Editing System requirements

{{Quality|Unrated}}

:''If you're looking for information on improving the performance of Dwarf Fortress on your computer, see [[Maximizing framerate|Maximizing Framerate]].  For installation instructions, see [[Installation]].''

Note that while the [http://bay12games.com/dwarves/ front page] displays only the current Windows x86-64 build, there also exist previous versions [http://bay12games.com/dwarves/older_versions.html under the "All Versions" link].

==Premium version official requirements==

 

* Memory: 4 GB RAM

 

 

* '''Linux on x86-64''' and '''MacOS on Intel''' may be able to run Dwarf Fortress via Wine, previous versions are [https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=5608 rated Platinum on Wine's AppDB].

''Dwarf Fortress'' is not particularly graphically intensive, even when using high-res [[tilesets]] and [[graphics set]]s. ''Dwarf Fortress'' also doesn't use technologies like [[wikipedia:OpenCL|OpenCL]] to make use of graphics cards anyway, so a top-of-the-line graphics card will generally not improve performance.

==CPU==

''Dwarf Fortress'' mostly operates on a single thread, so if you want to optimize for DF, you should probably optimize for single-core performance. This is especially true if you want to do more laggy things, such as [[mist]] generators.  However, laggy circumstances are generally the exception, not the rule, and in those other circumstances, you generally don't need a ''particularly'' powerful CPU.

As ''Dwarf Fortress''' bottlenecks are mostly due to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cache#Cache_miss cache misses], it has been [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=151121.msg6270374#msg6270374 speculated on the DF forums] that "a CPU with a positively giant L3/L4 cache (and I mean > 256 mb or GTFO)" would improve DF performance, as would using faster RAM with smaller [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency transfer times]—see the next section.

 

During [[Fortress mode|regular]] [[Adventurer mode|gameplay]], ''Dwarf Fortress'' usually doesn't consume too much memory -  512MB is probably a bit tight, but 1GB is absolutely sufficient, though if you're short on RAM, you may want to quit other running processes. What's particularly important during regular gameplay is RAM ''latency''—since the game uses the RAM ''every single frame'', it's important that your RAM be fast, lest you experience FPS death.

However, [[world generation]] is known to eat up a lot more RAM than normal gameplay, especially if you generate worlds that are particularly large or have long histories - multiple gigabytes may be consumed. To be safe, you should shut down any background processes when generating a world, and if you're particularly tight on RAM, consider reducing the size or history of the worlds you generate—the game is rich enough with content that you'll still have plenty of things to do, and you can always tweak the other, less RAM-hungry [[advanced world generation]] parameters. (RAM latency is less of a problem here, since you'll only need to do this once every so often.)

== Experimental reports ==

Configuration type: RAM-upgraded MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)

:Game version: v50.12-beta8

:Embark size: 4x4

:Number of dwarves: 193

:Average fps: 32 (18 graphical)

:Tileset in use: Steam

:Amount of stone dug: ~3000

:Amount of water and state: inactive magma pump stack, no water

:Approximate amount of z-levels: 30

:RAM usage of game: 1622 MB

:Draw mode in init.txt: Auto

:CPU: Intel Core i7-2640M @ 2.8 GHz

:RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz

:GPU: Intel HD Graphics 3000

:OS: Windows 10 under Boot Camp