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[HatfieldCW]

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but my search-fu is feeble.  What does it take to get good results in DF?

I'm on an old rig, running an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and 1GB of RAM and I have to use 2x2 embarks with a 50-dwarf population cap.  Even then, my fps drops to 25-30 when I get some cats and flowing magma going on.  A 6x6 plot with 250 shorties would quickly lead to !!Desktop PC!!, I'm sure.  I've turned off everything I can think of, killing my temperature, my weather, my economy (not that I ever get a tax collector in my minifort anyway) and I still cant go more than a few years without bogging down.

I'm about due for a PC rebuild, and I plan to do it on the cheap, but I'd like DF to be one of the things it's good at when it's done.  I'm guessing the video card is irrelevant, so I'm hoping that swaping my mobo, CPU and RAM will be enough.  So what do you think I'll need to excel at having large-scale fun?

[ShadeJS]

Basically the speed of the single fastest core matters most. 2 x 3.4 Ghz is better than 4 x 2.6. DF will 100% saturate ONE core, so > 1 core is nice. Beyond that 2 GB of fast low latency RAM, on a fast low latency bus is also very nice. On an OS (like Linux) where you have a high degree of control over the environment 1 GB of RAM will do in a pinch. As far as a video card goes, anything with a modern, fast, and decent OpenGL implementation will do fine.

For reference, I'm running DF on a dual core Athlon 6000+, with 2 GB of bog standard DDR2-800, and an AMD / ATI 4350 passively cooled card under Debian Linux. On a 6 x 6 with everything, and everything on, I will embark with about 'full' FPS. By the time I hit 200 dwarves with a full compliment of pets I'm hovering around 20 FPS. A siege, traders, water or magma works, or heaven forbid HFS or some combination of those will send the FPS over the cliff.

At the moment I mostly play with a pop cap of 120 and a child cap of 40. This will generally keep things above 20 FPS for anything short of HFS.

[Andir]

Video card can be pretty important, especially if you plan on expanding the window (the latest test build also experiments with zooming.)

Even thought the game LOOKS like ASCII characters, it's still accelerated and requires a speedy GPU if you plan on getting the most out of it.

I will agree though, the main limitation right now is the CPU, so spend your money there.  DF is still not optimized for multi-core processors, so get the fastest core speed you can.  (Or if you can find benchmarks on single thread performance... base your decision on that.)

[Eduren]

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but my search-fu is feeble.  What does it take to get good results in DF?

I'm on an old rig, running an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ and 1GB of RAM and I have to use 2x2 embarks with a 50-dwarf population cap.  Even then, my fps drops to 25-30 when I get some cats and flowing magma going on.  A 6x6 plot with 250 shorties would quickly lead to !!Desktop PC!!, I'm sure.  I've turned off everything I can think of, killing my temperature, my weather, my economy (not that I ever get a tax collector in my minifort anyway) and I still cant go more than a few years without bogging down.

I'm about due for a PC rebuild, and I plan to do it on the cheap, but I'd like DF to be one of the things it's good at when it's done.  I'm guessing the video card is irrelevant, so I'm hoping that swaping my mobo, CPU and RAM will be enough.  So what do you think I'll need to excel at having large-scale fun?

Are you using 40d10? Because 40d11 has made massive improvements to performance.

[HatfieldCW]

Are you using 40d10? Because 40d11 has made massive improvements to performance.

Thanks, I didn't realize that.  I'll make the update and see if it helps.

And thanks for all the other advice.  I'm glad to hear about the processing, since a dual-core is what I was looking for in a CPU.

[nofarmsnofood]

Sounds like you should just chuck out your old computer.

[Jurph]

I built this machine with parts from NewEgg and I can typically get 40d11 to give me over 100 FPS on a 3x3 site with ~100 population and all features enabled.  The integrated graphics are good enough to play Team Fortress 2 with no appreciable lag, so they're certainly good enough for DF.

The AM3 CPUs really do the trick, and you can get a high CPU speed on a dual- or triple-core processor at quite a discount because the "hardcore" buyers want all four cores.  You could also splurge on the CPU (since that's what DF craves) and probably get quite a nice gaming experience out of the deal. 

I'm still looking for a way to 'reserve' one of my cores for DF besides manually setting Affinity each time, but so far I'm pretty well satisfied that I made a good buy.  I think you'll hear the same thing from everyone: CPU horsepower is where it's at.

[Rilder]

I play DF on an old AMD 3200+ 2ghz Works fine, except for massive frame rate drops during sieges or ambushes.

[Xehon]

I have a AMD A64LE 2.6GHz with 2GB decent DDR2 ram and a gForce 7800GT and I get ~60FPS on a 5x5 map, with magma, flowing water, 80 dwarves, low to medium amounts of critters, temperature enabled and a somewhat mountainous terrain. I built this machine to run DF and I personally wouldn't stress getting a second core to make one of them DF dedicated. My one core is up to bar with the cores of most today's multi-core processors, I don't think its meaningful to waste that much money if its an issue. Core power is more important to DF than CPU power. Graphic's cards are not much of an issue, according to Toady older cards will run the normal 40d actually faster, because the older OpenGL is more compatible with it, but since 40dx will run faster anyways, it a non-issue. I'd avoid intergraded crads though, have seen a lot of trouble with those and they're rarely any good. 1GB ram actually should handle DF fine on a clean XP, but 2GB is always nice to have.

Oh, man. AMD is spitting out those CPU ports, I just got AM2+ last year, now its all AM3. Bah, and I possibly need an upgrade would I want to keep up with mainstream games... Damn lousy console ports... [Grumble, grumble...]

[Yanlin]

Minimum requirements for Dwarf Fortress V1.0

CPU: Skynet
GPU: 3 human brains
Cooling: Magma
RAM: Dyson Sphere

[HatfieldCW]

Cooling with magma?  Is there anything it can't do?

I fired up d11, and it does indeed perform better, but Dwarf Manager seems to hate me.  Alas!  Now I have many dwarfs, but it takes me so long to set their labors that I may as well still be running 20 fps!

[Jurph]

I fired up d11, and it does indeed perform better, but Dwarf Manager seems to hate me.  Alas!  Now I have many dwarfs, but it takes me so long to set their labors that I may as well still be running 20 fps!

Upgrade your Dwarf Manager to version 0.7.  It supports 40d11 out of the, er, box.  Runs great and includes some excellent (indispensable) features like "Set Profession and Labors to...".  Once you have a single (e.g.) Farmhand, you can quickly clone his labor preferences and label onto other dwarfs.

[codezero]

Dual core 1.66ghz, 4gb ram, 9600gt. I upgraded the last 2 from 1g and onboard and it made no difference to df apart from being able to set the gfps higher without slowdown.

The way you construct your fort is pretty significant, last time I played I turned everything off (not even a river) and built a central staircase only one shift block wide around it. I managed to get the king (140 odd dwarves) for the first time in ages and I still had about ~50fps. And the most important thing here is that I was on a 6x6 or something, the size doesn't really make a difference when nearly all dwarves only pathfind around the staircase.

[Idiom]

I'd recommend an AMD 550 BE (100$ Dual Core), with an AM3 board, and an NVIDIA GPU (They're generally better with drivers than ATI). There are good Core 2 Duos around the price range of the AMD 550, but Intel is run by heartless money making robots that have decided to use a new socket every time they blink (Core2 LGA 775 socket will be 2 generations behind by this summer) and AMD plans to use AM3 for a long time and is very good about backwards compatibility for upgrading an old socket later. The 550 will rival a C2D E7400, overclock just as well, and is cheaper. Spend the price difference on a fancy aftermarket CPU fan for some hardcore overclocks.

A 550 will still do games just fine, but don't expect to defrag your harddrive while running antivirus scans and play FarCry2 simultaneously. Put more money towards a good GPU. A 4870 is at a good price (1 gig model for 150$) but I'd spend the 50$ more for an Nvidia GTX260 Core 216 for the Nvidia drivers, better overclocking, and overall better performance. The 4890 is at a similar price to the GTX 260 core 216 right now, but I really don't think it worth the money.

If you want to do 3D games better and be more future proof, an AMD 720 BE is a triple core, only ~40$ more, and I recall several tests showed that 3 cores is optimal as most games don't even make use of a 4th core. If you get one of more recent manufacture, it's individual cores should be able to match the 550 (they're both high-end quads with disabled and/or defective cores)  but I haven't first hand with - wait, no one cares. Guess what I do for a living?