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Author Topic: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow  (Read 5219 times)

schm0

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REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« on: November 06, 2007, 11:34:00 am »

I decided to make a thread to report all of the things that bring DF to it's knees for all you players out there. Please list your processor and memory specs, then note the activity or activities that slow down DF for you. This way, Toady can go through the list and hopefully speed things up for the next release.

What is your processor brand and speed?
How much RAM do you have?
Do you run faster on maps without running water?
Do you run faster on maps without magma?
Do you run faster with certain features turned on or off?
Do you run faster when certain tasks aren't being performed by your dwarves?
What do you slows down the game the most for you?

[ November 06, 2007: Message edited by: schm0 ]

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Tormy

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #1 on: November 06, 2007, 11:43:00 am »

I have a 3GHZ P4 and 1 GB of RAM.
To be honest I have zero idea that what is causing the lag spikes.
I have like 60-70 FPS most of the time, however sometime I have a lag spike, the FPS is going down to ~20 for like 5-10 secs, and its going back to 60-70 after that. It aint happens very often but its still annoying when it happens.

[ November 06, 2007: Message edited by: Tormy ]

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Frobozz

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #2 on: November 06, 2007, 12:48:00 pm »

Two reasons for me. First, I have to run the program through Wine since I'm on Linux. Second, weather. Weather eats up a good chunk of the frame rate. To help increase speed the most I simply turn off weather (last I knew it did very little at this point) and modify some settings in the init.txt file (I set FPS_CAP to 75 and G_FPS_CAP to 50). With those changes the speed, now maxed at 50, almost never drops below 40.

As to how Toady can fix these issues, there are two major ways I can easily mention off the top of my head. First, he can port DF to Linux. What little I talked to him about it indicated that it wouldn't be that much effort.

The second way is probably by far the hardest optimization of all - multithread the engine. Processor technology at this point is heading rapidly towards multiple cores for processing data and, while currently there are still reasonable increases in speed for individual cores, that is bound to slow down a good deal at some point. Tom's Hardware recently previewed a new CPU from Intel called Penryn. On the last page of that article they express the opinion that a version of it could be made with eight cores.

[ November 06, 2007: Message edited by: Frobozz ]

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thvaz

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #3 on: November 06, 2007, 01:16:00 pm »

I wish multithreading very much. Please Toady  :)
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SwiftSpear

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #4 on: November 06, 2007, 01:17:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by thvaz:
<STRONG>I wish multithreading very much. Please Toady   :)</STRONG>

If only modifying a piece of software to be multithread capable was as easy as just wishing for it.

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mport2004

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #5 on: November 06, 2007, 01:31:00 pm »

AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor 6000+ 3.0 GHz
2046MB RAM
water seems to kill my fps
also im sure it dosent help that ive got a dual core
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Symmetry

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #6 on: November 06, 2007, 02:21:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by SwiftSpear:
<STRONG>
If only modifying a piece of software to be multithread capable was as easy as just wishing for it.</STRONG>

If world wishes would were look threads like the this  :(

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bremac

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #7 on: November 06, 2007, 03:11:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Frobozz:
<STRONG>First, he can port DF to Linux. What little I talked to him about it indicated that it wouldn't be that much effort.
</STRONG>

Wine isn't (or at least, shouldn't be) a major issue - wine is only a very thin layer remapping calls and reading PE files, so slowdowns due to it should only be O(1) with a c, hardly major loses; I'd expect maybe an increase of 0 to 1 FPS comparing native to wine, myself. Most of DF's speed is likely limited by the algorithmic complexity/cache miss rate of lookups, and the GPU.

I can't comment on what the real causes of non-feature slowdowns are, as I'm not the one with access to source and a profiler. Toady knows better than any of us what's really eating into time.

[ November 06, 2007: Message edited by: bremac ]

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Arven

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #8 on: November 06, 2007, 04:20:00 pm »

I have a 2.7 ghz dual core cpu and 2 GB ram and have no lag or FPS spikes.
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Capntastic

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #9 on: November 06, 2007, 04:26:00 pm »

3.4ghz processor and 2gigs of RAM, no lag except for the few minor bits (z-pathing, z-LOS) that are slowly being resolved.

Toady seems to know where most of the bottlenecks are, as it's mostly code that needs to be optimized.

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Frobozz

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #10 on: November 06, 2007, 04:59:00 pm »

quote:
<STRONG>Wine isn't (or at least, shouldn't be) a major issue - wine is only a very thin layer remapping calls and reading PE files, so slowdowns due to it should only be O(1) with a c, hardly major loses; I'd expect maybe an increase of 0 to 1 FPS comparing native to wine, myself. Most of DF's speed is likely limited by the algorithmic complexity/cache miss rate of lookups, and the GPU.</STRONG>

I haven't looked at Wine much I mostly just run it. But I'm going to assume that it isn't a direct one-to-one remapping of the calls. The only way that would be possible is if Linux had at least all the calls that Windows has. That isn't likely.

Why the GPU? The GPU has very little to do with this game. The most complex mode it has is to display a textured quad on the screen. Surely one simple texture isn't complex. Wouldn't even need to update that texture every frame either.

Also I happen to know Wine is slowing things down because I've already tested this system under Windows XP. If you think it might be my system in some way, let me give you some of my specs

Pentium D 805 at 2.66GHz per core on a 533MHz FSB
1GB DDR2-667 (only running at 533 thanks to the CPU)
GeForce 8600GTS with 256MB memory

Of course specs aren't necessary because, as I said, I've already tested under XP and Linux. There is a visible speed decrease. Oh and I am running official NVidia drivers before anyone asks. Believe it or not, I get more FPS under Linux than Windows typically.

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Tormy

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #11 on: November 06, 2007, 05:10:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Arven:
<STRONG>I have a 2.7 ghz dual core cpu and 2 GB ram and have no lag or FPS spikes.</STRONG>

What FPS do you have on a 6x6 starting area at least after like 1 year has passed in the fortress?

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Vodalian

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #12 on: November 06, 2007, 06:07:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by SwiftSpear:
<STRONG>

If only modifying a piece of software to be multithread capable was as easy as just wishing for it.</STRONG>


Multithread capable?  Uhm...   :roll:

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Dreamer

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #13 on: November 06, 2007, 07:09:00 pm »

I have...

AMD Athlong(tm!) 64 Processor, 3400+ (Not sure what that means), 2.21 GHZ, 3 GigaBytes of RAM.  Maps with Running water creates brief periods of 'normal', and brief periods of 'space walking'.

I actually haven't played around too much with everything else, since I'm not too worried about the lag.  It's just odd.

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Nukeitall

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Re: REPORT FOR TOADY: CPU and Memory Hogging -- What is slow
« Reply #14 on: November 06, 2007, 08:46:00 pm »

Particularly vicious processor slowdowns during excessive pathfinding, fluids, and my favorite, invasion pathfinding.

Ever been dual sieged? yeah.

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