FPS Slow Down

Hi All,

Just wandering if my FPS slow down is due to GFX or CPU.

To explain, the FPS drop is only when I am looking at a complex scene filled with units etc. The minute I look away, say at the sky, or on the empty ground the Frame rate picks up again. Would this not suggest that the GFX is slowing down here rather than CPU because the CPU would be doing all the physics calcs in the background regardless of where I am looking.

ok so it seems that everytime I look at the complex scene my engine clock halves to around 500MHZ and then when I look away at the higher FPS scene my engine clock shoots up again to around 1000MHZ. Please explain that?

Listing system spec will help others help you. DCS graphics run on a single core and sound on another so CPU speed is crucial.

Case : The VIPER GX2 Mid Tower Case

Power Supply : Casecom/Sky/Aerocool 700W Heavy Duty Power Supply

LCD Monitor : No Monitor

Motherboard : MSI B150M BAZOOKA MATX Skylake ,DDR4,6x SATA3 6x USB3.0 5.1ch

Processor (CPU) : Intel Core i3 6100 3.70GHz Dual Core SKYLAKE, 3MB Cache

CPU Cooler : Standard Intel Fan & Heatsink

Graphics Card : AMD R7 360 2GB GDDR5,PCIE,DP/HDMI/DVI

DVD/CD Burner : 1 x LG/SAMSUNG DVD/CD Burner 24 Speed

Hard Disk Drive : 240Gig SSD Kingston SSDNow V300 SATA 3 r4.5KB/w4.5KB/s (+$69.00)

2nd Hard Drive : 1 Terrabyte Seagate SATA 3 7200rpm (+$79.00)

RAM (memory) : 8 Gigabytes 2133Mhz DDR4 GSkill / Crucial /Kingston

Your Computer just hits the Minimum Requirements of DCS.

2 GB VRAM and 8GB SysRAM is not much for DCS. If you want to upgrade, then GPU and/or RAM

Minimum system requirements: OS 64-bit Windows 7/8/10; DirectX11; CPU: Core i3; RAM: 8 GB; Free hard disk space: 30 GB; Video: 2 GB RAM card, DirectX11 - compatible; requires internet activation.

I just purchased NTTR and loaded 2.0 on the same system as 1.5

I have 1.5 loaded on my SSD and it runs fantastic. 3-21" Nec's on a GTX960...

I had to load 2.0 onto a Hard Drive (15,000 rpm Raptor)

I KNOW this will slower to load but once loaded into memory does 2.0 still need to access files on the HD?? The performance of NTTR and 2.0 is bad (at best). I have all of the settings at minimum and still it stutters badly and hangs up to where I need to use TASK MANAGER to kill the program to exit.

The download and installation was successful and without a problem. I know the load times will be longer but the system runs smooth and clean with 1.5 but 2.0 is a real bummer...

Anyone else seeing this?? Ideas??? Really looking forward to 2.5...!!!!

There are many things you could try, starting with reducing view distance and putting 2.0 on the SSD. Here is a tread with many peoples trials and tribulations

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=158503

All the suggestions in the link add another level of complexity and costs many of which did not solve the problem.

So I ask again...

Why does my system run 1.5 with all settings pretty well maxed out and no stutters or problems and 2.0 is horrible with ALL settings at minimum?

The only difference is 1.5 is on the SSD and 2.0 is on the HDD (lack of space on SSD).

My questions specifically are:

Does 2.0 need to access the hard drive or does everything load into memory? (this would point to the PERF diff between SSD vs HDD)

Is 2.0 that much larger in Memory than 1.5? if this is the case then I need to add more Memory. But previous users did this and saw no improvement.

Since it's BETA software I have to assume that final optimization has not yet taken place, but will the final release of 2.5 improve this?

Is 2.0 more sensitive to any specific BIOS settings (ie. hyperdrive etc..) and what should the settings be?

Probably the ONLY ones who can answer these are the developers...

rickberry, you didn't tell us the resolution of your three monitors but even if they were 1024 x 768 low res (by today's standard) monitors you would be pushing a mid-range video card's capabilities hard. Triple monitors is a huge GPU resource drain on even the top cards. My 980 with 4 GB runs both versions of DCS at 60-90 fps on one 1440p monitor mostly maxed out. Still, there are times in 2.0 it is pressured. Additional monitors, even 1080p, would force me to accept lower quality settings or to upgrade to a higher performance card.

You also don't say anything about CPU and RAM. 2.0 is definitely more resource hungry and yet to be optimized as well as 1.5x. It can easily overwhelm a system that runs acceptably on 1.5x. We really need to consider the complete system as well as the DCS version when hunting for acceptable performance. Expecting 2.0 to run anywhere near as well as 1.5x is setting us up for disappointment.

Please read the message...!!! I KNOW about monitors, graphics cards etc... and the loads

BUT...

I have the same exact setup (monitors etc) for 1.5 and 2.0 the ONLY difference is that 2.0 is installed on a HDD vs my SSD because of space.

1.5 (max settings) runs smooth and clean with NO issues...

2.0 with (minimum settings on everything) runs like crap and hangs up constantly.

So regardless of my config (monitors etc) WHY does 1.5 run SO much cleaner than 2.0..?

Yes I know it's beta so is that the reason? If so then I understand, and will simply wait until they get 2.5 released, with HOPES that they do some serious optimization.

I did some tests and 1.5 loads and flatlines in memory around 3.75 GB

Looking at memory for 2.0 when it loads and starts running it hits 5.5 GB and keeps climbing as the game runs, until it hangs. I have 6 GB (will be adding more) but apparently 2.0 in its current release is very resource intensive ...

I guess I'll bit the bullet and add another 16 GB of memory, even though other threads reported no help by adding memory.

For those interested... I'll report back with my results in a few days...

Thanks for the responses, wish we could hear from one of the developers ( BTW you guys do rock!!!!) just frustrating trying to run 2.0 and expecting it to run as clean as 1.5.

rickberry, I read your posts completely. No need to be defensive. Now, do I understand you are running with a full 6 GB of RAM or VRAM? A video card with 6 GB VRAM is one thing and probably shouldn't have many issues with triple monitors unless they are 1080p or higher. 6 GB of RAM should barely function in Win 7 if at all. All of this would be much clearer if we didn't have to guess about your computer's specs. Right now it's all guess work.

All else being equal 16 GB of RAM will enhance your DCS experience. One thing to consider which you may already know. Win 7 and above will only recognize 16 GB of installed RAM on a Home Premium install. To add 16 to the 6 (?) you already have will require an upgrade to Professional. If you are running Home Basic the limit is 8 GB IIRC.

Sorry if you feel I was being defensive please believe me I am not and I thank everyone for their help and assistance.. but it seems I have read many threads where someone asks a question and everyone answers with everything else but. It appears that the answers do not reflect the question at hand. I totally understand systems windows xcetera I was a cadcam computer consultant for almost 26 years. I read some previous threads where the user added extra memory and it did not appear to solve his problem? I'll reiterate my question again. If the system with Windows monitors memory disk drives excetera is running just fine with 1.5 then I would expect 2.0 to run at least reasonably well. Even considering its beta software the differences are quite dramatic. I would expect the load times to be increased coming off of a hard drive vs. Solid state. But given all that and the settings at bare minimums for 2.0 it still runs like crap. After some testing I can see that memory is probably the issue, and much more dramatically than expected. 2.0 seems to be a serious memory hog. Once again totally understandable considering its beta software. Considering the amazing programming skills of the DCS team I guess I just wasn't expecting that how much of a difference. I was looking for something that 2.0 needed that 1.5 didn't other than memory. I'll add another 6 gig to the system bringing me up to a full 12 gig of RAM. If that doesn't solve the problem then I'll just simply wait to see what 2.5 has. Either case I'll report back here if anyone else is interested to see if it made the difference or not

No worries. I've been around online PC flight sims since 1988-89 flying wire frame WW2 birds in Air Warrior on a 2400 baud dial up connection. There's not much in military flight sims I haven't at least dabbled in. The hardware/software dance is very familiar but I'm certainly not an expert at either. I'm only a user with a tremendous amount of experience with coaxing the most the performance out of a sim on available hardware. There are many better at it and I never cease to learn something unless I get stuck in my own notions of how things work. The most important process I've learned is to always begin a request for help with a full list of the hardware I'm running. Those who are able to help will often spot the components (or game settings) that may be the cause of my problems. Whether they are right or wrong I always get a new direction to investigate.

With respect to your issues, I'm certain the low system RAM is a big one. I went from 16 GB to 32 GB hoping to be able to run a RAM disk for DCS. The size of DCS and my bloated system memory usage quickly binned that idea. (Yes, I know I can stop unnecessary processes and resident programs but I choose not to for my own convenience. I own any difficulty that arises.) The big unexpected benefit was that DCS runs far better than it did at 16 GB. I suspect DCS has to access the disk and page file far less often during play which eliminates micro stutters and frame rate volatility. Similarly, my 4 GB VRAM video card doesn't exceed the ability of DCS to feed my 1440p monitor. A large system RAM pool partially removes the hard drive part of the equation while running the sim. I've addressed the hard drives too with a SSD as my system drive and a large SSD for all sims and games. I think, I certainly could be wrong but this is how it appears to me, the primary benefit of the SSDs are in loading the game and missions. I have the overhead to allow DCS to load just about anything it needs into RAM. I have no idea if it does but the performance I have seen following incremental RAM, GPU, and SSD upgrades in both 1.5x and 2.0 suggests something is going right.

Flight sims have always been hungry for the best hardware. Developers have always been able to write software that will tax the best hardware available. We have the best combination of hardware and software I've ever seen since the early '80s on the Atari 64. Flanker ran OK but not nearly as well as DCS does on today's hardware. I never saw the relative performance I now see in DCS. Flying in DCS is far closer to actually flying an aircraft than ever before. I have over 23,000 hours and 38 years of military and airline flying as well as the 28 years of flight simming to qualify my opinion. I really want to try VR sometime but I learned to wait for the first couple generations of technology to sort things out before diving in. I really wish I'd have done that years ago. I'd have saved so much money.

I hope your RAM upgrade works for you.

"Gunna need a bigger boat...for 2.0"

Well gang and TWEET...here it is...

Tweet, thanks for all the input...!!! the bottom line is that 2.0 is much more resource intensive than 1.5... So given the following conditions on my system, (attached is the specs, with MSI GTX960 4Gb overclocked GDDR5 Graphics card running 3 NEC 2180 UX and 1 Viewsonic VA 2026w for the MFD's I have 1.5 running great with no issues.

I installed 2.0 on the HDD (lack of space on SSD) you really need SSD for ALL DCS installs..!!!! This made the load times of 2.0 painfully slow. OK I can accept that since it's a HDD.

I added another 2 sticks of 2x4 ie 8GB of CORSAIR DDR3 1333 Mhz along with the 6 GB I was running 1.5 on with no problems. Loading 1.5 and just flying around it takes up 4.41 GB and I had most other background stuff running like TWEET... in this configuration I did not see any real diff in 1.5 performance

With the added memory 2.0 still stuttered badly to start (flying Nevada Takeoff) but after a while it got a bit better but still flakey and with all settings set at MINIMUM.. and the memory leveled out at around 7.09GB No where near the upper limit of 14Gb I have installed now... so memory alone is not the solution...

So for all you out there planning to install NTTR and 2.0 just know that if you are running 1.5 now at it's upper limits for your system you better plan on some major additions (memory and SSD for sure) and possibly a graphics card upgrade.

For me I will stay with 1.5 as my main focus (still have a ton of things to learn) and wait for 2.5 to be released with the fervent hope that they put some serious optimization time into it.

Thanks again for all the input...! and Help...!!!

Good flying.... this is an awesome sim...!!:thumbup:

My system ran 1.5 great, and choked on 2.0. The issue was video memory. What video card do you have?

See previous post.... specs included

nm.

I don't think my issue is RAM related because when I run the game and I have "slow downs" my ram shows only 4 of 8gb being used, so I can't see how upgrading to 16gb will help me. Please tell me if I'm wrong because I'd rather spend the smaller amount of money on ram than the larger amount on a GTX 1070

there are fundamental differnces between the two sceneries in technology, which is something they are bringing together so it's hard to say, but I've never seen more than 8GB RAM usage so I can't believe that is so. I'd have gone with the gfx card based on the OP spec. Skylake is fast enough. SSD is pretty crucial for loading terrain though.

Ram being used is dependant on how much is available in total.

Not using an SSD is a clear drawback, in 1.5 and 2.x.

The scenery and mapdata exceeds any RAM amount, NTTR is roughly 25GB COMPRESSED, now unpack that all into 16 or 32 or even 64 GB ;) it wont fit !

Thats why allDCS's need to load scenery.

Big RAM and SSD help to do that, fast CPU too.

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I agree it's not a ram issue I bumped up to 14 gigabytes and didn't really see any difference. Things smoothed out a bit after just flying around but it's still shaky at best in 2.0

12 - 14 gig should be more than enough for just about any game the rest I believe is in the graphics card more memory there the better. Not sure if Crossfire or dual cards would Be worth the investment. I'm just going to wait until they get 2.5 released and then we'll take it up from there