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[galmud]

Ok so I'm stuck on this super ancient PII 350MHz but I'm gonna try playing DF anyway.

I realize I need a small fortress area and cap population really really low but I'm thinking a tiny fortress could be fun.

What more can I do to maximize performance? Some cpu-hungry stuff to disable? I normally use Mike Maydays gfx , is there any difference in performance compared to normal ASCII?

[Dwarfaholic]

Temperature.

[Obsidian]

And weather. Don't forget weather.

[RPharazon]

I think that you need at least a 800MHz processor to begin to play DF.

But you might want to set the population cap to 20, the birth rate to 0, temperature off, cave-ins off, weather off, and even invaders off.

Sure, DF will be playable, but it will be very very boring.

[Doppel]

As far as i know the tileset does not have any impact on performance, so theres no framedrops of using Mike Maydays tileset.

[aelystur]

if it will play at all, it will be very slow going. i have  1.3ghz. and my starting fps is around 50. and degenerates from there as my fortress ages. currently with no immigration and 13 drafs (I have births as a source of replenishing work force. currently only have 4 adults) my fps is swinging between 20 and 15.

[galmud]

Yeah DF on a P2 350MHz seems like an act of futility. Its sort of kind of "playable" . But starting fps is 25-30 already, which is what my regular system (A64 2.5 Ghz) usually gets with a busy fortress of 180 dwarves + lots of animals.

I have a P4 2.4 ghz upgrade otw though so hopefully I can satisfy my DF-addiction very soon

[Brdn666]

I have a 3.6 ghz processor and I get around to 40 FPS when I get to 100d. I get bored playing it that slow. I know that may sound like a rich person complaining they can't afford a gold Rolls Royce, but hey I know someone who plays at like 5 FPS and is happy because that is all they know.

[coldstone]

threads like this should point to good cheap places to buy a new comp orr.. tip pages on upgrading yourself orr.. used computer stores in the area.

[Xehon]

@Coldstone

Well, I'm going for a AMD Athlon 64 LE-1640. A single core processor, perfect for CPU heavy programs like DF that can't take advantage of multiple cores. Don't let the GHz(AMD is packs more per Hz than Intel) and legacy status fool you. It's pretty much the best single core processor still on the market. You still need a AM2 motherboard, but they're come, at times, quite cheap. A random PCIe graphics card that can do OpenGL, almost anything should do(I'm salvaging an old nVidia Gefore 7800GT from my old rig). A GB of DDR2 RAM is quite cheap by now, so no biggy. A SATA or SATA2 HDD, you could get away with a cheap SATA hard drive with low space, but DF could probably use the extra speed from a SATA2, atleast during WorldGen and loading(can't afford SATA2 myself, so I'll stay with my old HDD, a SATA). A case and volla, you're set up with probably one of the best rigs for playing DF. Helluva cheap BTW. Well, that's my 2 cents.

Edit: Grammar Nazi attack...

[Angellus]

DF can profit from dualcores.

If you se all labour of the pc on one core and give one full core to DF it WILL profit.
^^

Does anyone know if DF supports 64bits or is there something that makes it do so? =D

[Xehon]

Alright, first off I'm taking the liberty to ignore Intel on this, although you could apply this to Intel CPUs as well.

The LE-1640 has 2,6GHz. Few, very expensive dual core processors have more per core. If you're a rich bastard then go ahead and enjoy your high-end processor, but otherwise the single core processor will deliver more FPS. Even if you give DF a whole core to rule over, unless you've got Vista installed. In which case you're better off ditching it and start running DF over Wine in Linux(Ubuntu might be a nice OS for a linux-newbie). The separate core method doesn't give much more FPS. Background processing in a well-maintained computer is negligible. The increase comes from less queries send to the CPU. That being said, I truly believe that my method is most cost-effective and in it's class the fastest possible solution.

You could run DF on a 64bit OS, but it's a 32bit program so you still need to emulate a 32bit environment for it. Might give you a decent boost, but unlikely anything worth the while. 64bit OS-es are rather crude and can be a pain in the rear with all the drivers and 32bit and 64bit run environments.

Am I being too nerdy? I mean, look at me. I'm surfing a game forum while writing about the fastest and cheapest PC builds to play a ASCII game and I'm doing it naked. On second though, looking at me might not be that wise.

Edit: Forgot teh 64-b17z!!!

[galmud]

Well Im not looking to upgrade . My main system an old singlecore A64 (s754) runs DF well enough.

Im just stuck now on this P2 but I found a cheap P4+mobo to replace it

[grelphy]

@Angellus: No, 64-bit processor/OS support makes no difference to DF. It is compiled for 32 bits and so the 64-bit extensions don't have any effect.

(Technical for those who want it: Windows x64 thunks 32-bit executables into 64-bit machine code to run it in 64-bit mode on the processor. There are no performance benefits for applications not compiled for 64 bits, though.)

It may also be worth noting that: 1. All modern processors support x86_64; that is, all AMD Athlon 64 (duh) and all Intel Core/Core 2 and 2. Intel Core 2 processors give similar performance per GHz to AMD processors.

[Xehon]

@Angellus

True, but as I've been told, a 64but running environment still gives a small performance boost. Even though it's not worth the while as I said.

You're right about Intel as well, but around here their components are noticeably more expensive then AMDs. In addition, the few multi-core processors that they have on the market and deliver more then 2.6GHz per core are heckuva expensive. I could get some twenty AMD64 LEs for that price.