tools for Optimizing DCS Performance (non-VR)

Hi All,

I'm looking for suggestions on how to go about troubleshooting and fixing performance issues in DCS, primarily frame rates.

When I host a complicated mission such "Border Patrol" my frame rates can get pretty abysmal - depending on my location my FPS can dip to 1 frame every 20 seconds! But generally they average around 20-40 (I have v-sync set for 60).

I'm looking for suggestions on how to go about measuring my bottlenecks with Task Manager and/or Resource Monitor or other tools.

On my casual glance at the built in Windows tools I don't see any obvious bottlenecks - CPU, RAM, and GPU are all within what seem like reasonable limits but I'm not sure I'm looking at the relevant metrics.

What is a good starting point for measuring any bottlenecks and what should I be looking for?

MSI Afterburner Software from Guru3d.com

Configure the OSD to show temps for CPU + GPU, CPU/core + RAM + GPU usage, FPS and Frametime.

You need to invest an hour or so to get the OSD all set up. You can alter what it shows while in DCS, it will adopt the changes after a few seconds.

You have a nice system but why such a slow RAM ? It is not THAT crucial as with AMD systems but you do lack behind with 2133MHz. Intel should run at least 2666MHz. But that is not the reason why you drop to 1 second, I am just curious as money obviously wasnt the reason.

Have you set a PageFile with fixed 32GB size ? Despite your very large RAM, do so and see if that helps. Set it to your SSD, if you have mor SSDs, set it to the Non-OS/DCS SSD to maximize throughput.

Watch the GPU temps closely when you drop in fps, that is often the culprit.

https://www.guru3d.com/files-get/msi-afterburner-beta-download,36.html <---This is the latest edition, install and REBOOT

Hi BitMaster,

Thanks for the suggestions. I setup MSI Afterburner with your suggested metrics and changed my Page File as follows;

C:\ NONE (this is my boot and DCS drive)

G:\ 32GB (38GB max, this is a secondary SSD)

After restarting the PC I started up DSC->Mission Editor->load mission->play mission in SP. Then I looked around and did some flying.

To my unaided eye it doesn't look like anything besides RAM Usage, Framerate, and Frametime are being taxed too much or getting saturated.

The time spent within the mission itself corresponds to the time where RAM usage is saturated at 16384 Mb. I might not have set the graph bounds to go beyond this level so maybe this is a result of data exceeding the graph limits rather than exceeding my RAM usage limits.

I *might* have noticed a slight improvement in subjective smoothness of my FPS after changing my Page File, but if so it was pretty minor.

Any comments or suggestions would be welcome. Thanks again.

Peachpossum

After bumping my graph limit for RAM Usage to 32768 GB, I could see under the same conditions it maxed out at 18.8GB which seems OK.

The frametime graph is clearly being saturated at 50ms. If I understand this metric, if 1/Frametime corresponds to max FPS, then my GPU is struggling to get frames rendered in time to get 20 FPS. So that would explain the poor FPS. But what could I adjust to reduce Frametime?

If the relationship between FPS and 1/Frametime are equal, then I'd need to get my Frametime down to about 16ms or less to peg my FPS at 60.

Are you sure your system has 64GB RAM ?

The graph says a different thing. Check Windows System Information on how much is recognized if you have 64GB installed.

CPU-Z will tell you, its a free tool.

was in a hurry for previous post..so..

Frametime is nothing you can tune directly, it's the time your system needs to render a frame, it must not be more than 1000:fps, like 1000:60 = 16.666ms allowed open time slice window ( however you wanna call it ) to inject the frame into the GPU pipeline, if you miss it with 16.68ms the door is already closed, "Sorry mate , Pub's closed, no more beer today" kinda thing. You either undercut it or hit it on the beat or you are screwed, there is no mercy involved.

Again, your RAM makes me think...check and tell.

Hi BitMaster,

My system is reporting it can see 64GB of RAM.

When I run the same mission and monitor RAM Usage with the upper limit of the graph set for 32768 MB, you can clearly see my RAM Usage tops out at 17.5 GB - well under my 64GB limit.

I ran the same scenario with DCS graphics options set for LOW preset and was still seeing my Frametimes exceeding 50 ms for much of the time. My framerates went up to about 25-30 for most of the run (instead of 17-25 with HIGH preset settings).

I'm starting to wonder if this mission I am using is just too complex, but my friends report much better framerates on lower end systems when connected to my server.

Are you running a separate computer with the dedicated server client or are you trying to do both on your gaming rig?

If so show us some stats running in Single Player or hooked up to somebody else's server to establish a baseline for performance comparison. Your framerates and frametimes are all over the place.

A 6700 only has 4 cores. I'm not sure you can do both on the same machine. You can try running DCS with core affinity set to 3 cores and use the 4th core for the client or try to set up a VM but even then I think you are asking a little too much. I'm not sure I could run a server simultaneously on my 9900K, though I've never tried.

When you play on console or other multiplayer PC games and host a game there is infrastructure provided by the company. As far as I know, all DCS multiplayer servers are provided by individual players or squadrons who pitch in to buy the server or rent one from a service that provides a server off site.

If you look in the multiplayer forum you'll see guys running servers on Xeon CPUs which are expensive HEDTs that can have 12+ cores.

I Play on possibly the largest dynamic sever online (Includes CA player controlled ground units) that will really test your pc out.

I've been on this sever with a 1000 units, + All the spawn player units and 30 vs 30 PVP. Still runs well.

It's only a 7700K (4 core) like my pc and on Gigabit fiber.

But that's all it does....., it only host the game. No one can play on it. Your probably asking to much. What's it like playing the mission on single player?

Also of note your 6700 is very slow. 3.4ghz is not nearly fast enough to feed your GPU and do the physics calculations for the game. You really need to be at 4.8-5ghz on a skylake processor.

Hi All,

I am trying to do both on my PC - host a server and fly with my friends, usually no more that 6 people for any given mission.

However all my graphs above were made while running this busy mission in Single Player Mode. It sounds like I'm expecting too much from my 4 year old Skylake.

yes, you need more cores and WAY more than 32GB.

10cores at least and 32GB for your client and 12-16GB server, so take 64GB and 16 cores and multiple SSDs. That should work.