You will get gains, but still, don't expect total smoothness. Battlespire ran like crap on everything i've seen. It uses 640x480x65536 and no other option is available (except for crappy still-slow pixel doubling to simulate 320x240)

I'm currently running an i7 940 (with a fast graphics card, GTX 295) and I'd guess I get about 15fps in Battlespire. Which is about what I got when it came out I think, so that seems appropriate =).

I have never been able to finish it under Dosbox though - mostly for lack of trying, earlier versions were too slow or my machine was, and since Dosbox caught up I just haven't gone through it.

I guess the good news is that you can get it to playable levels, considering your 920 is pretty close to the 940 I'm using in the first place.

-Frob

Really!? That's the best it can do? I get 20ish FPS on my single-core in the complete 'indoor' levels.. but as I got further along certain areas become sluggish.

Though, really, if those processors can't maintain 20+ FPS throughout I would say its just going to have to wait for better emulators (future DOSBOX releases, that is). On the very same PC now that Battlespire is playable - but not perfect - it was completely unplayable not too many DOSBOX releases back. So... I suppose a 0.74, .75, .76 - etc, etc will be more likely to 'liquify' this beastly demanding title than the next THREE generations of CPUs.

Performance in DOSBox for PC's as far as code optimization is pretty much at it's peak, there may be a few optimizations that might give a small fps increase but really the only hope is for faster processors.

frobme wrote:

I'm currently running an i7 940 (with a fast graphics card, GTX 295) and I'd guess I get about 15fps in Battlespire.

You must not be running with the dynamic core or something, that seems very low for your hardware.

The game runs much faster at 320x2?0 than at 640x480, but is playable at both on my (2.4 GHz?) Core 2 Duo laptop.

I just ordered most of the parts for my new Intel Core i7 860 (P55/LGA1156) desktop and am looking forward to testing some of the more demanding DOS games on it under DOSBox.

You must not be running with the dynamic core or something, that seems very low for your hardware.

That's a worst case scenario. In the opening area it's quite fast, probably 30+ fps (little bit hard to tell from within Dosbox, I should patch up with the versions that showed FPS previously - guilikoza's I think?). But there are areas later in the game that are quite a bit slower and occasionally show visual updating, which is usually <20fps. Oh, and I'm referring to 640x480 - that's how I played it originally, so that's how I play it now! =)

So basically the worst I could find was still playable, which isn't bad at all. Given that Battlespire was one of the most demanding DOS games ever made, pretty encouraging that we're able to play it now, since unless Dosbox gets worse in speed (unlikely!) we're set for most DOS games these days.

-Frob

Might I ask... what speed are you running your 940 at? I'll have my 920 OC'd at 4-4.2ghz so I'd like to compare.

Is Dosbox optimized to take advantage of multi-core CPUs? And, slightly not related, but, with such a powerful computer like the OP's, why play old DOS games on it? 😜

temptingthelure wrote:

Is Dosbox optimized to take advantage of multi-core CPUs?

No.

And, slightly not related, but, with such a powerful computer like the OP's, why play old DOS games on it? 😜

QUIET YOU! 😉

DosFreak wrote:

temptingthelure wrote:

Is Dosbox optimized to take advantage of multi-core CPUs?

No.

Oh, alright then.

DosFreak wrote:

And, slightly not related, but, with such a powerful computer like the OP's, why play old DOS games on it? 😜

QUIET YOU! 😉

😁 😁

Tried running DOS in Virtual PC/Sun Virtualbox? You can get Dos 7.1 for free, it's under the GNU/GPL license.

Hmm, I dont think ms dos 7.1 or whatever you want to call it is under the gpl license. There's a dos clone that is, but that's not the one that was included in win9x.

He must be referring to FreeDOS, not MS DOS

DosFreak wrote:

but really the only hope is for faster processors.

How can you say this? I've done searches and found several posts on these forums indicating that DOSBOX will not get multi-core support. So what good is hoping for processors faster than the newest ones out there, when the application will never utilize their speed?

Sorry, I don't mean to come across as boorish. I had just searched here about multiple cores a few days back and was both disappointed by what I found and, admittedly, too ignorant to understand the reasons beyond it.

Besides, this is going on Frobme's assertion of how his 940 runs one of the most demanding games on DOSBOX. I'm mildly skeptical of the possibility that an i7 cannot supply DOSBOX with resources it needs to emulate even an intensive game like Battlespire, at a constant 30FPS+.

You don't need multiple processors or core's for more speed. Processors got faster before dual processors were invented and they continue to get faster.

Read the reviews of Battlespire for when it came out. Alot of them say it requires a P150+ at high resolution and color depth at 16bit, since this is all rendered in software and emulated by DOSBox it will be slow and there's no possibility for 3D acceleration for the game like there is for RedGuard (RedGuard using Glide in DOSBox most likely runs alot faster but you'd have to ask Gulikoza about that)

So stop worrying about how slow the game is in DOSBox either low the graphics settings or move on to the next game until processors are fast enough to play the game or of course for a different solution to play the game.

There's some multicore support in dosbox, but the biggest resource hog is the cpu emulation. For truly to notice performance improvements on multicore cpus, the cpu emulation would have to be spread over several cores. This is a nearly (if not fully) impossible task.

If emulating these games requires so much CPU power, you might as well just buy an old PC for $50 (or given away) and play it on that.

I figure I would post an update here.

I'm now running an i7 920 @ 3.8ghz and there is no comparison.

In intensive parts of Battlespire where I would always get under 15FPS, sometimes under 10, according to FRAPS I get 25+ always.... and even more important than the number, which doesn't seem like 'that much' of an increase is that the game is just .... one hundred percent, liquid smooth... whereas you could feel the stuttering in some places on the old AMD.

I am thinking of getting an Intel myself after so many years being an AMD fanboy.