What are the system requirements for most zdoom/boom wads coming out now?

[invictius]

Ancient Aliens didn't like running on a p4 3ghz in software mode, it wasn't a problem in gzdoom. Object 34 sonar was unplayable on a 867mhz g4 mac, so I imagine that needs some sort of 1.5ghz cpu. I'm guessing that most of the community has at least a pentium 4 or low-end dual core system since they are plentiful and giveaways, not retro and valuable, atm.

[Maes]

The lowest I've recently practically used for ZDaemon gaming (including slaughtermaps) is an old HP nx6110 laptop, so I guess a Pentium-M (essentially a low-GHz Pentium 4 with plenty of cache). Truth be said, some of the largest maps in Chillax were so choppy they reminded me of DMINATOR.WAD on a 486DX/40, and I had to set the resolution to 800*600 (4:3 monitor, yay!), but for the most part it was playable and enjoyable.

Doom is a game that doesn't benefit much (or at all) from multiple cores, on any port, and the differences in single-core performance between a modern CPU and a 10 year old one are not as dramatic as one would think, so Pentium 4 level is right on the money. Of course, there was a lot of variability between the various "Pentium 4" CPUs: from early 1.9 GHz models with 256 KB of cache, all the way to the latest 3GHz+ models with 1 MB of cache and hyperthreading (some even dual-core and with 64-bit extensions).

[Voros]

I'm answering directly to your question.

A: Most Zdoom/Boom maps can even run on a shit PC. Very few require lots of power.

[invictius]

Maes said:

The lowest I've recently practically used for ZDaemon gaming (including slaughtermaps) is an old HP nx6110 laptop, so I guess a Pentium-M (essentially a low-GHz Pentium 4 with plenty of cache). Truth be said, some of the largest maps in Chillax were so choppy they reminded me of DMINATOR.WAD on a 486DX/40, and I had to set the resolution to 800*600 (4:3 monitor, yay!), but for the most part it was playable and enjoyable.

Doom is a game that doesn't benefit much (or at all) from multiple cores, on any port, and the differences in single-core performance between a modern CPU and a 10 year old one are not as dramatic as one would think, so Pentium 4 level is right on the money. Of course, there was a lot of variability between the various "Pentium 4" CPUs: from early 1.9 GHz models with 256 KB of cache, all the way to the latest 3GHz+ models with 1 MB of cache and hyperthreading (some even dual-core and with 64-bit extensions).

This dminator.wad?

[Maes]

invictius said:

This dminator.wad?

Yup. It was an early slaughter-style PWAD based on a modified E1, because you know, doing so was a thing back then. Particularly infamous was the courtyard in E1M2 (the external area), which was loaded with 100 or so pinkies. Really overkill, back in the day ;-)

[invictius]

Maes said:

Yup. It was an early slaughter-style PWAD based on a modified E1, because you know, doing so was a thing back then. Particularly infamous was the courtyard in E1M2 (the external area), which was loaded with 100 or so pinkies. Really overkill, back in the day ;-)

Completely off-topic but what is the oldest piece of hardware you've ever run under win 7? I was checking for drivers for a mediavision sounbblaster pro clone, for millenium - site claimed to have 7 drivers!

[Bloodshedder]

Maes said:

Pentium-M (essentially a low-GHz Pentium 4 with plenty of cache)

The Pentium M was based on the Pentium III architecture and is the predecessor to the Core M / Core 2 Duo and thus the current Core series of Intel processors we have today.

[invictius]

Bloodshedder said:

The Pentium M was based on the Pentium III architecture and is the predecessor to the Core M / Core 2 Duo and thus the current Core series of Intel processors we have today.

How much single core performance difference do you think there would be in zdoom when comparing p4 to the dual/quad/i5 series we have today?

[Linguica]

invictius said:

How much single core performance difference do you think there would be in zdoom when comparing p4 to the dual/quad/i5 series we have today?

Well here's a fairly high end Skylake Core i5 compared to a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, which retailed upon release for $1000: http://cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=2594&cmp%5B%5D=1130

Single Thread Rating
Intel Core i5-6600 @ 3.30GHz                  2101	
Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 @ 3.46GHz   796

[Graf Zahl]

For ZDoom it would even be more, if you compare an old single core processor to a modern multicore. Although the game itself is single threaded, it still uses multithreading for the sound engine and let's not forget about the operating system itself which also needs its slice of CPU time.

[LexiMax]

I actually get significant framedrops in ancient aliens MAP29 playing on Zandronum (which is ZDoom 2.5 behind the scenes) on a pretty beefy PC (i5 3570k).

It's still well north of 35fps, but I'm actually kind of curious what is causing all the lag.

[invictius]

AlexMax said:

I actually get significant framedrops in ancient aliens MAP29 playing on Zandronum (which is ZDoom 2.5 behind the scenes) on a pretty beefy PC (i5 3570k).

It's still well north of 35fps, but I'm actually kind of curious what is causing all the lag.

It's those weird floors. Same thing happened to me on the second map of spacedm9 because it has those see-through, neon looking floors.

[Maes]

Bloodshedder said:

The Pentium M was based on the Pentium III architecture

Correct, my bad. Then again, didn't the most powerful Tualatin Pentium III's nearly (or outright) outperform the first Williamette Pentium IVs? Too bad that Intel segregated them to pro-only markets and then pulled the plug on the 512KB-cached Tualatins...

Linguica said:

Single Thread Rating
Intel Core i5-6600 @ 3.30GHz                  2101	
Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 @ 3.46GHz   796

QED, that IS underwhelming considering the two CPUs are separated by nearly 10 years of development (Q1'01 vs Q3'15). Imagine if e.g. the best Pentium in 1996 was only 3 times as powerful as the best 386 in 1986. And that benchmark certainly incorporates the effects of larger caches, faster memory buses and DIMMs etc. Yikes.

OK, I know, GHz brickwall and all that, but it really does mean that some inherently serial computational problems and algorithms (and Doom is one, at least if vanilla mechanics are preserved) will not get significantly faster in the foreseeable future.

OK, multiple cores do help with OS concurrency, audio processing, maybe rendering etc., but not by a whole lot, and they don't help with Doom's core algos themselves.