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[Lord OOTFD]

I recently upgraded my desktop to the FAR better Phenom II 965 processor, I had hoped for a huge improvement in performance but what I got was double my awful old processor, and only about 5 fps faster than my LAPTOP. I mean yeah the Intel centrino is a decent chip, but I expected a bit more here.

I've looked around and I found some indication it may be a problem with nvidia drivers and opengl. I followed the limited suggestions I found to no effect, and as I've run out of ideas on how to get my fortress running faster I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem.

My desktop has the Phenom II 965 Black edition (3.4ghz quad core, 8mb cache), and a Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT.
My laptop has a Centrino dual core running at 2.26 ghz

My current fort is a 30 year old 6x6 with 80 dorfs, it runs at ~15 FPS on my laptop and ~20-25FPS on my desktop

I tried disabling vertical sync with the Nvidia control panel but this failed to cause any noticeable change. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[Ozyton]

Dwarf fortress is single threaded I believe.

[dnabios]

Yeah, but there is some advice that may help you on the wiki:

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Maximizing_framerate#Dual_Processors

[Savok]

Dwarf fortress is single threaded I believe.

That doesn't matter. At all.

In layman's terms, the main boost to speed that one gets with a newer processor these days comes from the much greater efficiency with which the processor is designed.

[Lord OOTFD]

I should have been a little more specific in what I have, I've already done most of what is listed on the wiki, I'm trying to figure out if there is anything specifically for AMD processors or the Phenom II 965 I need to do to make it run faster, as it should be running at about 50 FPS not 20ish. How much of a difference is there between old fortresses and new fortresses in terms of performance? I assume it stops running checks on dead entities (I have something like fifty pages of dead creatures)

On the System specifications page of the wiki it talks about some kind of opengl error with certain graphics cards, does anyone have any idea what the specific cause and solution for that is?

Also I forgot to mention my machine is running windows 7 pro 32bit

[Andir]

Didn't someone say something about the graphical FPS being tied partly to the G_FPS (Game FPS)?

[Sizik]

Didn't someone say something about the graphical FPS being tied partly to the G_FPS (Game FPS)?

G_FPS is graphical FPS.


OP, have you tried 40d16?

[Lord OOTFD]

Using 40d16 with May green graphics set and orcs. Setting Partial print on does nothing, changing my G_FPS value does nothing, switching off caveins gives me ~2FPS...

beyond that I have sound off, intro off, weather off, Economy off (though I don't know if this will decrease performance, I just don't like it)
I can't think of anythign else which would affect it, DF is running on it's own core, with virtually nothign else running.

[Ozyton]

Yeah, the game may only be graphically refreshing at 25fps or so but the game would actually be running at something like 100 FPS or whatever which is what relaly matters. A dwarf takes a step every 10 frames or so, so if they move pretty quickly around the fort then you should be good, if if they seem to be taking a step, pausing, then taking another, then that's a problem.

EDIT: also temperature can affect it I think... though that would make it so dwarves swim in magma as if it was water and rivers never freeze etc. (I think)

[Lord OOTFD]

Alright, I'm watching the FPS counter isn't that tracking the actual number of cycles? as is It's playable but I was rather hoping to get more than 20FPS with this new CPU.

On the topic of temperture if you disable it does magma still turn into obsidian? I haven't turned it off as I use magma to deal with nobles and am hoping to build a giant automatic computer controlled orc/goblinite harvester.

[Sevrun]

Don't think Magma will cool, as water won't freeze or thaw, whatever the temp is when you disable the temp is where everything stays, for all intents and purposes.

[Lord OOTFD]

Ah well, unless someone else with an AMD processor has had this issue It seems rather arcane. Is the FPS counter counting the actual number of cycles the program is making or is it counting the refresh rate?

As it stands I don't think I can get any more speed out of DF but it is playable, so as long as It never goes down to 8FPS again as it was before I shouldn't have problems. This is still quite frustrating as I was expecting at least doubled frame rate. I need to keep temp on as I'm working some magma megaprojects, and who knows I may eventually actually post something on my 30 year awesome fort.

[Sevrun]

That'd be awesome, though I'm sorry I can't offer better help.  It seems like a very interesting puzzle, and I do so love puzzles.

[Nadaka]

I've got a 965 at 3.4 ghz on a pretty good motherboard. I start at around 200fps on a 6x6 with everything turned on, running water, chasm, magma, etc. IIRC at about 80-100 dwarfs I am still at around 60-80fps. The displayed fps in the corner is real game frames, not graphics fps. That is on 40d16 with stock settings and no special tweaks.

I have not done it, but you can set processor affinity to run DF on one cpu and everything else on another processor. You can also selectively overclock if you have a better than standard cooling. the 965 goes up to 3.8-3.9Ghz pretty easy.

[Jay]

Most programs are compiled for a specific instruction set.
In this case, that'd be the instruction sets used by a Pentium 4 (I believe..  did Toady already have the Core 2 Quad that he has now when he compiled 40d?)
All processors in this day and age support all the instruction sets, which is what's allowing you to play at all..  However, I don't think the emulation of the competition's instruction sets, for either of them, are as good as the actual thing.
While Toady might have compensated for this with a certain compile switch that escapes my mind at the moment, I still don't think your performance would be quite the same.
In short, Intel processors will probably perform better for DF than comparable AMDs.
Improvements in architecture also help.  This is why an Intel Core i7 performs so much better than a Core 2 Quad, even when similar in clock speeds.

While I'm reasonably certain about the truth of the above, I probably butchered the terminology somewhere...  But I digress..