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[Pagan]

Long time lurker, first time posting here.

Last night I gave IOBits GameBooster a try with Dwarf Fortress. My average fps with a new fort is usually around 80-100 fps depending on how much water is around, and usually drops to around 50-60fps once I have around 50 dwarfs or so.

Last nights test run had me running at 100fps continuously, with the lowest dip I saw being a brief 70+, even after the second wave of migrants(roughly 48dwarfs in fort at that stage if I recall right), it hardly dipped below 90.

from the website....
"Designed to help optimize your PC for smoother, more responsive game play in the latest PC games with the touch of a button, Game Booster helps achieve the performance edge previously only available to highly technical enthusiasts.

It works by defragmenting game directories, temporarily shutting down background processes, cleaning RAM, and intensifying processor performance. That means you can keep all the features of operating systems ready for when you need them, but turn them off when you are ready to get down to serious business – gaming."

Also, did I mention its free?
http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html

[JarinArenos]

*does a bit of searching* Well, looks legit anyway (sorry, had to check. First-time poster 'advertising' a third party program sets off all kinds of alarms in my head). I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

[mnjiman]

I wont touch it unless a few regular posters say its worth getting.

[JarinArenos]

I'll do some more extensive testing and report back. I feel up to combating anything nasty on the off chance something isn't legit here. A quick test shows some minor (but definitely noticeable) speed increases, though.

[Moddan]

I tested this with a 9 year old fortress that normally runs with 40ish fps. They got boosted to 50ish so yeah, it seems to work.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Something I used to play around with the more graphical intensive games. Didn't really see to be worth it that much, most games only giving a couple of fps increase.

However I never thought about using it with DF which relies so heavily on the cpu and ram, might be fairly useful in fact.

[Pagan]

lol, I was wondering whether or not I should mention it was my first post.
Even though I've been registered a while I've never posted here, although I browse it daily for tips and ideas.

Anyways, stumbled on this by accident yesterday, thought I'd share it here too since I did on the dwarffortress reddit this morning as well.

Wish I had found it a few days ago when a rampant river through my living area meant waiting till winter at 1fps
That was a long long wait

[zwei]

lol, I was wondering whether or not I should mention it was my first post.

Well, it certainly is suspicious to have your first post be basically seo-spam & advert ...

I have serious doubts about that software. Sounds like snake oil, especially from description of how it is supposed to work (cleaning menory? please... defragmenting? this is not 1999... ). My favorite is "intensifying processor performance". Hilarious.

Of course, you will notice improvement in fps because DF fps tends to fluctuate a lot... it is easy to attribute that to this tool.

[Pagan]

nah, its IObit software. They're really good. I'd also shout spam if it was pay for software, but its not, hence me plugging it.

I found this by accident while looking for something else, gave it a try and it worked. Its as simple as that.

The thing is, if you're familiar with the way windows works, and the amount of unneeded stuff that runs in the background, you'd know that turning all of it off helps wonders for CPU load. Unfortunately doing it manually is quite a mission and sometimes you mess up badly. My pc is already running a stripped down OS because its pretty much only for making music on(and these days playing DF), but this found stuff I hadnt thought of disabling.

Short breakdown on what it disables on this work pc though.
Application Layer Gateway service, Automatic Updates, Cryptographic services, Com+ Event system, Fast user switching compatibility, Logical Disk manager, TCP/IP Netbios Helper, Network Location Awareness, Print Spooler, Protected storage, Secondary logon, Server, Shell Hardware Detection, SSDP Discovery service, System Event Notification, Task scheduler, Windows Image Acquisition, Windows time.

As you can see, thats ALOT of services disabled. So you can imagine the amount of resources freed up by it. And only costs about 3mb ram to keep in memory. So definately a good trade off.

Lastly, the fps increase is definately there. I've run enough forts to know how bad water and things can mess it around, but I ran my test for quite a while and had a pretty constant fps, which I've never had before.

[rephikul]

Short breakdown on what it disables on this work pc though.
Application Layer Gateway service, Automatic Updates, Cryptographic services, Com+ Event system, Fast user switching compatibility, Logical Disk manager, TCP/IP Netbios Helper, Network Location Awareness, Print Spooler, Protected storage, Secondary logon, Server, Shell Hardware Detection, SSDP Discovery service, System Event Notification, Task scheduler, Windows Image Acquisition, Windows time.

Some of these you can disable by hand and some I personally cant run without, not sure how's your comp set up. I personally do not trust any "cleanse ram and make your comp run faster" programs because if it work so easily microsoft would have implemented it already About the only thing they dont do is overclocking.

[Zucabr]

Suspicious or no, I have been using this program for a bit, a few years. The thing is, is that it's highly customizable, and in fact will depend completely on user-defined settings towards what it will and will not close.

Here's the basic breakdown.

You open the program, and then you can configure which unnecessary background programs you want temporarily closed, as well as services, Windows components that tend to do rather arcane and advanced things you won't be using when playing a video game, if at all. You then push the ginormous button, and the program closes the list of processes you selected, along with the services.

I find that the services don't actually take up much RAM, maybe 10-50ish MB, but closing the unnecessary programs can free anywhere from 50MB RAM to 300MB RAM, depending on what I'd previously opened.

Then, when you're done playing, you push the button again, and it restarts everything again for you, all the processes and programs.

(My personal list of closed programs includes the java updater, webcam services, unlocker assistant, Adobe Acrobat assistant, several tray icon programs, iTunes Helper, Daemon Tools Lite, Download Managers, Registry Mechanic, Advanced SystemCare, OpenOffice QuickStart and a router driver)

The effectiveness really depends on how much your programs are already using. If you have a rather low-end system, and not much memory to spare, say a GB of ram, 1024MB... then freeing up that 300 can make the difference between 30DFPS and 100. Higher end systems that get bogged down with programs may also benefit, if, say, all your Windows and background crap is hogging around 700MB RAM, maybe even 1.5GB of RAM with some antivirus clients and downloaders, then closing all that -- temporarily -- can give you back more of your, say, 4GB of RAM. This also would include all those services and all the programs that would have been bureaucratically using your CPU, for worthless administrative crap for your computer.

All that CPU power and RAM would now instead go towards simulating that 10Z-level waterfall you made!

Also...

Some of these you can disable by hand and some I personally cant run without, not sure how's your comp set up. I personally do not trust any "cleanse ram and make your comp run faster" programs because if it work so easily microsoft would have implemented it already About the only thing they dont do is overclocking.

Well, yes, some things you really need. That's why you can SET the parameters. And Microsoft isn't really the best example as regards to tech-and-user support. You depend on THEM for your computing needs, and you're... kinda screwed.

[rephikul]

You open the program, and then you can configure which unnecessary background programs you want temporarily closed, as well as services, Windows components that tend to do rather arcane and advanced things you won't be using when playing a video game, if at all. You then push the ginormous button, and the program closes the list of processes you selected, along with the services.

Processes and services? In windows xp it's task manager and CP\Admin Tools\Services. In Windows 7 it's just task manager. If you want to do batch jobs there's always .bat

Then, when you're done playing, you push the button again, and it restarts everything again for you, all the processes and programs.

If you want to do batch jobs there's always .bat But wait, let's screen what you tinker with:

(My personal list of closed programs includes the java updater, webcam services, unlocker assistant, Adobe Acrobat assistant, several tray icon programs, iTunes Helper, Daemon Tools Lite, Download Managers, Registry Mechanic, Advanced SystemCare, OpenOffice QuickStart and a router driver)

All of theses should not be on by default, period. Seriously, your system isnt running faster than normal, it's its normal running speed without all the crap you bogged it down with. My XP had 17 processes after installation. Today it's on 30 processes on idle and right now it's on 38 processes.

Well, yes, some things you really need. That's why you can SET the parameters. And Microsoft isn't really the best example as regards to tech-and-user support. You depend on THEM for your computing needs, and you're... kinda screwed.

They dont have the best support squad, that's true. The OS they build, however, is very decent. And I was talking about the OS, not their support squad.

In short, you have convinced me not.

[Fisher-Risen]

Overall, IMHO This program looks like something for people who bog their comp down with who knows how much unnessecary junk. Which makes it great for me because i share my comp with other people (Ugh my family) who could care less about my DF fps. However, for people who actually only run what they need.. This program is useless.

[nuker w]

Gaah. What is it with people being against first time posters whom give out advice in a non-spamy way? 

Moan aside, I use this thing a lot and I have great results with it. To be honest, whom ever said "This looks like for someone whom has junk...", thats not quite true. I keep a clean hard drive mostly and this thing STILL pops it up a few good FPS.

[Pagan]

lol, I've been wondering the same thing the whole day.

Last night I was like "OMG this is awesome! I have to share this!" and the whole day I've been getting shit for spamming. Just makes me lol though, thats the internet for you.

My home pc is a dedicated music station. I produce on it, and its very CPU intensive, so my OS is heavily stripped down and it still didnt even compare to the boost this program gave me.

Also, if you check, I've been registered about a month, which is almost exactly how long I've been addicted to DF. Only reason I dont post is I'm only now getting good at it, so I have pretty much nothing to contribute to any subjects. Hell, I'm still trying to figure out how to build a shooting gallery so I can try marksdwarves for once.