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[Couchmonster]

Hi guys,

I am about to create a DF only computer with a powerful CPU power on a single core (I dont know which one yet).
So I am asking about your experience what would be the best CPU to play DF on?
I heard the IBM PowerPC and the Pentium 4 have the highest CPU clock on a single core.
The PowerPC with 4.8 and the Pentium with 3.8 without overclocking.
Do you know any better solutions?

And what does Toady use?

Regards the Monster on the Couch

[IronValley]

You will probably want a dual-core machine. Not to run DF, but to run all other sorts of programs in parallel with DF.

[thvaz]

The Core i7 extreme edition would be the best you could get. Even it being a six core, twelve thread machine.

[Ultimuh]

The Core i7 extreme edition would be the best you could get. Even it being a six core, twelve thread machine.

Would it be able to do a Large World Gen within less than 20-30 minutes?

[Tharwen]

My i7 2.8GHz-something-or-other does large worldgen in about 5 minutes if I remember correctly. I don't know exactly why.

[thvaz]

I have a Core i7 on my laptop but still didn't try DF on it. But it is not a Extreme edition.

[Silophant]

The Core i7 extreme edition would be the best you could get. Even it being a six core, twelve thread machine.

Would it be able to do a Large World Gen within less than 20-30 minutes?

Certainly. My five year old, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo only takes 5-10 minutes for a large worldgen.

[janglur]

In my experience, the AMD Phenom II X4 980 can outperform even Intel's entire i7 line.  But of course, YMMV, as there's fundamental differences between any seperate architectures, installations, and even DF maps that can all skew the results drastically.

My aging Phenom II X3 720 can gen a max size world in about 3-4 minutes (standard gen settings on vanilla).
So it's not like you need to buy the absolute best to acheive your goal, there.  Just something from the past 5 years should do fine.

[Couchmonster]

Actually about 75% of my fortresses get abanndoned because of drastic fps problems on my 3.0ghz Intel Core2Duo.

[janglur]

What do you consider 'drastic'?  Also, is it a C2D Mobile or regular?

I usually consider the game playable until <20 FPS.  That allows me about 250 dwarves on a 6x6 map, depending on features.

[Putnam]

Intel i5 2500k, as the intel i7 2700k has hyperthreading, which actually makes performance worse on games that don't utilize multiple cores.

[janglur]

Wierd, but I suspect it may be due to the graphics system of that particular processor.  On-core GFX = Bleh for raw performance.  it sucks a LOT of power away from the cores unnecessarily.

Still, i'd expect it to do a LOT better than you suggest it is.

[Vherid]

2 minutes for large world 250 year history gen.

Intel i7 920 @ 3.2ghz, it usually runs at 4ghz.

[Jake]

My 3GHz Pentium 4 only has the one core, and it can get through worldgen in about fifteen minutes, but that's with every other background application turned off.

[i2amroy]

Yeah the best CPU that you could get would be one that has the highest processing speed, not necessarily multiple cores. Sure you will get a small increase in speed if you set the graphics mode to partial or something like that and have two cores, but any more cores than two and it doesn't help you at all because DF is virtually single-threaded. Cycles per second is the important feature, not how many cores there are.