Test: Setting CPU Affinity

Thanks, that actually helped alot with my understanding of Hyperthreading. With that being said, I disabled it in the BIOS, ran all my benchmarks and my temps came down an average of 6-8°C on AVG, but my scores dropped substantially as well:{,,, I have not yet jumped in the Sim to see if my stutters have smoothed out,, I will try tomorrow,,, thanks

Thanks, that actually helped alot with my understanding of Hyperthreading. With that being said, I disabled it in the BIOS, ran all my benchmarks and my temps came down an average of 6-8°C on AVG, but my scores dropped substantially as well:{,,, I have not yet jumped in the Sim to see if my stutters have smoothed out,, I will try tomorrow,,, thanks

I ask myself how your high end system suffers performance problems at all !

You should be on Cloud #9 & happily piloting whatever you choose.

Let me add this: If you need to check Bios to see if HT is on...it shows how little you are into PC's and their interior. A simple view into TaskManager does the same in 10 seconds.

It gets hairy when you work a clockwork and have very little insight what you are doing. I am not saying that is bad or wrong, it will just be that much harder to get to where you wanna go.

Those are the bloody years of learning basics and dependencies in computing, just keep on learning and some day it will give a clearer picture.

I agree, I should be on cloud 9! Imagine my disappointment when I cranked up the new pc and ran DCS for the 1st time,

I actually did not say I had to check my BIOS to see if HT was on, I said I will have to check, but I believed at the time it was enabled ( I was at work when I typed that). I know how to view the cores in the task manager, but thanks for the tip just the same.

I will admit I am not a coder or PC professional, I have been building my own gaming rigs for a long time, and have learned a lot, but only as much as I needed to be successful. Example being, the gaming rig I just replaced had an Intel I5 2500k, it took me months of fiddling, but I got a stable overclock of 4.8 on an AIO cooler, and it is still running after 5 years at that.

This new upgrade, I have fiddling with overclocking for a couple of weeks and the other day I wound up updating the BIOs because it offered some additional VCore adjustments. Heres the catch with regards to your statement above, this new CPU has Hyper Threading, my other rigs did not, so it is in fact NEW to me. I am putting an effort in, believe me (wifes not happy with all the time I put in). I have spreadsheets to track adjustments and results. I use AIDA64, ASUS RealBench,Cinebench,3d Mark, Heaven, Prime 95, Corsair Link, CPU ID & Real Temp to test and monitor. I think Im making an effort. I will say this, In the past, I have only set the Base clock (100 in this case), and slowly adjusted up the Frequency and Vcore until it started to become unstable and or temps were too high. I have read pages and pages of overclocking tips thru the years, I admit, I did not grasp every drop of it, but I have been successful to date on my older rigs.

I currently have XMP enabled on this rig, and testing the HT On/Off results as this is new to me. This newer BIOS has many new features my others have not, but I am sticking with the basics.

As for DCS, well, you can imagine my disappointment when I had this rig set at a stable overclock of 4.8 (HT on at the time) and I get all this stuttering. I set ALL my settings as they were on the other rig, including NVIDIA GUI settings. So I go hunting the forums, I read a lot of people complaining about the same thing with the latest updates, some run smooth as silk. I have not flown in 6+ months, and this new rig has the updated version, the old one does not. That’s why I am here,,,, im fishing for help,,, thanks for any input.

You do have Game-DVR in Win10 turned OFF !? That is one of the usual suspects.

You should recheck that setting from time to time as some say MS turns it back on after updates/upgrades.

Yes, I turned that off during the build, but it is an excellent tip for those that may not be aware. Thank you very much.

So right now, the only thing I have really changed in the last 2 days was updating Bios, and turning HyperThreading off (for test comparisons). HT off has yielded lower CPU temps and lower benchmark scores, and unfortunately, I have just tested DCS again and it is still jittery. I am running a stable 4.7 overclock at the moment. All of my DCS settings are the same as my last build.

The only differences between older smooth running Gaming PC is obviously hardware changes, then you have the version differences of DCS. So, there could be something else in my system config contributing to this or its simply a DCS matter that I can not remedy without making some settings changes in DCS GUI that Im not sure what to change to make this more fluid?

I run all 3 versions of DCS buttersmooth.

Are you using 2 monitors ? May try only 1 and/or try to lock the fps at your screens Refresh Rate. There is a big issue with Stutter and syncing fps every few seconds for many gamers across many games. The reason is timing between frames send and accepted/processed, basically the stutter is needed to get your frames synced again the uncomfortable way.

There are better ways to sync frames, they are called freesync and gsync

Gsync is almost an unfair advantage, ...almost :gun_smilie:

Have you tried it the sleekest possible way ? the least apps, USB devices, etc... feather light config !

4.7G and stutter sux !

I wish you could hook up a Freesync/Gsync and try that. See if the monitor is the bad boy.

Yes, I am using both monitors. a couple of days ago I changed it to only one to see if it may have been Helios that was casing it with the exports etc, but same issue running single screen. I know I locked the other PC at 60 FPS, I did not on this, I will certainly give that a go. I am using the same 2 monitors and GPU I had been using on my old pc.I have NOT trimmed any of the fat such as devices etc. I have the same stuff hooked up on this PC as I did the other,,, there may be some windows apps I have to look into that could be running that were not on the other? It may be worth me posting up a screen shot of my graphics settings as reference, although they are what they were on the old PC, the latest updates could be all the difference for all I know? Maybe a suggestion based on my settings would be a step in the right direction???? Who knows,,,,then maybe some NVIDIA settings review??

Man, another day of searching and trying different things, and still a choppy flight! I have not done the update that came out in the last couple of days, but will tomorrow. Im about to take this new build and put it where the old build is,, in my work bench! I sure hope this is a DCS thing because I dumped quite a few $$$ into this new rig,,,

Fakum,

Did you try letting DCS rebuild your SAVED GAMES folder (c:\users\*username*\.... ?

Save a copy of it (that's where you keyboard bindings etc. are). Then delete it and let DCS rebuild it for you.

No, but anything is worth a shot at this point

Unfortunately , that had no impact at all. and out of respect for the forum topic itself, I am definitely going off topic here and will cease in this thread. There are MANY others, unfortunately, none that I have found yet appear to be helping me out. Very discouraging after spending all this time and money for a very choppy flight. I do have faith that someday soon I hope, I will get this resolved. Thanks for all the help guys!

I can feel the frustration Fakum :(

I would put it away for a few days and then do it allover again, from the very beginning, that was me if I it was mine.

I had the exact same CPU on a MSI Z170 Gaming M9 and it ran DCS brilliant in default mode. In the end I did not get lucky with neither CPU nor board, both went RMA, but DCS ran fine when the board booted ( LOL ). Overclocking was a bit of a hassle o the MSI, might be me and me preference of Asus, might be real, I felt the Bios is not on par with Asus straight forward approach and the MSI Bios is a lot more tricky and less organized in MY point of view. Others may prefer MSI, I am fine with that.

Either way, make sure you run the newest Bios and have XMP enabled, if it works. Enable all cores when the Bios asks when exiting XMP settings. It will raise all core turbo to 4.4 iirc on MSI M9, M7 might be same value. Asus did 4.5 btw on Z170 Extreme board, but that one board failed too, Asus also zero points in my Z170 history *laughter.

Install the newest build of 10 directly from USB, prepare the stick with the tool available at MS 10 image DL site. It works great and is easy to use. 4GB stick size minimum iirc.

After 10 is done, install Intel Chipset FIRST ..then any other.. Intel ME, Nvidia, Sound, USB, Network, Joystick, rudder, DCS, WInupdates and GO FLY

Do the minimum to get the drivers installed, the OS safe, frameworks installed, DCS installed and FLY.

There is a lot less to fiddle with if it is kept simple.

Like Nvidia drivers... exclude those 3D driver parts if you never use 3D from Nvidia.

Thanks for the advice. One good thing is that I do backups almost at each point of a build, so I can easlily go back to any point and experiment. I would hate to start the build all over, but I get your point. I had a very good overclock at 4.7, i backed it down to 4.6 anyway,,, so I got pretty lucky with the OC. XMP is on. Today I fiddle alot with NVIDIA settings, and I even went as far as to drop ALL settings in DCS Graphics to lowest setting and using 1 screen and its still a choppy ride? Frame rates have been pretty good the entire time for me, running an average of 50 - 60 was typical on the other PC, and it seems on par with this one,,, but the damn chop is annoying. I have come all this way for this? I might load Nevada to see what happens with that, Im just running 1.5 right now,,, I dont know, Im pretty disgusted and what a waste of a 3 day weekend, not to mention the after hours coming home from work and pecking at it for many weeks,,,,

Have you ever installed MSI Afterburner and checked your GPU, temp and GHz ? Sometimes the GPU gets too hot and throttles back. That may occur every few seconds. We had that before here in this thread. Your GHz graph should be static, no ups and downs.

Other than that, don't give up and try 2.0 Nevada

I have not used MSI Afterburner on this rig but I did use its proprietary GUI to set up the 980 Ti for fan curve etc and left it at that. i dont even think its breaking a sweat, especially with its own AIO cooler, but I will double check. I am installing 2.0 now so I can check it out later,,, thanks

Well, not any better with 2.0, running low across Desert deck, very choppy, even FPS is spiking all over between 20 - 60,,, :{,,,,, time to take a break from this mess!

Fakum,

I feel your pain. I never had an issue with DCS, but I did have to tear my hair out for PUBG. Turns out it was my PSU even though it passed very torture test that I could throw at it.

Back to you issues, I would simplify things and break it down like BitMaster suggested. For example, TrackIR have been known to cause issues. Well, maybe it was USB drivers or power settings. But regardless, I would remove TrackIR and Helios completely. Registry settings etc. And if you're going to reinstall everything, I wouldn't even add Cougar/Rudders. I would introduce one thing at a time to see when things go haywire.

Best of luck!

Fakum have you tried to reduce visib range a bit, setting civ traffic to off and water to low?

Using anisotropic and msaa from nvidia control panel instead from ingame options??

I have visibility at its highest setting and it runs smooth, so his must do the same, regardless if 4GHz, 4.2G 4.5 or 5G. Mine runs it in default buttersmooth and Fakum's GPU is 1 step bigger than mine....no..that cannot be it.

The culprit is something else I am afraid.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It might be awhile before I get back to figuring this out. i put so much time into this just so I could get DCS up and running and ready so I can jump back into it in a couple of weeks, I neglected all my other responsibilities,,, I have to attend to those now. Many thanks,,

I had some stuttering on my rig as well. Tried all sorts but DCS still stuttered with my VR headset. What finally solved it for me was a program called Process Lasso. It allows you to prioritize DCS versus everything else running. You can also try it for free. Very easy to setup.

Thats an interesting suggestion,, I took the time to watch a youtube video of that, I certainly have nothing to loose with trying it before I throw in the towel!

I did find an interesting result today (Im supposed to be doing hours repairs, but while the wife was out, I fiddled) I had reported that Hyperthreading On or Off had no impact in relieving any of the stutters in 1.5, but since I installed 2.0 yesterday, I gave it a try today, and I was surprised to see 2.0 was much more smoother with HT off, yes, very noticeable! NVIDIA GUI, I set up a profile for DCS 1.5.exe that is not being used for 2.0,, I will see if there is some sort of relationship by allowing NVIDIA to use the same graphic settings as with 1.5 later,,,,wifes home :}

UPDATE! I went for the Process Lasso approach as a last ditch effort with Hyper threading enabled. I set DCS to dominate cores 4,5,6,7. So 2 dedicated physical cores and 2 HT. I understand that DCS basically runs off of one core, with some understanding that it uses a 2nd to handle audio, so thats how I set it up anyway, all other process use cores 0,1,2,3. WHAT A DIFFERENCE! 1.5 runs silky smooth, the only thing with it is when I get into or over thick forestry at low and high altitude do I get stuttering. I will have to figure out what settings to tinker with to address that.

2.0 ran silky smooth throughout the desert,, I did not run over to the strip yet to check its performance, but Im heading in a good direction it appears. I monitored my core temps during this and I did not see anything different from before with temps. this is to be continued until I get the stuttering gone. Thank you all again! Paddyman, thanks for the tip sir!

if you're going to set process affinity... 1,3,5 and 7 are physical cores 2,4,6 and 8 are logical cores on a 4 core, 8 thread CPU...

so you want to set DCS on cores 3 and 5... or 5 and 7...

it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference though...

Process lasso made a huge difference for me too. I had found that DCS was pegging core #11, a logical core, while all the physical cores were idle. Theoretically, this shouldn’t matter, but when I locked it to use only the physical cores, it went to core 10 and started running much smoother.