Is Demigod (at a least a little) optimized?

you shouldn't count on it, given gpg's track record.

is it optimised now? no.

will there be optimisation further on? yes.

will it be good enough for a machine like yours? doubtful.

2GB RAM is plently, but an X2 3600+ and 8500GT are rather old. i'd suggest you start saving up your pennies for some upgrades.

that said, you should turn on the render time (NUMPAD-SLASH) and console in 'ren_showNetworkStats'; then you'll be more able to find the performance crippling culprit.

• Windows XP SP3 / Vista SP1
• 1.8 GHz Processor
• 512 MB Available System Memory
• 10 GB Available Hard Drive Space
• 128 MB 3D Video Card (ATI Radeon 9800 / Nvidia GeForce 6800 or better)*
• Sound Card
• Broadband Internet Connection for Multiplayer
• Stardock's Impulse Required for Updates/Digital Download
• * Intel integrated chipsets are not supported

I'd say your comp should run Demigod ok, as long as you are willing to turn down some graphics options (the 8500 is not too good)

Thanks for the anwser folks!

I'm pretty sure my PC is not the latest specs, but I didn't think that demigod is over prince of persia in rendering graphics.

Hope to see something better later!

I agree with what was posted earlier.  Your workstation is outdated for today's games.  I would suggest a core 2 duo/quad with 2GB and at least a 8800GT.  It will run smoothly at 1600x1200 with that setup.  The cost is very minor believe it or not.

is a 8500 weaker than a 7950GT? My 7950GT runs Demigod perfectly (well 20-30 fps but thats enough for an RTS) at a medium/high custom setting on 1400x1050 (no antialiasing).

Demigod in it's current form is more optimized than some games coming out in their, supposedly, finished form nowadays. They can still optimize it further, but they're already ahead of the curve.

To the OP: seriously?

I run at 1440x900 with fidelity (for fog of war quality) and shadows set to medium, and texture detail set to high. My system is basically exactly the same as yours, and I manage about 25-30fps through the whole game.

I run on a intel core 2 quad, 2 gig ddr2 ram, Geforce 8800 GTO. Highest settings + 1650x1080 resolution = almost no slowdowns.

Knowing stardock's policies, they like to sell to low-end machines as well as high-end, their reason for doing so is because it is one of their anti-drm stands. If you target ONLY high-end machines, the people who paid the 6 grand for em (yea I know someone who did and I think they are absolutely nuts) are NOT going to be able to afford your game, so they will download it. Also they know what they are doing so they will have no fears about downloading and cracking.

So they target a wide audience who does not need to buy a new computer to just play their game.

Problem with performance of DG:

1) No use of multiple cores. I wonder if LUA uses an global interpreter lock... If it does they need to do multi-processing not multi-threading or they will NEVER get the advantages of multi-core CPUs which are standard now days in most home computers sold. This is especially true when they don't use multiple cores when you host a game, the game is slow even though I have 3 cores idle fully capable of executing the server portion of the game hosting.

2) The game is still in beta2. I do expect that the game will have significant performance improvements as once the major bugs are gone, they will start working on performance improvements as top priority. Obviously currently only the top notch machines can play DG at nice graphics settings.

3) I expect the game to be able to scale for a low-end machine, and for a machine even better than mine, so that a really high game setting will look amazing, but we can scale it down and it will still look alright. I would expect my machine to be in medium setings range.

The devs said this build is loaded to the brim with bugs that they didn't have time to fix, so it's totally not optimized yet. I'm having no problems, though, and my system is only slightly better than yours, OP.

I wouldn't count on it getting a lot faster though. It already runs remarkably well on lower end hardware.  

If you want to know what really kills performance it's the shadows and anti-aliasing. Turn those down and you will probably find it runs best.

I suspect in competitive play, people will play with everything turned down to the minimum but not for performance reasons (try it and you'll see what I mean).

Thing is Frog, even when I run everything low online - it's when the game gets cluttered with lots of units does everything always bog down, even on a fairly good machine. The only way I avoid this issue is adjusting the Spawn Rate of units, giving people time to kill them all before more spawn. If the Spawn Rate is set to default or high, it's lag city.

That's the cpu useage of all units Orlean - they all have pathfinding routines running and many ranged projectiles are fully modelled.

And you're point? ^^ Even without Shadows and Anti-Aliasing, it's killing my system.

Computer Specs:

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp.080413-2111)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
BIOS: Phoenix - Award BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 1550MB used, 22838MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (70Hz)
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Sound Devices: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [AC00]

An 8500 is way weaker than a 7950.  The 8500 may support some newer features, but it's a super-cheap budget card.  The 7950 was a top-of-the-line card from the 7000 series.

That is the point. Shadows and Anti-aliasing doesn't have anything to do with your many-units-problem. You could have a quintuple SLI of the best cards on the market and it wouldn't make a difference. It's a 100% pure CPU issue - and only upgrading that will fix it.

I have a Q6600, 2 gigs of memory and an 8800GTS and I run the game perfect (30+ FPS) with everything on high, 1920x1200 and 4x AA.

Also runs great on my friend's C2D 2.33 and 8600GT all on high.

I've yet to even have a stutter.

i've had some lagg but thats because of connection or because my entire screen was fillled with units but the laggs not that much.

Oh, I've gotten plenty of lag

QFT. The SupCom engine is a major proc-hog. You can have 2 gig ram, and a midrange card, and be ok, with certain limitations, (See Frogboy's post above), but unless you have at least a fairly speedy dual core, you are hosed.

well there's your problem, it's a 2.0GHz single-core machine. if you're lucky you're packing a Socket 939 board and chip and so have dual-channel RAM, but if not then i see your machine as having oodles or RAM but can't get through a tiny bus to your aging CPU.

hoard together all your Christmas money, spend a weekend researching whats-what in current computer tech. and then buy some much-earned upgrades.

That and your graphics card is the cheapest of the cheap with a technical support for DX10 and such but really can run nothing.

Not that that's applicable for Demigod, but it is a good thing to keep in mind.