DCS Performance, FPS Drops and Stuttering

Not sure what you're describing. It should be using 4 cores, which I'm assuming you observed, with totals under 10%. Also assuming it's an i7 or has at least 6-8 primary cores, because on this i5-3570k @3.4GHz I get approx. 25% usage per core.

Apparently, 32GB may be required, only due to the way the game is designed to 'allocate' memory for all assets via memory mapped files, instead of mapping them on-demand. Windows keeps caching to pagefile because it's trying to free up 23GB of RAM, which was allocated but never used. hehe. ;)

edit: System occupies 5-6GB, so 2-3GB were cached. Also, it eventually runs out of stuff to cache to disk, then starts Hard Page Faulting at a lower rate of 60KB/sec as it shuffles RAM and cache back and forth.

I just can't imagine needing more than 10-13GB to load all of the assets I need for a specific map. In MP, you have to load all the planes, but in SP why is memory being allocated for assets that aren't even in the map I'm playing? :doh:

Use SysInternals Process Explorer btw. It has a lot of useful info all in one place.

Not sure what you're describing. It should be using 4 cores, which I'm assuming you observed, with totals under 10%. Also assuming it's an i7 or has at least 6-8 primary cores, because on this i5-3570k @3.4GHz I get approx. 25% usage per core.

The totals under 10% is when DCS is off and basically nothing is running except for driver stuff that loads up when booting already. It goes up to 25% (or very close to it) per core when DCS is running. And it's an i5, just like you mentioned. I guess there is no i7 with the same designation, that would be the 3770K.

Tried now with 4.4GHz for all cores in boost. Well, got temps up to 70°C, but didn't lower the Vcore curve yet, went up to around 1.13 - 1.14 whereas it peaked around 1.09 before the OC. Had temps up to 62°C there before already, so not that much of an increase anyway. I mean we're talking 29.4% increase of clock rate here, which is lots. My fps always have been 40+ now, just once I saw a 35 while splashing a MiG and taking a screenie of that (can't read the fps anyway while flying, the font colour is absolutely horrid and it's size too small). With mirrors off it goes up to 70+. Before OCing, this was around 22-25ish and ~35-40ish w/o the mirrors. Absolutely crazy if you ask me, not even a third more in CPU clock resulting in almost twice the fps... In externals I had 90 mostly, often over 100. Never had that on the 1080 before OCing my CPU. When it was at 70+, it was very much already. Could get 100+ with the F11 cam pointed up though

When ED now finds the primary cause of the drop that some are having since the Tomcat release and fixes that, I'll be ready for VR...

PS: No stability problems yet...

ah ok, yea i run without mirrors and just look behind. they're a massive resource drain as it's essentially a second camera (view port) with slightly lower LOD and visibility values. I usually don't like OC'ing stuff, most of it fails eventually. ;p

yea, it seems that announcement was regarding VR FPS specifically, and not asset/memory management or preloading design issues/oversights.

as it stands, apparently you need 8-16GB VRAM and 32-64GB RAM, which would be completely unnecessary if the game was better optimized for lower end systems instead of just hogging everything. Lazy way of loading assets.

Maybe that was done to mitigate the preloading stutter somewhat, once the assets are already loaded, but it creates other issues, and the original problem there is that the preload/asset management/streaming thread is blocking the graphics thread leading to FPS drops/cutting out momentarily.

DCS eats 7GB RAM + 3,5GB VRAM already on the absolutely lowest settings possible (with blurry textures like 20 years ago) on an empty map. 1920x1200.

I have 32gb of DDR4 RAM and 11GB of VRAM. I don't concern myself with these petty details ;) Also congrats on your OC :) CPU intensive games like DCS/Arma benefit tremendously from and overclocked CPU. It's really easy for your GPU to end up bottlenecked, or for the whole thing to be bogged down by AI units.

@Beta

I've been running a 4.6ghz OC on my I7-6700k for ages without a bobble. Done properly, they will not heat, and will never fail. Crashes, even occasionally means either you're pushing it too hard, or that something is not configured quite right. It's not terribly hard to do, but it does require a bit of practice and willingness to tinker.

When your cooling system costs more than a faster CPU. I exchange parts so rarely, the cooling probably wouldn't fit the new form factor. lol.

Although I doubt the i5-3570k can push his GPU to its limit, but he hasn't implied that. I know it's just barely good enough to push this Radeon 7870, and a bit extra, but not much more than that. It definitely can't push higher gen cards.

Suppose it depends on the game, but then why he's getting more FPS at 25% CPU utilization is beyond me as well. If the GPU utilization doesn't change from 100% then I'm at a complete loss...

im having this problem too, fps dips around 40's then it recovers to 60-70's immediately this is happens me every 30 seconds.

Module loading time

After the last update for DCS World Beta, I have noticed a massive increase in module/mission loading time. Before, loading into a mission was something like 30 seconds to start, now it is something in the region of two minutes to load in. This has only started happening after the last update. Is anyone else experiencing similar delays?

I have 2 flights after last patch.

Both flights encountered serious stutter, first flight even CTD during stutter.

I don't want to play anymore until this is fixed

Have any of you guys been using nvidia's latest 430.64 drivers or any of the 430.xx series?

These have been dreadful with my setup, there is an obvious FPS problem caused by these driver sets, the moment I went back to 425.31 the framerates were stabilized.

Have any of you guys been using nvidia's latest 430.64 drivers or any of the 430.xx series?

 

These have been dreadful with my setup, there is an obvious FPS problem caused by these driver sets, the moment I went back to 425.31 the framerates were stabilized.

good to know.... was considering updating to check for any performance gains, but decided to go to bed instead... still runnin like a champ with 390.77 over here... Lol..:pilotfly:

Have any of you guys been using nvidia's latest 430.64 drivers or any of the 430.xx series?

 

These have been dreadful with my setup, there is an obvious FPS problem caused by these driver sets, the moment I went back to 425.31 the framerates were stabilized.

I can confirm. Same experience on my setup with the latest 430.xx drivers (GTX1080).

rolled back to 425.31 and this fixed all my stuttering issues.

PS: DCS is running on SSD

Didn't try latest one... Still on 425.31 and no any issues.

Buy SSD.

does anyone know wich is the best nvidia driver version at the moment for VR?

i noticed a huge performance drop since my last nvidia update.

i wanna do a rollback to the best version, if there exists a "best one".

or maybe just wait for the next update?

have you got any tips regarding nvidia drivers?

Didn't try latest one... Still on 425.31 and no any issues.

Best driver currently for DCS.

I didn't update drivers for a few months and was having stutters and generally low FPS. After installing 425.31 drivers, what an improvement. Approx 70 to 100 fps now. Just wanted to say, thanks guys!

This post over at Guru3d might be useful to some too

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/rtx-2070-nothing-new-stuttering.426588/page-2#post-5670159

I can confirm rolling back to 425.31 improved stable FPS to my VR!!

+1

I'm having the same problems both in VR and normal. The real kicker is it happens even at the main menu! It's easier for me to see in VR with the Oculus performance overlay up. At the main menu I get a rock solid 80fps (Rift S) but every few seconds it drops down to 25fps then right back up again. In sim, solid 40fps but every few seconds it drop down to 10fps then back up again. And this is doing nothing but sitting on the ground. Even tried holding my head steady so it didn't have to work much.

It completely ruins the experience in VR!

DCS is on a SSD. Specs are i7-4770k (not overlocked), 32gb RAM, and GX 1080ti.

When I get home today I am going to try rolling back the drivers as suggested but I'm not optimistic. This isn't happening in any other games that I play so it seems odd it would be the driver.

Rolling back to the 425.31 drivers did not fix the problem for me. Still frequent, repeating frame drops for no discernible reason.

Rolling back to the 425.31 drivers did not fix the problem for me. Still frequent, repeating frame drops for no discernible reason.

Same! :(

I had that issue. In my case it was caused by two things. One is hyperthreading or multithreading (forgot the exact name). By disabling hyperthtreading in the bios helped a lot in making things more stable. I can not rule out that this solved more a hardware problem on my end then with DCS.

Second, I found that DCS defaults to using a single core affinity for intel cpu. Culprit here is Turbo Max program. Disabling this program helped me. For good measure I also used Project Lasso for setting the affinity to my 5 cores (5 logical cores disabled by disabling hyperthreading).

Hopes this helpes.