs more than a gigabyte to play DF.  It uses less memory than many mainstream games.