2.5 - CPU or GPU critical?

Wondering about the new EDGE engine - are things like the new deferred shading, shadows, mirrors, TGP etc best tackled with a fast CPU or a big GFX card?

My understanding is that we're still looking at GPU, particularly as the current edge is built for DX11.

There was recent talk of Vulkan. From what I've read, "if" the developers make use of the capabilities, then some of the GPU tasks can be farmed out to CPU threads, thus potentially resulting in a significant improvement in frame rates.

Problem is that there's a lot of "ifs" in there, and whilst I do have genuine faith in ED to make it happen, I'd be surprised if it'll happen quickly.

So for at least the near future, GPU.

GPU.

1080 or 1080 Ti really make a huge boost on the performance.

I always thought CPU core speed was the bottleneck for DCS. Multiplayer runs slower than single. If GPU was the bottleneck, it would run at the same speed (assuming the other players weren't in sight). This is also assuming the GPU isn't being used to calculate weather / physics etc... Also, my cpu core maxes out.

- Edit - I'm not using 2.X

My understanding is that we're still looking at GPU, particularly as the current edge is built for DX11.

There was recent talk of Vulkan. From what I've read, "if" the developers make use of the capabilities, then some of the GPU tasks can be farmed out to CPU threads, thus potentially resulting in a significant improvement in frame rates.

Problem is that there's a lot of "ifs" in there, and whilst I do have genuine faith in ED to make it happen, I'd be surprised if it'll happen quickly.

So for at least the near future, GPU.

I understand reservations with Vulkan, but just look how ED jumped on the Virtual Reality so big and so fast, but hey maybe it's nothing as complex as a graphics engine.

So it's not possible you can't jump on an API like that, specially if it's like going to make sense in terms of accuracy.

Even if Vulkan would provide a marginal ... 30% speed increase vs something like 60%, the ability to have lower level access would open up possibilities other than performance and graphics effects.

Now some people say DX12 is a huge difference vs DX11 and closer to Vulkan, but I don't know how accurate the Vulkan comparison is, I doubt DX12 allows the same depth as Vulkan.

Still DX12 would open up features so I don't mind if it's DX12, I figured I can just put Win10 on another disk and keep using Win7 normally so that's a non issue now.

Back to the point, what I would want to point out is that with a more advanced API, I think and don't hold me for it but, it could help with developers having more ability to do more accurate physics-geometry-destruction-animation sync, so that things appear on screen exactly as the physics say it should and not some dummy object doing some animation on it's own that doesn't even affect gameplay, ATLEAST i would hope so that this would be the case, because that's a key importance for a simulator, and generally that the area is being looked into. For example in call of duty 2 and probably many other games you had your eyes(camera) and gun at the top of the head on the external model, and with DCS being on Virtual Reality, they got that learning curve all about the physics-geometry-location-sync already, I think Oculus gives out "good practices" dev document or something, I heard Carmack talk about it at least.

EDIT:

Emm, simulators don't have a lot of animation in terms of models them selfs having animestate and I think DCS is not exception, slowing it down you can see it's just layers of models changing and effects turning off or on, I'm not sure the proper term of that is but it's probably not animation, it's the simple manual style, that's probably good, and maybe it should be kept that way for .... but we see bomb blast effects might get animated or what was that, maybe in predictable simple stuff like that when bomb hits you model damage, match it to animation speed, and it's good, I'm not sure where there is a main problem, but I kinda sense it sort of, or maybe I'm just having one of those moments of just trying to find something to brainstorm heh.

The bottleneck has always been the cpu, when talking about a tipical user (no VR, 1 monitor full hd or 4k etc etc)

Ofc i am not talking about free flight missions with just your plane and gg...

maybe in 2.5 is this changing? i think not becouse the technolog should be the same as alpha branch.

After seeing Normandy hammer my 1070 at 99% with the 8700K staying relatively calm, I can see a Titan V in my future :)

Wondering about the new EDGE engine - are things like the new deferred shading, shadows, mirrors, TGP etc best tackled with a fast CPU or a big GFX card?

I've been running my i5-6600K at 4.4 GHz and I hardly ever notice DCS reaching more than about 50% load on one core, maybe 25% on another, and close to nothing on the other two.

However, I like to fly with the visual goodies cranked up and it's really hard on the graphics card. I find my GTX 1070 is 100% loaded around downtown Las Vegas and the framerate drops down to about 35-40 FPS. That's with everything on absolute max including Extreme visibility distance, mirrors on, all visual goodies maxed, 4X MSAA, and no depth of field. That last one is the only thing I don't like to use, I prefer everything sharp. Also, that's flying-around-looking-at-stuff framerates, expect FPS to drop a bit for a second or two when you blow a bunch of stuff up :)

So, a hefty graphics card is what you need! Actually, I find that Normandy is easier on the vid card than NTTR, but for whatever reason I get more micro-stuttering in Normandy... Practically none in NTTR.

The new Caucasus map will be interesting, you know, if it ever gets released :)

I've been running my i5-6600K at 4.4 GHz and I hardly ever notice DCS reaching more than about 50% load on one core, maybe 25% on another, and close to nothing on the other two.

DCS will only use two cores, and the second core is barely used.

Interesting thread. Looks as if we all experience very different CPU usage. I fly single player but in VR and I have 25% showing in task manager. That is 25% on a 4 core system with 4 threads. So 2 cores running 100%.