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What exactly is a dedicated server?


Mule

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is this true? DCS uses multiple threads and those threads can run on any core at anytime.

it’s one of the reasons we buy buy multi core machines. and why many of us buy cpu’s with 6 or more cores.

 

DCS is a single-threaded application, with only the sound processing running in another thread IIRC.

 

You've probably bought the hexa core CPU because of marketing as there's no benefit from it in gaming over a quad core and even that one is an overkill in most cases.

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is this true? DCS uses multiple threads and those threads can run on any core at anytime.

 

it’s one of the reasons we buy buy multi core machines. and why many of us buy cpu’s with 6 or more cores.

 

If you're buying more cores for your games, you're doing it wrong. Multicore is for specific generally non-gaming applications. 99% of games will not use much processor power at all, much less multiple cores, and only a handful of very specific simulations like DCS use the CPU to any significant extent.

 

-edit

For example, I have effectively unlimited funding to throw at my PC. I use a quad core, heavily over clocked and liquid cooled as it is exclusively a gaming rig. I get as good, probably better, performance than the ultra expensive 6+ core Intel processors anywhere in nearby generations and spent a lot less to get it. They might blow me out of the water processing video animations or running a server, but not playing a game.


Edited by zhukov032186

Де вороги, знайдуться козаки їх перемогти.

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I think not. I think your performance will be much worse off running both server and client on the same machine as opposed to just hosting a regular server.

 

Ye of little faith.

Using my laptop to host the server and I've had a drop of something like 7GB of ram usage on the same mission on my gaming PC. I've definitely seem an improvement in frame rate. Awesome stuff.

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DCS will only run on two threads, DCS.exe and ed_sound.dll. The rest are threads used by the system to handle things such as graphics rendering, audio effects processing, and input handling. Here's a screenshot of the threads as DCS is running:

 

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Notice that there's only 14 threads that have any kind of activity on them, and of those 14 threads, only 6 have activity that's more than 1% of the total cycles. The DCS thread itself takes up 66% and the graphics drivers take up 32%, with the remaining 11% taken up by the remaining threads.

 

It's not that multiple cores won't help performance, it's that people vastly over-emphasize how much it helps. With DCS doing pretty much all of its processing on a single thread, the CPU speed is much more important than the core count. The rest of the threads can easily be handled by an additional core or two.

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DCS will only run on two threads, DCS.exe and ed_sound.dll. The rest are threads used by the system to handle things such as graphics rendering, audio effects processing, and input handling. Here's a screenshot of the threads as DCS is running ...

...

It's not that multiple cores won't help performance, it's that people vastly over-emphasize how much it helps.

 

Excellent explanation, couldnt agree more :)

 

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DCS likes FAST cpu's. The 9900K with 8 cores is still the fastest consumer CPU available right now for single threaded performance. Since it's not using those other cores I've gotten DCS up to about 5.275 GHz stable on a single core overclock and keep the other cores at 5. If I try to run Cinebench or 3Dmark with that clock it crashes. The DCS engine loves the CPU clock speed. I run at 4096 x 2160 with 4X MSAA with mirrors and all the bells and whistles and keep a smooth 60fps. For some modules and maps I have to drop the draw distance down from Extreme to Ultra or the AA down to 2x. There's no one size fits all graphic settings for all maps and modules. You have to fine tune depending on what and where you're flying.

 

If you have a pascal or higher card you are CPU bottlenecked. If you don't believe me, throw a 1080 Ti into a 9900k/Z390 and compare framerates in DCS. CPU utilization in Afterburner is not an accurate metric of CPU bottlenecking. i.e. the logic that a CPU is not at 100% and therefore not bottlenecked is flawed. I'd post the benchmarks from my last build but I accidentally erased them when I reformated my drive for my new build. I thought I had backed them up onto my share drive. Unfortunately a lot of people are still speculating about hardware they don't actually own and have no experience with. I'm not sure why. You have to actually test this hardware yourself against some kind of baseline. Most of the stuff online is relevant to chasing benchmarks scores or other games, not DCS. DCS has a very unique engine compared to all the other AAA games I've benchmarked and tested. Probably the physics engine, flight model, training scripts, AI objects, etc. Inferring performance from general gaming sources will not be accurate for DCS.

 

From memory my 2080 Ti with a 7700K only got about a 10% performance bump. I saw about a 5% performance bump when I paired my Titan Xp with a stock clock 9900K compared to the 7700K. Overclocked 9900K with overclocked 2080 Ti was 40%+ improvement in framerates. I was already running locked at 60fps, so I got to turn on all the eye candy. The benchmark was the P-51 free flight over Vegas. That mission is a great benchmark/stress test for single player. Lots of buildings, long afternoon shadows. After about 20 minutes the lights on the strip come on and the frame rate drops. Firing guns 2-3 fps drop. I need to run some proper benchmarks for SLI scaling. Been really busy lately.

 

I was going to post something a little more scientific or an Excel graph but I lost the data:doh:

 

FYI: The adage that games don't use more than 4 cores isn't really accurate any more. Pretty much all the AAA games that have come out in the past year will use more than 4 cores.


Edited by Sn8ke_iis

 

 

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FYI: The adage that games don't use more than 4 cores isn't really accurate any more. Pretty much all the AAA games that have come out in the past year will use more than 4 cores.

 

I've evaluated this in the past:

 

 

The short version is that while games do take advantage of multiple cores, how much is dependent on the game. In a lot of cases, there's still a main thread where the majority of the work is done, with other threads having low enough load that they can potentially all be run on a second core with no loss of performance.

 

Particularly telling is this article that benchmarked Fortnite vs. multiple cores on the same CPU and found that there's negligible difference between six cores running 12 threads, and two cores running two threads:

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fortnite-best-performance-benchmarks,5541-6.html

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Yeppers, it's not that they CAN'T use more cores, it's that it doesn't benefit you. I'm sure most of them do, nevertheless they are not CPU intensive applications, so whether you have 12 or 4 they aren't bwing heavily utilised.

Де вороги, знайдуться козаки їх перемогти.

5800x3d * 3090 * 64gb * Reverb G2

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, back on topic (which is people asking questions to embarrass themselves), how do you run one of these hypothetical servers (speaking as someone who also has only ever flown solo). Build a Winblows machine, load DCS, wave the rubber chicken and it starts up in server mode?

 

 

I'm assuming there's a canonical thread I missed somewhere. "DCS Server for the Clueless" didn't get any hits.

 

 

Someone said MP is way more better-er, even if you only play against the AI. I'm all for more better-er.

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