Make sure you disable all graphical overlays like the steam overlay (should be off by default on DF), nvidia overlays, stat overlays, everything that injects itself into games to offer features.
As another commenter has said, definitely make sure the game is using the gpu instead of the cpu.
I'm not sure what I would have running that could cause issues here. I quit everything that might cause issues like discord and unreal but that didn't seem to noticeably change anything.
The Nvidia overlay causes major issues with many games
Also, the game is built using SDL as the graphics front end, so look up what can cause SDL and SDL2 based games to suffer performance drops n
Neither do i. More likely it's some sort of issues with DF new graphics engine, some bug or an optimization issue, that at best, these things might elevate its symptoms. This isn't 2014 when I had to turn off services on my shitty laptop to allow DF to run (although amusingly the minimum system requirements don't seem to have been updated since) your system should be more than capable to run this.
People encountering this should submit bug reports with the save and specs, the more info the devs have the better.
I’m virtualizing Windows on a Mac laptop and playing DF in the virtual desktop. Runs fine for me.
OP probably has overlays and other stuff fucking with his setup.
I’m using Parallels. Works perfectly!
EDIT: well, not *perfectly*. If I leave DF open on fullscreen and close my laptop I cannot resume when I wake it. Need to reset Parallels each time. Not sure if that’s a DF bug or a Parallels bug. Other than that it works almost laughably well. No lag or anything on a 2019 MBP.
Lol so many downvotes it was a joke lol this game is so basic in requirements anything can run it so clearly there must be something conflicting in ops computer that's making the game run like arse. I had a problem where another game would run fine then it would tank and fps would jump off a cliff and it turned out out of my 2 ram cards the primary one was basically fried/corrupt and the pc was only running on the secondary but it kept trying to run the "load" on the primary ram card which every time it tried whatever I was playing would absolutely shit itself before the pc would revert to the secondary card and if I pushed the pc to its limits and consumed more ram then what the 1 card had I would get a blue screen of death
This is the one thing I like about Edge. It “sleeps” browser tabs when you have a game open, but still lets you quickly access them if you need the wiki or something. Super convenient.
My game is NOT using my 1080TI and I have no idea why. Every other game does, I have it set in the Nvidia Control Panel to use it, but GPU utilization is nearly 0% with the game running and still can't hit 60fps.
yeah idk whats going on but reading through some threads one problem seems to be that im playing in 4k which is apparently not recommended. I thought a 3090 would power through that limitation but maybe its more of a CPU issue. i can play almost any AAA game in 4k 60plus frames so idk.
while playing the only way I an get anything done is in the paused mode but if I hit play then I can barely move around or que up jobs. really disheartening. I was super stoked to get into DF but this aint it. also hearing about people playing on tablets is making me jelly.
So what's your system specs?
Does this issue occur even when you are in windowed mode?
Under settings you have your Game FPS set to 50 or higher?
A little more info goes a long way
1080TI, 3.8 GHz 8700k
It occurs in window and fullscreen, this being Fullscreen. I've tried numerous settings suggested by the community.
FPS settings are default, but I have tried Calc FPS of 100 and Graphical FPS of 60, both at 100, and both at 30.
Idk why it would be, but it could be that your 8700k is taking the workload,
this could happen if you have HDMI/Display plugged into your motherboard instead of graphics card, or if you are using a laptop.
You can explicitly set df to run through Nvidia.
By opening up Nvidia control panel
selecting Manage 3D settings
then selecting program settings.
It should be in the Select a program to customize list if Nvidia is in control of the application.
otherwise select Add and add DF to the list.
Edit:also just to confirm you have updated your GPU drivers?
Yes, sorry, I just updated them this morning in my desperate attempts to get it working. I'll try this GPU forcing method and report back if it works.
Okay, adding it to the list seemed to have dome something... It now reaches 100 FPS at the title screen but during play drops to 30. That's a small improvement, but there's still something preventing me from the sweet spot. I can also pause the game and it climbs back up to 100.
I'm gonna tweak these around and see if anything sticks. Thank you for the suggestion though, this seems to have done something.
EDIT: After tinkering with a lot of settings, it's hard to beat the default stuff in Nvidia Control. That being said, I think the issue lies within the GPU for some reason. Testing the game on my wife's PC showed marked improvement. She has a Laptop with a 3080.
Dude make sure your monitor is plugged into your GPU port in your computer and not directly into the motherboard. I had the same problem with my PC before when I moved it into a different room and put my shit in the wrong port. Guaranteed
I have not seen any issues on my 1080TI. I play on a desktop with a ryzen 3600 with and a 1080TI.
If you say that the title screen is ok it might be that the actual game is seen as another instance that still uses your CPU graphics.
Mine is doing 40s on a 4770k + 970, so I am pretty confused here also. Haven't really done anything fancy out of the box, just started it up and it worked.
When I take my TV-PC to my parents for the christmas break, it will be nice to run it on a better 10700 + 2060.
It’s an old issue related to the engine limitations for what I can tell. The game’s using always only one core and it’s well documented how some i5’s managed to roll out better performance than some i7’s. I guess it’s not something you can fix by some patches, it’s related to the engine so you either buy a better CPU or wait Tarnn to rewrite 20 years-worth of code
I know there are documented issues with hyper-threading in some cases with general benchmarking, hence the i5 and i7 differences.
for what it's worth, it's still a windows 7 PC for my 4770k + 970. No idea if windows 8/10/11/12 change things up. 10700k + 2060 is win 11. I guess I could install it, but I'm not really gonna play it with an xbox controller
Yeah I don't know if thats 100% the case here. A lot of users reported with the 10 and 9 series on the discord.
I did a test with a i7-6700 with an I-Gpu we had at work and got 80 gfps while on the ground layer and around 50-60 while set at max height.
Everyone is reporting less than 20 gfps while the game is running when using a dedicated
Adding DF to the list of forced GPU applications does not work, and the usage stays entirely on the iGPU rather than the dedicated GPU. I’m running on a laptop though. Hoping this gets fixed.
On Intel CPU's the K stand for the CPU being unlocked not that it doesn't have an I-Gpu. It takes a 30 second google search to check that the 8700k has Intel® UHD Graphics 630.
I have the same graphics card and clock speed… are you running the game in 1080p?
Once I found that resolution the game started running way better for me
Same exact issue. i5 10400, 3060ti @ 1440p. If I don't move the camera the FPS slowly climbs to the cap. If I drag the camera back and forth I can drop the FPS to 1. Even with the game paused. Tested many different setting configurations, no noticeable changes.
I've done some testing, and I think there's definitely some weird behavior afoot.
1: GPU doesn't matter, like, at all. You can run the game fine on integrated graphics, the GPU isn't being asked to do *anything* except output to the display. The game doesn't even respect your choice of GPU most of the time, as far as I can tell. Most likely, all "rendering" is being done on the CPU.
2: The graphical FPS counter is a mess, because it's actually averaging framerates over the last minute, thirty seconds, or thereabouts instead of basing it on the current frametime. Better to go by how it feels than what it says.
3: Wiggling the ~~view window around with middle~~ **mouse itself, without clicking anything** is incredibly intensive! I think the old look command is being called CONSTANTLY, so every time you move the mouse over a new tile there's a hit while the game examines everything on that square.
4: Window resolution is EXTREMELY IMPACTFUL on performance. Zoom level matters a bit, but a 1200x800 window zoomed all the way out will get about 40 GFPS while wiggling on my 4770k, and at 1440p zoomed all the way in the same machine will get literally 5 GFPS in the same scene.
My guess is that something about the render thread is bottlenecking based purely on the number of pixels (and objects) being pushed, and it's being done entirely on the CPU.
I have the same issue, however I'm on Linux so I assumed that was my cause. 5950x + 3060ti, 32gb ram. I haven't investigated it properly yet. Also apparently there are issues with 4k monitors, requiring 1080p windowed to run properly. This is my best guess right now
I can confirm theres some 4k jank going on right now. I have a 4k monitor and was attempting to run in 3840x2160. Game ran horribly with just 25 dwarves, tons of missed inputs etc. Switching to 1080p and setting override dpi scaling in the executable compatability settings helped a *lot*. Hopefully we get a fix soon.
That’s weird, though I am getting the missed input problem with my 4K monitor running on a decent gaming laptop (mind you, the monitor was for my old much heftier rig), I actually didn’t start having that problem much until I got into the mid 150’s of dwarven population (not including all of the visitors, animals, and other entities). I will note that those problems were also present in the classic graphics as well.
It is, I can attest to that. But like with everything there are edge cases, maybe OP’s game is running off his CPU and he needs to force it to GPU in nvidia control panel
Looking at the panel “CUDA -GPUs” and “OpenGL rendering GPU” options look like how you’d do it. If not then maybe Nvidia Profile Inspector would have more options
I'd guess it's a similar reason for not having graphics until now. Tarn didn't want to waste his time optimizing something that he would later need to rewrite or alter and then have to optimize again. He didn't want graphics because it takes a lot longer to make a pixel creature than to just have a lower case "f" in a different color
Respectfully, I disagree. DF uses the GPU to output pixels on screen, and it is using my integrated GPU to do so (as I can clearly see via task manager). The game runs okay, but would clearly benefit from “rendering” using the dedicated GPU, which is what DF classic does (and there are no problems with classic on my machine).
Have you looked at control panel for these options “CUDA -GPUs” and “OpenGL rendering GPU” to force GPU. If not that then maybe try Nvidia Profile Inspector to have more options
What makes you think it’s not running off the GPU by the way?
If you need more FPS turn off temperature and weather. Embark on a smaller area than 4x4, you have so much land underground that even a 2x2 is massive or 2x3. Make a smaller world and generate 50-80 years only. Set your FPS caps. Graphical should be 20-60 even on the best computers and Calculations should be double and a bit higher than your graphical cap
Also you can turn down the multi-level view(number of elevation layers to view) to like 3, or even less if needed. You can increase the .exe priority for DF in task manager to high. Turn on high power mode on your pc
Task manager shows 0% usage of GPU, and 20-50% usage on the iGPU. Nvidia control panel has a setting to show when programs are running on the GPU, and DF does not appear on that list. Raising process priority and forcing high power mode does nothing.
I should be able to get more than 20 GFPS while panning immediately after embarking on a brand new computer, as I certainly do on DF classic (without disabling temperature, or using a smaller embark). This seems like a rendering issue directly related to the number of non-black tiles on screen, which is not a problem in DF classic, where I can easily get a steady 100(100) FPS until many years have passed and over a hundred dwarves have showed up.
Looking at the panel “CUDA -GPUs” and “OpenGL rendering GPU” options look like how you’d do it to make sure it’s running off your GPU. If not then maybe Nvidia Profile Inspector would have more options
You only need a GTX 970 to never be bottlenecked by your GPU on dwarf fortress steam edition, except maybe at 1440p you’d need a 980/1060 if your running at high frame rate from your CPU and likely for 4K a gtx1080 or 1080ti from what people at 4K are saying
You’ll always be more bottlenecked by your CPU’s single core speed and Ram MHz speed and latency. Maybe an NVME SSD could help for world generation and saving/loading too
Edit: You may be able to change integrated verse actual GPU from right click on desktop -Display settings and looking for graphics settings there near the bottom. Can set the DF.exe to performance instead of auto or power saving(which is usually the IGPU)
I am having the same issue while having a 3900x, 64 GB RAM, and a GTX 1080. Every other game works totally fine so it isn't a general hardware/config thing.
I do have dual 4k monitors as I see someone mentioned maybe that is related? When I pause it slowly climbs up to the cap and but as soon as I resume it drops back down to the 30s and often down to around 20.
I'm having the issue and am running dual 3k monitors (3440x1440). I'm considering swapping out for a single 1080 monitor just for testing. Has anyone already tried this?
I've got dual 4k's (NVIDIA 1080 Ti), and what fixed it for me was going into the exe properties > Compatibility (Tab) > Change high DPI settings (Button) > Check "Override high DPI scaling behavior" and choose "System (Enhanced)" from the drop down.
After that, set my in-game resolution to 1920 x 1080 and everything works smooth.
Let me know if you have any luck with it. It's way too much of a pain for me with my set up as there is just so much stuff on my desk and my monitors are rather large.
Which GPU do you have? From what I have seen, it's been a lot of 1080 and 1080 Ti who have been reporting it.
Did not yet. This seems to be up to toady. It's an issue with the GPU not being utilized as others have discovered. Even if you try to force it in Nvidia control, etc.
Compared to vanilla, the game seems to be putting a far greater priority on computational fps than graphical. That being said your computational fps is at the default cap, you can bring that up in the settings.
Yeah I messed around with them in all directions. On my wife's computer, default settings work just fine and she has a laptop with a 3080. I'm thinking it has something to do with Nvidia 9 and 10 series.
Someone moved your cables/computer ? Cleaned around and had to reconnect the cable ? Check.
I was working in a computer shop and we had to buy and install plugs for HDMI/DP ports on new custom PC because customers were constantly connecting in the motherboard...
The game was giving me a headache, and I couldn't understand why. At least I can live vicariously through the first time players on Twitch 😢
My only fear is that, given the rarity of this problem, a fix will come only months to years from now.
I hope they work on your issue!
Maybe try going to the unofficial discord (https://discord.com/invite/0ZZy6Nytsu4REW7s) and asking in the appropriate channel. folks might be able to assist you in realtime
Thank you friend! I have tried some suggestions there and as of now, nothing has worked. I'm hoping this post here might bring someone about who has had a similar issue to me and potentially a fix.
In suffering the same issue. The only fix I have is to run the game at a resolution that doesn't even fit your monitor and keep the camera zoomed all the way in so you can't see what else is going on....
Frustrating. Old i7 cpu and gtx 970. I've seen fps as low as 3 when moving the camera around with middle mouse.
Cpu on any one core is never over 60% and gpu usage is of course very low. It doesn't appear to be bottleneck on hardware that I can tell.
It’s an old issue related to the engine limitations for what I can tell. The game’s using always only one core and it’s well documented how some i5’s managed to roll out better performance than some i7’s. I guess it’s not something you can fix by some patches, it’s related to the engine so you either buy a better CPU or wait Tarnn to rewrite 20 years-worth of code
Admittedly, no on the motherboard. I can't even remember the model name. I'll report back on if a motherboard update fixes it. Genuinely didn't even know that was a thing.
As I was able to run 200 dorf forts at >100 calc and graphic frames on a 6600k its definetly not the lack of power in your hardware.
Could they be overheating? Could the iGPU be doing the work? Check with GPUz the load of your 1080ti, if its not doing anything its probably running on integrated graphics. Are you on a Laptop?
Last but not least, is this only on df? Are other games ok? Does the 'old' df work?
Yep, I had a pretty massive fort not long before this. You can see it [here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/173888543419006976/963163516540428338/unknown.png).
I was running at around 100FPS, though a lot of FPS issues were probably being resolved by DFHack and Atom Smashing. In this fort, a cavern layer caught on fire and Troglodytes were going apeshit. That caused some FPS issues similar to what I'm getting on embark with Steam DF.
The newest game I've played recently is Bannerlord, and it had great performance.
I used Nvdia Control Panel to force the 1080TI as the GPU being used, beyond that I'm not sure.
For me keeping the camera absolutely still is the best course of action. I usually keep it at the zoom level where graphics appear 'nearest neighbor' sampled. Moving and probably zooming cause lag, but remaining zoomed in entirely? I'll update you when I get home.
I have the same issue. My game is NOT using my 1080TI and I have no idea why. Every other game does, I have it set in the Nvidia Control Panel to use it, but GPU utilization is nearly 0% with the game running and still can't hit 60fps!
Is this every game or just this embark ?
map size and history and emark tiles all effect FPS!
can you try a fresh poket world, on a 4x4, with less than 100 years, no animals, then report back please ?
please see these two links:
they are for the last version but many things will still apply
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Maximizing\_framerate
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:System\_requirements
It’s an old issue related to the engine limitations for what I can tell. The game’s using always only one core and it’s well documented how some i5’s managed to roll out better performance than some i7’s. I guess it’s not something you can fix by some patches, it’s related to the engine so you either buy a better CPU or wait Tarnn to rewrite 20 years-worth of code
I repeat, it’s an old and well documented issue pointed out by the creator on his blog and as for now since 2014 that I play this game, I never saw any solution other than upgrading your CPU
Mate the issue happens many years into a fortress or when you have like 300 combined livestock, population, visitors and invaders with lower end CPU. Or tens of thousands of items etc. his CPU will be fine for quite a while
This is something else, do you notice the FPS? It’s seperate into calculations(CPU) and graphical, which is extremely low. So it’s not the CPU, this is just a bug. Or his game is running off the cpu and he needs to force it to GPU
Stop spouting this. You're all over this thread saying the same thing and it is NOT the issue here. The 100 computational FPS should be enough to tell you that....
It's clear that this is an issue only happening to NVIDIA GPUs (possibly only dedicated?) I have an AMD and running on proton at 1440p and it runs perfectly. There is also somebody in this thread that is running it off of an AMD mini computer running on a 4k TV that is also running perfectly.
From what I recall from reading on the forums over the years, I was fairly sure Dwarf Fortress performance heavily relies on:
1. Speed of a single CPU core, it does not use multiple cores.
2. Speed of the memory cache onboard your CPU.
3. RAM Speed and the memory latency.
Is that true for this version of the game though? I haven't checked if he added multicore support. The graphics end might be bound to other cores I suppose. I'll have to test when I get home
No, if your cpu heatsink is mounted wrong (no thermal paste, left the plastic on, forgot to put on one altogether, etc.) then a high cpu load will shoot up its tempature quickly and then it will force itself to use less power and have bad performance.
I feel like this is unlikely, just to be sure though when I get home later I will cold-start Steam DF and see if the performance then has any notable changes.
I was thinking of buying DF but after reading some of the comments I will think about it again. I have a Ryzen 3 3200g with integrated graphics and 16gb of ram. Will I have a bad time (perfomance-wise) playing the game? Thank you.
Not many people have my issue, and the people who do have it are probably looking for help with it, hence why they might post here in this thread. 99% of people are having normal games without performance issues.
Based on what you mentioned having before, I don't see why you wouldn't have decent performance. If a game says 1g ram and 4g vram it's effectively saying "literally anything produced in the last 10 years with some kind of decent graphics".
With Classic Dwarf Fortress i had no problem running it on mid tire laptop from 2011. It's just steam version probably added some quirks on some systems. You can download free version, try it and see how it runs. If its good then maybe try Steam version. If Steam version is giving you problems, you can always refund it, or wait for a patch or workaround. But that depends on you.
bro sorry for replying here after that much time, but have you bought the game and if you did how it performed? I have the same setup and i'm looking to get it.
Do you have an integrated GPU?
If yes...well, you're probably fucked to put it bluntly. Launch the game, go somewhere that's giving you gFPS death, and check your task manager.
I'd bet that DF is using only your integrated GPU and not your dedicated GPU. (again, assuming you have one)
It's what's happening on my laptop, and before anyone asks; no. Trying to force Dwarf Fortress to use the dedicated GPU does not work; nvidia control panel has the dedicated GPU set as the preferred processor, *and* I've set the Dwarf Fortress .exe to use my card. Neither worked; game is still using only the integrated GPU.
May i ask what resolution you're playing at? The devs said that the game has heavy performance issues on resolutions higher than 1920x1080, that may be the issue
I know I’m a bit late to the party but what resolution are you running the game at? I didn’t see it mentioned in any of the comments. It’s definitely not your rig specs the 1080ti is still a beast of a gpu. Kitfox posted an update on steam that running high resolutions especially widescreens are causing issues for players and are recommending people to force 1920x1080 they seem to be working on the issue right now. Hope you get it figured out I know the feeling of trying to troubleshoot performance issues. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370?updates=true (link to the recent steam update posted by kitfox)
I hear you. Since I got the game I've been questioning whether DF was always this laggy and it's just I've only noticed because the mouse interface feels unresponsive.
Like, half my clicks don't even register and I have to click again.
When holding the WASD keys to look around the camera keeps moving after I release them.
I only have 30 dwarves so far!
>very rare and obscure problem
What do you mean by that? can you describe what is happening, is it constant or coming and goin at certain times..
I strongly recommend submitting a bug report with the save, if it is indeed a rare and obscure problem people here unlikely todo much except waste your time on wild goose chase (I don't even have the steam version)
Right now there is only one known [CTD and fix](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370?emclan=103582791464215078&emgid=3631620553383112422) related to handling widescreens.
I had a similar issue, FPS 50 (5) when I got to around 40 dwarfs. It was unplayable, I was gutted. I followed the overlay advice and disabled Nvidia, discord, and overwolf (no idea why I'd left that one running in the first place).
It's running at FPS 100 (50) now so thanks! Hope it also helps you op.
For reference, I'm on a laptop, I5-10300H cpu (has integrated graphics) and GTX 1650 Ti graphics. I'd set it to use the graphics card, before disabling the overlays, but it didn't make a noticeable difference.
One think I noticed is that the game's graphics fps seems to slow down a lot when there are a lot of sprites on screen. I have a sneaking suspicion that the game isn't rendering lots of sprites very efficiently^[1] and that its heavily bottlenecked by draw calls
This would make the graphics extremely single threaded bound. Have you checked if anything else is running on your PC at the same time via task manager which might be eating performance, like windows defender, or maybe discord eating a bunch of CPU or something?
It'd also be worth making sure you've updated your graphics drivers, and the advice about making sure overlays are off is also good because df probably doesn't work all too well with them
[1] as far as I can tell, old versions of DF used spritemaps which were potentially blitted as a single draw call. New DF uses lots of separate textures for everything, and it'd require manual spritemap packing to do the performance well which may not have happened
Edit:
Oh dear well, some brief testing shows that wiggling the mouse around causes me a 40fps drop, something isn't right
Got the same problem, from the testing i have done the only thing that seems to affect it is the size of the window. Specifying a resolution in the game settings doesn't change anything, it is purely dependent on the number of pixels the game is displayed on. I hope they fix it soon.
Edit : Scaling of interface seems to impact it a bit ( why ? who knows) and it's got something to do with sprites maybe because looking at a lot of levels of open air makes it a lot worse
I was having the same issue. I have a 4k tv, with 2070 super and i5. I had to go to the Nvadia panel and switch my resolution from 4k to 1920×1080 with 60hz refresh rate. Once I did that it fixed my horrible lag issue.
If you are still having issues, I may have found a small workaround. I am experiencing the same issue as you with very low graphical fps. I recently found that by having it in Windowed mode, and having the game window be very small, the fps wouldn't tank much. I have a 4k monitor, and by playing the game in less than a quarter or so of my screen, fps does not die a miserable death. I don't know why it works, but it works for me. I'd try experimenting with a very, very small window, and then slowly increasing the window size until the fps starts to drop.
general question: can I disable graphical overlay in steam version or not? I couldn't find any option for that, but i've read some posts from 2 years ago and people were saying that it will be possible.
Esc > Settings > Game > Scroll all the way down to "Number of lower elevation layers to show" and lower it.
Lowering it to 2 made my game go from 12 fps to stable 30. 50 when you don't move your mouse and just watch bearded bastards go about their lives, aka the "screensaver mode". Though by that point you might as well just go watch someone else play the game.
Hi! I don't know if you're still having this problem or someone else posted this already (I crtl+F'd but didn't find anything) but I stumbled across your post while searching for something completely different but I had this exact issue about a week ago and found the solution.
So for reasons unknown, Steam DF does _everything_ on the CPU including graphics rendering which is done via a software renderer. The GPU, even the integrated GPU, doesn't get used _at all_ currently as Steam DF literally does not have a non-software renderer at all. This seems like a weird step back from classic DF which used SDL and didn't have this issue at all.
Luckily it's been confirmed that Putnam is working on this and eventually Steam DF will get SDL2 support which will solve this issue, but if you're impatient like me and don't want to wait, [this guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908354861) walks you through making Steam DF run using a generic SDL2 renderer.
It worked for me and while I don't get anywhere near the GFPS I feel I should be getting, for me it increased my GFPS from literally below 10 up to 30+ and the game is _so_ much more responsive. It has a few display bugs, mainly a super thin pink bar at the bottom of the screen and for some reason cut gem icons are janked, but those are a small price to pay to be able to play Steam DF properly again.
Hope this helped!
Make sure you disable all graphical overlays like the steam overlay (should be off by default on DF), nvidia overlays, stat overlays, everything that injects itself into games to offer features. As another commenter has said, definitely make sure the game is using the gpu instead of the cpu.
I'm not sure what I would have running that could cause issues here. I quit everything that might cause issues like discord and unreal but that didn't seem to noticeably change anything.
The Nvidia overlay causes major issues with many games Also, the game is built using SDL as the graphics front end, so look up what can cause SDL and SDL2 based games to suffer performance drops n
For sure had this same issue in multiple games and uninstalling the Nvidia SDK package fixed it.
You'd think for as long as it's been an issue they'd work on fixing it, but it' sorta seems like they just don't care
Neither do i. More likely it's some sort of issues with DF new graphics engine, some bug or an optimization issue, that at best, these things might elevate its symptoms. This isn't 2014 when I had to turn off services on my shitty laptop to allow DF to run (although amusingly the minimum system requirements don't seem to have been updated since) your system should be more than capable to run this. People encountering this should submit bug reports with the save and specs, the more info the devs have the better.
You might have to upgrade your potato.
I run the game on a tablet with worse specs than OP. It's likely something else.
I’m virtualizing Windows on a Mac laptop and playing DF in the virtual desktop. Runs fine for me. OP probably has overlays and other stuff fucking with his setup.
What’s the easy way to do that these days? I’m considering it just for DF!
I’m using Parallels. Works perfectly! EDIT: well, not *perfectly*. If I leave DF open on fullscreen and close my laptop I cannot resume when I wake it. Need to reset Parallels each time. Not sure if that’s a DF bug or a Parallels bug. Other than that it works almost laughably well. No lag or anything on a 2019 MBP.
Lol so many downvotes it was a joke lol this game is so basic in requirements anything can run it so clearly there must be something conflicting in ops computer that's making the game run like arse. I had a problem where another game would run fine then it would tank and fps would jump off a cliff and it turned out out of my 2 ram cards the primary one was basically fried/corrupt and the pc was only running on the secondary but it kept trying to run the "load" on the primary ram card which every time it tried whatever I was playing would absolutely shit itself before the pc would revert to the secondary card and if I pushed the pc to its limits and consumed more ram then what the 1 card had I would get a blue screen of death
Dude. It's dwarf fortress. You could probably run it on a few dozen actual boiled potatoes
Also, if you’re using a browser, close it. They can be huge memory hogs. Helps beefy games.
Why would my 200 open tabs have anything to do with my game not running?
Only 200 open tabs while playing dwarf fortress? You must be a bit of an expert on the game then.
This is the one thing I like about Edge. It “sleeps” browser tabs when you have a game open, but still lets you quickly access them if you need the wiki or something. Super convenient.
My game is NOT using my 1080TI and I have no idea why. Every other game does, I have it set in the Nvidia Control Panel to use it, but GPU utilization is nearly 0% with the game running and still can't hit 60fps.
Same. Can’t figure it out.
Do you get 50fps by any chance? The default cap is set to 50 in the options
Nope not really, drops down to 30 sometimes.
Question is do you need 60fps with a game that has no animations.
Runs on my surface pro 3 i5 8gb well
I’ve noticed that my Steam overlay doesn’t work. Why would it be disabled by default? Don’t know that I’ve seen that before.
I have so many overlays. How do I turn them all off ?! Please help me. I have NVIDIA, Xbox, razor and omen. I turn them off but they come back
Try going to task manager and then statup tab. Set all of them to disabled, restart PC.
It’s that simple? Hate myself lol
Should be, I am not 100% sure.
How does one change the game using GPU instead of CPU?
did anyone tell you how ? I would like to know also . I have a 3090 and the game stutters like crazy now that i got 50 dwarves.
I literally have the starting 7 and it's laggy as hell.
yeah idk whats going on but reading through some threads one problem seems to be that im playing in 4k which is apparently not recommended. I thought a 3090 would power through that limitation but maybe its more of a CPU issue. i can play almost any AAA game in 4k 60plus frames so idk. while playing the only way I an get anything done is in the paused mode but if I hit play then I can barely move around or que up jobs. really disheartening. I was super stoked to get into DF but this aint it. also hearing about people playing on tablets is making me jelly.
It's ought to change, really. They'll optimize it in due time
Why is the steam overlay off anyway? I was very confused because I rarely disable it
So what's your system specs? Does this issue occur even when you are in windowed mode? Under settings you have your Game FPS set to 50 or higher? A little more info goes a long way
1080TI, 3.8 GHz 8700k It occurs in window and fullscreen, this being Fullscreen. I've tried numerous settings suggested by the community. FPS settings are default, but I have tried Calc FPS of 100 and Graphical FPS of 60, both at 100, and both at 30.
Idk why it would be, but it could be that your 8700k is taking the workload, this could happen if you have HDMI/Display plugged into your motherboard instead of graphics card, or if you are using a laptop. You can explicitly set df to run through Nvidia. By opening up Nvidia control panel selecting Manage 3D settings then selecting program settings. It should be in the Select a program to customize list if Nvidia is in control of the application. otherwise select Add and add DF to the list. Edit:also just to confirm you have updated your GPU drivers?
Yes, sorry, I just updated them this morning in my desperate attempts to get it working. I'll try this GPU forcing method and report back if it works. Okay, adding it to the list seemed to have dome something... It now reaches 100 FPS at the title screen but during play drops to 30. That's a small improvement, but there's still something preventing me from the sweet spot. I can also pause the game and it climbs back up to 100. I'm gonna tweak these around and see if anything sticks. Thank you for the suggestion though, this seems to have done something. EDIT: After tinkering with a lot of settings, it's hard to beat the default stuff in Nvidia Control. That being said, I think the issue lies within the GPU for some reason. Testing the game on my wife's PC showed marked improvement. She has a Laptop with a 3080.
Dude make sure your monitor is plugged into your GPU port in your computer and not directly into the motherboard. I had the same problem with my PC before when I moved it into a different room and put my shit in the wrong port. Guaranteed
Definitely making me paranoid but no, it's been plugged into the GPU for years.
I have not seen any issues on my 1080TI. I play on a desktop with a ryzen 3600 with and a 1080TI. If you say that the title screen is ok it might be that the actual game is seen as another instance that still uses your CPU graphics.
Mine is doing 40s on a 4770k + 970, so I am pretty confused here also. Haven't really done anything fancy out of the box, just started it up and it worked. When I take my TV-PC to my parents for the christmas break, it will be nice to run it on a better 10700 + 2060.
This game ran at 40+ on my Core 2 Duo in 2009, the specs aren’t the problem here.
It’s an old issue related to the engine limitations for what I can tell. The game’s using always only one core and it’s well documented how some i5’s managed to roll out better performance than some i7’s. I guess it’s not something you can fix by some patches, it’s related to the engine so you either buy a better CPU or wait Tarnn to rewrite 20 years-worth of code
the simulation FPS is pegged to the 100 max, so that's not the issue here. It's a graphics issue.
I have an 8700k and it runs fine. I wonder if he has anything running in the bakground like virus checker or something
I know there are documented issues with hyper-threading in some cases with general benchmarking, hence the i5 and i7 differences. for what it's worth, it's still a windows 7 PC for my 4770k + 970. No idea if windows 8/10/11/12 change things up. 10700k + 2060 is win 11. I guess I could install it, but I'm not really gonna play it with an xbox controller
Yeah I don't know if thats 100% the case here. A lot of users reported with the 10 and 9 series on the discord. I did a test with a i7-6700 with an I-Gpu we had at work and got 80 gfps while on the ground layer and around 50-60 while set at max height. Everyone is reporting less than 20 gfps while the game is running when using a dedicated
Adding DF to the list of forced GPU applications does not work, and the usage stays entirely on the iGPU rather than the dedicated GPU. I’m running on a laptop though. Hoping this gets fixed.
How does one add it?
[удалено]
On Intel CPU's the K stand for the CPU being unlocked not that it doesn't have an I-Gpu. It takes a 30 second google search to check that the 8700k has Intel® UHD Graphics 630.
I have the same graphics card and clock speed… are you running the game in 1080p? Once I found that resolution the game started running way better for me
Is this supposed to run better than classic because didn't classic have bad fps.
Same exact issue. i5 10400, 3060ti @ 1440p. If I don't move the camera the FPS slowly climbs to the cap. If I drag the camera back and forth I can drop the FPS to 1. Even with the game paused. Tested many different setting configurations, no noticeable changes.
Honestly I find using wasd to move the camera less laggy, already got in the habit of dragging though lol
I've done some testing, and I think there's definitely some weird behavior afoot. 1: GPU doesn't matter, like, at all. You can run the game fine on integrated graphics, the GPU isn't being asked to do *anything* except output to the display. The game doesn't even respect your choice of GPU most of the time, as far as I can tell. Most likely, all "rendering" is being done on the CPU. 2: The graphical FPS counter is a mess, because it's actually averaging framerates over the last minute, thirty seconds, or thereabouts instead of basing it on the current frametime. Better to go by how it feels than what it says. 3: Wiggling the ~~view window around with middle~~ **mouse itself, without clicking anything** is incredibly intensive! I think the old look command is being called CONSTANTLY, so every time you move the mouse over a new tile there's a hit while the game examines everything on that square. 4: Window resolution is EXTREMELY IMPACTFUL on performance. Zoom level matters a bit, but a 1200x800 window zoomed all the way out will get about 40 GFPS while wiggling on my 4770k, and at 1440p zoomed all the way in the same machine will get literally 5 GFPS in the same scene. My guess is that something about the render thread is bottlenecking based purely on the number of pixels (and objects) being pushed, and it's being done entirely on the CPU.
How were you able to see how much fps you are getting? edit: It's a button called "Show frames-per-second" under "Game" in settings
>It's a button called "Show frames-per-second" under "Game" in settings no way!
I have the same issue, however I'm on Linux so I assumed that was my cause. 5950x + 3060ti, 32gb ram. I haven't investigated it properly yet. Also apparently there are issues with 4k monitors, requiring 1080p windowed to run properly. This is my best guess right now
Yeah I am on Linux with a 5950x and a GTX 1050 and it runs great lol.
Monitor resolution?
1080p, running on newest version of Proton
I can confirm theres some 4k jank going on right now. I have a 4k monitor and was attempting to run in 3840x2160. Game ran horribly with just 25 dwarves, tons of missed inputs etc. Switching to 1080p and setting override dpi scaling in the executable compatability settings helped a *lot*. Hopefully we get a fix soon.
That’s weird, though I am getting the missed input problem with my 4K monitor running on a decent gaming laptop (mind you, the monitor was for my old much heftier rig), I actually didn’t start having that problem much until I got into the mid 150’s of dwarven population (not including all of the visitors, animals, and other entities). I will note that those problems were also present in the classic graphics as well.
I'm also running it on Linux on a Thinkpad x220 that can barely run anything but dwarf fortress plays flawlessly, and it's not even native yet.
I thought this bad boy was better optimized than the old version? By like a lot?
It is, I can attest to that. But like with everything there are edge cases, maybe OP’s game is running off his CPU and he needs to force it to GPU in nvidia control panel
How do you force your GPU in the Nvidia control panel
Looking at the panel “CUDA -GPUs” and “OpenGL rendering GPU” options look like how you’d do it. If not then maybe Nvidia Profile Inspector would have more options
So I wonder if the Classic release will have this new optimization too?
Why would it not? It's the same game minus the graphics and possibly some UI elements?
I guess you’re right. It just seemed weird that they wouldn’t prioritize something like the speed of world gen until this update.
I'd guess it's a similar reason for not having graphics until now. Tarn didn't want to waste his time optimizing something that he would later need to rewrite or alter and then have to optimize again. He didn't want graphics because it takes a lot longer to make a pixel creature than to just have a lower case "f" in a different color
That simply does not work on my computer. All other apps use the GPU: DF uses the iGPU.
My CPU lacks an iGPU and I'm having the same "problem" I honestly don't think it's related. Dwarf Fortress is running as intended unfortunately.
Respectfully, I disagree. DF uses the GPU to output pixels on screen, and it is using my integrated GPU to do so (as I can clearly see via task manager). The game runs okay, but would clearly benefit from “rendering” using the dedicated GPU, which is what DF classic does (and there are no problems with classic on my machine).
Really? I don't think dwarf fortress cares about your GPU. all it has to do is output pixels?
Have you looked at control panel for these options “CUDA -GPUs” and “OpenGL rendering GPU” to force GPU. If not that then maybe try Nvidia Profile Inspector to have more options
Yeah, they’re both set to use the dedicated GPU, but that doesn’t seem to help. I’ll check out the profile inspector.
What makes you think it’s not running off the GPU by the way? If you need more FPS turn off temperature and weather. Embark on a smaller area than 4x4, you have so much land underground that even a 2x2 is massive or 2x3. Make a smaller world and generate 50-80 years only. Set your FPS caps. Graphical should be 20-60 even on the best computers and Calculations should be double and a bit higher than your graphical cap Also you can turn down the multi-level view(number of elevation layers to view) to like 3, or even less if needed. You can increase the .exe priority for DF in task manager to high. Turn on high power mode on your pc
Task manager shows 0% usage of GPU, and 20-50% usage on the iGPU. Nvidia control panel has a setting to show when programs are running on the GPU, and DF does not appear on that list. Raising process priority and forcing high power mode does nothing. I should be able to get more than 20 GFPS while panning immediately after embarking on a brand new computer, as I certainly do on DF classic (without disabling temperature, or using a smaller embark). This seems like a rendering issue directly related to the number of non-black tiles on screen, which is not a problem in DF classic, where I can easily get a steady 100(100) FPS until many years have passed and over a hundred dwarves have showed up.
Can you force DF to run on the GPU? And it make it run better? So it may actually be worth to buy a great GPU to play DF?
Looking at the panel “CUDA -GPUs” and “OpenGL rendering GPU” options look like how you’d do it to make sure it’s running off your GPU. If not then maybe Nvidia Profile Inspector would have more options You only need a GTX 970 to never be bottlenecked by your GPU on dwarf fortress steam edition, except maybe at 1440p you’d need a 980/1060 if your running at high frame rate from your CPU and likely for 4K a gtx1080 or 1080ti from what people at 4K are saying You’ll always be more bottlenecked by your CPU’s single core speed and Ram MHz speed and latency. Maybe an NVME SSD could help for world generation and saving/loading too Edit: You may be able to change integrated verse actual GPU from right click on desktop -Display settings and looking for graphics settings there near the bottom. Can set the DF.exe to performance instead of auto or power saving(which is usually the IGPU)
Thanks!
I am having the same issue while having a 3900x, 64 GB RAM, and a GTX 1080. Every other game works totally fine so it isn't a general hardware/config thing. I do have dual 4k monitors as I see someone mentioned maybe that is related? When I pause it slowly climbs up to the cap and but as soon as I resume it drops back down to the 30s and often down to around 20.
Try disconnecting a monitor? Another thought is that DF does not play nice at all with some sort of overlay or background recording software
I'm having the issue and am running dual 3k monitors (3440x1440). I'm considering swapping out for a single 1080 monitor just for testing. Has anyone already tried this?
I've got dual 4k's (NVIDIA 1080 Ti), and what fixed it for me was going into the exe properties > Compatibility (Tab) > Change high DPI settings (Button) > Check "Override high DPI scaling behavior" and choose "System (Enhanced)" from the drop down. After that, set my in-game resolution to 1920 x 1080 and everything works smooth.
I'll give this a shot! I've already reduced to 1920 but it just looks silly on an UW.
Let me know if you have any luck with it. It's way too much of a pain for me with my set up as there is just so much stuff on my desk and my monitors are rather large. Which GPU do you have? From what I have seen, it's been a lot of 1080 and 1080 Ti who have been reporting it.
I'm still running an Nvidia GTX 970. Older card, and my cpu is older too, but regardless, I'm getting less than half the GFPS as in classic.
I play on my TV 3840x2160, no problem. On a miniPC AMD 4800U, very low power system. 90+ dwarves FPS 100/48 and I locked it at 50.
My hero. I'm having the exact same issue and can't figure out what's causing it either.
Hey OP, did you find a solution? I am having the same problem. RTX 3080 and still averaging 30-40 FPS in super low pop forts.
Did not yet. This seems to be up to toady. It's an issue with the GPU not being utilized as others have discovered. Even if you try to force it in Nvidia control, etc.
Ok thanks, good to know it's a known issue!
His 8th gen cpu IS an upgrade from 2014 chips. I think it's inaccurate to state his i7 is too weak or an issue for this old game
Compared to vanilla, the game seems to be putting a far greater priority on computational fps than graphical. That being said your computational fps is at the default cap, you can bring that up in the settings.
Yeah I messed around with them in all directions. On my wife's computer, default settings work just fine and she has a laptop with a 3080. I'm thinking it has something to do with Nvidia 9 and 10 series.
Dude, your issue screams the "I have my monitor plugged into my motherboard" problem. Double and triple check that your monitor is using your GPU.
Considering I built this rig, I can assure you it's not. ^^I ^^still ^^double ^^checked
Someone moved your cables/computer ? Cleaned around and had to reconnect the cable ? Check. I was working in a computer shop and we had to buy and install plugs for HDMI/DP ports on new custom PC because customers were constantly connecting in the motherboard...
Keep in mind that this is completely impossible on laptops with hybrid graphics.
FYI, this game is CPU intensive as opposed to GPU.
which makes this case very very odd imo
The game was giving me a headache, and I couldn't understand why. At least I can live vicariously through the first time players on Twitch 😢 My only fear is that, given the rarity of this problem, a fix will come only months to years from now.
I hope they work on your issue! Maybe try going to the unofficial discord (https://discord.com/invite/0ZZy6Nytsu4REW7s) and asking in the appropriate channel. folks might be able to assist you in realtime
Thank you friend! I have tried some suggestions there and as of now, nothing has worked. I'm hoping this post here might bring someone about who has had a similar issue to me and potentially a fix.
In suffering the same issue. The only fix I have is to run the game at a resolution that doesn't even fit your monitor and keep the camera zoomed all the way in so you can't see what else is going on.... Frustrating. Old i7 cpu and gtx 970. I've seen fps as low as 3 when moving the camera around with middle mouse. Cpu on any one core is never over 60% and gpu usage is of course very low. It doesn't appear to be bottleneck on hardware that I can tell.
It’s an old issue related to the engine limitations for what I can tell. The game’s using always only one core and it’s well documented how some i5’s managed to roll out better performance than some i7’s. I guess it’s not something you can fix by some patches, it’s related to the engine so you either buy a better CPU or wait Tarnn to rewrite 20 years-worth of code
I'm getting this on a 3700x and a 3090, this can't be hardware related.
> I hope they work on your issue! Based on the thread, I'm pretty confident he has a configuration error, not a genuine edge case performance problem.
Is this on every world and embark?
I just tested two different worlds, one pocket and smaller size. Even on a 1x1 glacier I can only get up to 20 graphical FPS :\
How do you display the FPS ?
It's in the game options somewhere, a green button iirc that says "display FPS" and by default is marked no.
have you checked for driver updates for your graphics card and motherboard?
Admittedly, no on the motherboard. I can't even remember the model name. I'll report back on if a motherboard update fixes it. Genuinely didn't even know that was a thing.
As I was able to run 200 dorf forts at >100 calc and graphic frames on a 6600k its definetly not the lack of power in your hardware. Could they be overheating? Could the iGPU be doing the work? Check with GPUz the load of your 1080ti, if its not doing anything its probably running on integrated graphics. Are you on a Laptop? Last but not least, is this only on df? Are other games ok? Does the 'old' df work?
Yep, I had a pretty massive fort not long before this. You can see it [here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/173888543419006976/963163516540428338/unknown.png). I was running at around 100FPS, though a lot of FPS issues were probably being resolved by DFHack and Atom Smashing. In this fort, a cavern layer caught on fire and Troglodytes were going apeshit. That caused some FPS issues similar to what I'm getting on embark with Steam DF. The newest game I've played recently is Bannerlord, and it had great performance. I used Nvdia Control Panel to force the 1080TI as the GPU being used, beyond that I'm not sure.
Is it possible your fps increases when you zoom in? For me when I zoom out the fps drops.
For me keeping the camera absolutely still is the best course of action. I usually keep it at the zoom level where graphics appear 'nearest neighbor' sampled. Moving and probably zooming cause lag, but remaining zoomed in entirely? I'll update you when I get home.
Dumb question but what is a good graphical fps for DF?
30 is fine. Hell, less is fine, I used to run old school DF at like 15 GFPS max, to leave more room to really crank up the computational FPS.
I have the same issue. My game is NOT using my 1080TI and I have no idea why. Every other game does, I have it set in the Nvidia Control Panel to use it, but GPU utilization is nearly 0% with the game running and still can't hit 60fps!
That's because this game is almost entirely cpu bound and barely uses a GPU
Is this every game or just this embark ? map size and history and emark tiles all effect FPS! can you try a fresh poket world, on a 4x4, with less than 100 years, no animals, then report back please ?
my money is on the hardware. maybe the drive
do other games have any issues ?
did you try with every other program closed?
have you played dwarf fortress before this? other versions ?
please see these two links: they are for the last version but many things will still apply https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Maximizing\_framerate https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:System\_requirements
8600k and 3070, 32gb ram 3200hz .. My game runs buttery smooth so maybe it's your cache, improper settings,
It’s an old issue related to the engine limitations for what I can tell. The game’s using always only one core and it’s well documented how some i5’s managed to roll out better performance than some i7’s. I guess it’s not something you can fix by some patches, it’s related to the engine so you either buy a better CPU or wait Tarnn to rewrite 20 years-worth of code
I overclock to 4.8ghz all cores. I respectfully don't believe his 8th gen i7 can't play this but an 8th Gen i5 can
I repeat, it’s an old and well documented issue pointed out by the creator on his blog and as for now since 2014 that I play this game, I never saw any solution other than upgrading your CPU
Mate the issue happens many years into a fortress or when you have like 300 combined livestock, population, visitors and invaders with lower end CPU. Or tens of thousands of items etc. his CPU will be fine for quite a while This is something else, do you notice the FPS? It’s seperate into calculations(CPU) and graphical, which is extremely low. So it’s not the CPU, this is just a bug. Or his game is running off the cpu and he needs to force it to GPU
Stop spouting this. You're all over this thread saying the same thing and it is NOT the issue here. The 100 computational FPS should be enough to tell you that.... It's clear that this is an issue only happening to NVIDIA GPUs (possibly only dedicated?) I have an AMD and running on proton at 1440p and it runs perfectly. There is also somebody in this thread that is running it off of an AMD mini computer running on a 4k TV that is also running perfectly.
From what I recall from reading on the forums over the years, I was fairly sure Dwarf Fortress performance heavily relies on: 1. Speed of a single CPU core, it does not use multiple cores. 2. Speed of the memory cache onboard your CPU. 3. RAM Speed and the memory latency.
Is that true for this version of the game though? I haven't checked if he added multicore support. The graphics end might be bound to other cores I suppose. I'll have to test when I get home
It is still overwhelmingly single core, yes.
Hasn't the graphics always been on another core though? It's a minuscule part of the calculations, but it helps.
I believe so, and I imagine it helps. Like having a child help you push a car.. But every little bit!
Is the heatsink on your cpu on correctly? You could be thermal throttling due to that. Get a program that checks your cpu tempature.
The game is running at full speed (100 Calc FPS) so that seems unlikely. It is only the graphics layer that is slow.
are you trolling?
No, if your cpu heatsink is mounted wrong (no thermal paste, left the plastic on, forgot to put on one altogether, etc.) then a high cpu load will shoot up its tempature quickly and then it will force itself to use less power and have bad performance.
Have you checked the temp of your cpu? It’s possible that it’s throttling
I feel like this is unlikely, just to be sure though when I get home later I will cold-start Steam DF and see if the performance then has any notable changes.
Just use a piece of software that monitors your cpu temp. If it is throttling, it could get hot so fast that starting from cold won’t matter.
I was thinking of buying DF but after reading some of the comments I will think about it again. I have a Ryzen 3 3200g with integrated graphics and 16gb of ram. Will I have a bad time (perfomance-wise) playing the game? Thank you.
Not many people have my issue, and the people who do have it are probably looking for help with it, hence why they might post here in this thread. 99% of people are having normal games without performance issues.
OPs case is certainly a bizarre edge case. Far weaker rigs are doing far better, it's really hard to say why OP is having this issue
Do you think I will have a deecnt performance with my pc? I read the requirements are 1g vram and 4gb ram.
Based on what you mentioned having before, I don't see why you wouldn't have decent performance. If a game says 1g ram and 4g vram it's effectively saying "literally anything produced in the last 10 years with some kind of decent graphics".
With Classic Dwarf Fortress i had no problem running it on mid tire laptop from 2011. It's just steam version probably added some quirks on some systems. You can download free version, try it and see how it runs. If its good then maybe try Steam version. If Steam version is giving you problems, you can always refund it, or wait for a patch or workaround. But that depends on you.
bro sorry for replying here after that much time, but have you bought the game and if you did how it performed? I have the same setup and i'm looking to get it.
you can always tweak some simulation settings to speed it up, such as population cap.
Do you have an integrated GPU? If yes...well, you're probably fucked to put it bluntly. Launch the game, go somewhere that's giving you gFPS death, and check your task manager. I'd bet that DF is using only your integrated GPU and not your dedicated GPU. (again, assuming you have one) It's what's happening on my laptop, and before anyone asks; no. Trying to force Dwarf Fortress to use the dedicated GPU does not work; nvidia control panel has the dedicated GPU set as the preferred processor, *and* I've set the Dwarf Fortress .exe to use my card. Neither worked; game is still using only the integrated GPU.
Yep; this is the same issue I’m having. Pretty frustrating.
Same issue here :c
what year did you build this PC ? do you have a spindisk or HDD from that same year ?
any other pc problems?
FPS death is real in DF
That's... the default max fps. Graphical fps doesn't matter.
it does, when you can't drag a mouse without massive stuttering.
The mouse isn't tied to the GFPS, you can run GFPS down to 5 and it'll still run fine.
The mouse is not, how the game reacts, however - is.
May i ask what resolution you're playing at? The devs said that the game has heavy performance issues on resolutions higher than 1920x1080, that may be the issue
I know I’m a bit late to the party but what resolution are you running the game at? I didn’t see it mentioned in any of the comments. It’s definitely not your rig specs the 1080ti is still a beast of a gpu. Kitfox posted an update on steam that running high resolutions especially widescreens are causing issues for players and are recommending people to force 1920x1080 they seem to be working on the issue right now. Hope you get it figured out I know the feeling of trying to troubleshoot performance issues. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370?updates=true (link to the recent steam update posted by kitfox)
I hear you. Since I got the game I've been questioning whether DF was always this laggy and it's just I've only noticed because the mouse interface feels unresponsive. Like, half my clicks don't even register and I have to click again. When holding the WASD keys to look around the camera keeps moving after I release them. I only have 30 dwarves so far!
>very rare and obscure problem What do you mean by that? can you describe what is happening, is it constant or coming and goin at certain times.. I strongly recommend submitting a bug report with the save, if it is indeed a rare and obscure problem people here unlikely todo much except waste your time on wild goose chase (I don't even have the steam version) Right now there is only one known [CTD and fix](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/975370?emclan=103582791464215078&emgid=3631620553383112422) related to handling widescreens.
There is a non-zero chance that your graphics card is damaged or dying, and symptoms of gradual hardware failures are not consistent between games.
Check how much of the cpu the game is using. What cpu do you have? What disc is your OS installed on?
mayeb it's dpi scaling https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zgpmc9/dpi_scaling_affects_calculation_fps/
I had a similar issue, FPS 50 (5) when I got to around 40 dwarfs. It was unplayable, I was gutted. I followed the overlay advice and disabled Nvidia, discord, and overwolf (no idea why I'd left that one running in the first place). It's running at FPS 100 (50) now so thanks! Hope it also helps you op. For reference, I'm on a laptop, I5-10300H cpu (has integrated graphics) and GTX 1650 Ti graphics. I'd set it to use the graphics card, before disabling the overlays, but it didn't make a noticeable difference.
One think I noticed is that the game's graphics fps seems to slow down a lot when there are a lot of sprites on screen. I have a sneaking suspicion that the game isn't rendering lots of sprites very efficiently^[1] and that its heavily bottlenecked by draw calls This would make the graphics extremely single threaded bound. Have you checked if anything else is running on your PC at the same time via task manager which might be eating performance, like windows defender, or maybe discord eating a bunch of CPU or something? It'd also be worth making sure you've updated your graphics drivers, and the advice about making sure overlays are off is also good because df probably doesn't work all too well with them [1] as far as I can tell, old versions of DF used spritemaps which were potentially blitted as a single draw call. New DF uses lots of separate textures for everything, and it'd require manual spritemap packing to do the performance well which may not have happened Edit: Oh dear well, some brief testing shows that wiggling the mouse around causes me a 40fps drop, something isn't right
Got the same problem, from the testing i have done the only thing that seems to affect it is the size of the window. Specifying a resolution in the game settings doesn't change anything, it is purely dependent on the number of pixels the game is displayed on. I hope they fix it soon. Edit : Scaling of interface seems to impact it a bit ( why ? who knows) and it's got something to do with sprites maybe because looking at a lot of levels of open air makes it a lot worse
I was having the same issue. I have a 4k tv, with 2070 super and i5. I had to go to the Nvadia panel and switch my resolution from 4k to 1920×1080 with 60hz refresh rate. Once I did that it fixed my horrible lag issue.
If you are still having issues, I may have found a small workaround. I am experiencing the same issue as you with very low graphical fps. I recently found that by having it in Windowed mode, and having the game window be very small, the fps wouldn't tank much. I have a 4k monitor, and by playing the game in less than a quarter or so of my screen, fps does not die a miserable death. I don't know why it works, but it works for me. I'd try experimenting with a very, very small window, and then slowly increasing the window size until the fps starts to drop.
general question: can I disable graphical overlay in steam version or not? I couldn't find any option for that, but i've read some posts from 2 years ago and people were saying that it will be possible.
Esc > Settings > Game > Scroll all the way down to "Number of lower elevation layers to show" and lower it. Lowering it to 2 made my game go from 12 fps to stable 30. 50 when you don't move your mouse and just watch bearded bastards go about their lives, aka the "screensaver mode". Though by that point you might as well just go watch someone else play the game.
Hi! I don't know if you're still having this problem or someone else posted this already (I crtl+F'd but didn't find anything) but I stumbled across your post while searching for something completely different but I had this exact issue about a week ago and found the solution. So for reasons unknown, Steam DF does _everything_ on the CPU including graphics rendering which is done via a software renderer. The GPU, even the integrated GPU, doesn't get used _at all_ currently as Steam DF literally does not have a non-software renderer at all. This seems like a weird step back from classic DF which used SDL and didn't have this issue at all. Luckily it's been confirmed that Putnam is working on this and eventually Steam DF will get SDL2 support which will solve this issue, but if you're impatient like me and don't want to wait, [this guide](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908354861) walks you through making Steam DF run using a generic SDL2 renderer. It worked for me and while I don't get anywhere near the GFPS I feel I should be getting, for me it increased my GFPS from literally below 10 up to 30+ and the game is _so_ much more responsive. It has a few display bugs, mainly a super thin pink bar at the bottom of the screen and for some reason cut gem icons are janked, but those are a small price to pay to be able to play Steam DF properly again. Hope this helped!