The next step

Good morning

So as pointed out earlier, I am old tech savvy (read 386 w math co) was my first build. Long long time since my last desktop!!!

Built system in signature last week specifically for DCS use.

Have booted, “adjusted bios” and updated drivers per you tube videos (not over clocked) . Installed windows 10 pro, steam and latest release of DCS including a bunch of modules (all non steam versions) Ran a quick test using my 144 mhz monitor with “high” setting on DCS and runs smooth so far. Jumped into an online server and seems to run great sans getting “shot down” before hitting the battery switch (noob welcome??????) fwiw used a resource monitoring program temps were good ,all cores below 15% and graphics card 90% at 145 fps in free flight over Dubai. <==all “ish” figures as Im away going off of recollection.

Ok after all of the above babbling, before I dig out the index and heap another layer of configurating on the pile, what else should be done to optimize my base system? I just want to make sure all the bones are ready so I can just “optimize the headset once I go there.

Kind of vague I know but I hope u get the jest of what I am asking.

Thanks all!!

Define optimize in this context?

Have you set the power settings in Windows and the Nvidia driver to "performance"?

What motherboard do you own? Nowadays most gaming boards come with pretuned profiles for overclocking in their BIOS. Enable a conservative one and if it boots you are good. There are benchmarks out there to test stability but just playing DCS for an hour or two is the best stability test. My more aggressive overclocks will crash Cinebench but are fine in DCS.

Have you enabled the XMP profile for your RAM? Like the CPU overclock profiles these are pretuned for you motherboard, CPU, and RAM. You can squeeze out a frame or two that way and can prevent microstutters.

Have you installed ProcessLasso? Highly recommend it. More convenient and in depth than Windows. I'm away from my rig right now, but I can post a snip later of my settings.

I recommend the on screen display that comes with Afterburner for flat screen. FPSVR is a utility available on Steam.

Don't own the Index. But with the Reverb it was a whole new Rabbit Hole of troubleshooting and tuning. Good Luck!

In general, DCS and VR like fast CPU's and RAM. Learning to overclock is worth it and very user friendly these days.

In general, DCS and VR like fast CPU's and RAM. Learning to overclock is worth it and very user friendly these days.

Kudos to your 2080 Ti SLI, that's what I call being dedicated, hardcore and passionate. That's the spirit. Tipping my hat.

Thanks Der Hirte. I've been building PC's since the late 80's with my first 80486. I was lucky enough to have a parent who worked at IBM so I grew up on the first IBM PC and PC AT.

I'm actually about to sell my second 2080 Ti and go back to an ITX motherboard and smaller case. My rig is heavy and I like to move it between my living room, bedroom, and simchair often and it's not very convenient for that.

I made the bargain with myself that if I liked the Reverb enough to keep it I would sell the 2nd GPU as VR can't utilize SLI as of now or in the foreseeable future. I mostly play DCS but I have a big backlog of older games on Steam. I recently played about a 100 hours in a heavily modded version of Skyrim Special Edition and the second card was at 0% utilization. Not sure if that was inherent in the engine or because of all the 3rd party mods. It's a blast to play older games with everything maxed out as the developer intended. You can even supersample above your native resolution in the Nvidia driver.

Now if you are into recent AAA games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider in 4K, it's jaw dropping amazing. Looks absolutely gorgeous. But the law of diminishing returns applies. You are paying quite the premium for a few graphic settings and frame rate.

I love helping people get into gaming and tune/build their PCs. Even the 4K videos and screenshots you see don't really compare to the native content. You have to see it with your own eyes.

For DCS when playing with SLI enabled on flat screen with TrackIR I was able to maintain 60 fps at 4096 x 2160 with almost everything maxed and with shadows kicked up to Ultra manually in the config file. I kept depth of field off, heatblur on medium and civilian traffic on medium. On a few modules like the P-51 in single player I was even able to keep MSAA at 4x. Gorgeous...If I have time before I sell it I'll try and do some SLI benchmarks for DCS on how well it scales. Best guess at this time is about 30-40%. Most games don't scale very well with SLI. But assuming you have the power supply to handle it, 2 used 1080 Ti's would probably do well compared to a single 2080 Ti at current prices.

As said above by Sn8ke_iis, set your GPU in Nvidia Control Panel to "High Performance" and make sure it is set to Gsync if you runa GSync screen as well as the desired Hz.

For Windows power plan settings, I recommend you make a shortcut to the "old" battery icon located in the "old" control panel" and then toggle from "Balanced" for daily use to "High Performance" for DCS, but tbh, any 7th gen ( 7700k etc. ) or later Intel chip switches so fast there is no real difference in DCS but it may surpress one or the other hiccup. It is very important to do this for the GPU as outlined above, there you see a BIG difference in fps if you stay with the Nvidia Balanced Profile.

Despite you run ample RAM of 64GB, I would still set a Pagefile of 16 or 32GB for now. I would not disable it and also not leave it at System Managed either but would set it to a FIXED size. It may be not needed, just try it out if you encounter issues.

Keep a stack of Nvidia drivers, dont delete the installer. It happens that sometimes a new driver causes issues and you would like to go back w/o the hassle to explore Nvidia's website for older drivers.

Set MSI-Afterburner OSD to show the relevant data, GPU, VRAM, GPU Clock, CPU clock, CPU usage, your CPU has 16 threads, so 1 core is tilt when you see more than 6.25% usage, so you might wanna set it to show all cores for a few flights, then revert to show CPU total only.

Add Temp for CPU and GPU, maybe PageFile and what else you think you want to check.

Once you feel it's running great and stable, make it sleek and exclude those that you dont want to see permanently and clutter your screen.

Make sure your RAM is set to XMP profile in Bios. Do that before you overclock if you intend to do so. I would go for an ALL-CORE 5G with nor more than 1.35v under load, better less! and temps no higher than high 80ish while you do stress testing.

For stress testing, I recommend prime95 version 26.6 for a long run and newer/newest versions ONLY if you watch temps and wattage with HWinfo while you do it and dont do it for extended hours, 2h is well enough for AVX. Newer than 26.6 uses AVX codec and does pull more ampere and thus will heat up your CPU a lot more than any test without any AVX employed.

In the end, DCS is the final test, but I would only trust it if it runs an overnight prime95-26.6 default stress test followed by a 2-4h stress test with Aida64.

If you use the pre-defined Overclock settings in your Bios you will very likely have higher volts than needed and thus run a lot hotter. If it runs 5G at 1.35v flawless, lower in 0.01-0.02v steps until it crashes while you prime95 it. then go 1 or 2 up. YOu might be able to run 5G at less than 1.30v, that would be a good oc.

It can be tricky to read the right volts. What matters are Volts under FULL LOAD, not while in idle. The difference, or the DROP in volts when going from idle to 100% full tilt can be managed by a setting called LLC, Load Line Calibration. All vendors have different labeling conventions which setting is stronger, or worse for your CPU's health. Asus for example goes like this: LLC1 is weakest ( highest drop allowed ) and LLC7 is the strongest, ( almost no drop and thus A LOT HOTTER ). Once you get there, come back and we will guide you, I dont want to tilt you now ;).

Since you only see 90% GPU usage...yes, you could use some OC to see it at 99% all the time ;)

:joystick::pilotfly: Happy flying and congraz that you actually dared to do it ! :thumbup:

Wow, that is super helpful( and unfortunately quite overwhelming) thanks for the input so far

Was in bios and turned on xmp and turbo but didn’t see any options for adjusting or over clocking? Its an MSI gaming board fyi. All in one water cooler on chip.

Lost me on page file. How to??

Downloaded and installed latest Nvidia drivers but didn’t see any option for settings. Any help?

Funny that I really want to learn to fly sims but am enjoying learning the new technology as well!!

Can’t wait to strap on the headset, can only imagine...

Thanks!!

This might be a bit out of date, but hopefully it will help.

From your desktop right click on the desktop to pull up the context menu to pull up Nvidia Control Panel. Or click on the Nvidia icon in your system tray.

There's a utility called Nvidia Profile Inspector that I like to use but become familiar with NCP before you jump to that.

This one might be more current for an I9.

With XMP and Turbo on you have unleashed most of the power of your rig.

FYI, this already is considered as overclocking.

Step by step, take it slowly so you understand what you are doing. It's no shame to watch 20+ videos about that topic before you go hands on. It may not even be needed. YOu will see once you fly if your GPU is not at 99% most of the time.

Take it easy :thumbup:

I just read up on page files, will do that next then I guess I should plug in the headset and see what’s what. Almost afraid at this point after reading gobs of posts. Wonder if even my system is going to be up to the task. We shall see

I just read up on page files, will do that next then I guess I should plug in the headset and see what’s what. Almost afraid at this point after reading gobs of posts. Wonder if even my system is going to be up to the task. We shall see

Your just setting a fixed size for the drive to use. In your case not often with 64 GB of ram. Your system would run without one, NOT recommended.

Some found it better to set one. Here's a post with screenshots of it set that helped some online. For example

Others set them to small and the sim will crash (It's set in MB)