Possible performance bottleneck

Hello everybody!

I'd like to ask you for help with my DCS performance. I'm running DCS on fairly old PC (i5 4460, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 1060 6GB, SSD), but my FPS are generaly fine on smaller missions. When I however try a mission with a lot of units my FPS unsurprisingly drops rapidly. The problem is that both my CPU (58 %) and GPU (28 %) seem underused (screenshot 1) but my FPS are shit (11). Interestingly when I pause the game my CPU usage drops a bit (52 %) but my GPU usage (88 %) and FPS (71) rise rapidly (screenshot 2). Also I found that lowering graphics in this particular mission Hornet campaign mission 2, does not help with performance, at least on mission start.

In your experience, what might be the cause? What is bottlenecking what?

Thanks!

To my experience, the memory clock (ddr and cache) have a huge influence on fps. Be sure to put them at the best value

Also dcs uses mainly two cores so being at 50% cpu means your are capped by the cpu power.

Bottleneck is CPU, no question about it. The problem is DCS uses only 2 cores and 1 of them does most of the work while the second only does the sound engine (fairly trivial). The speed of that single core is the single most important item for determining how DCS will perform overall. When you pause the game, the physics and AI are also paused, leaving only the graphics engine occupying that main core. This is why you see a huge bump in performance when pausing.

Unit spawns can also cause a major performance hit if you're using an old fashioned mechanical drive instead of an SSD of some sort. But that would be a very intermittent issue and mostly tied to mission start. It also tends to completely freeze the game until the asset is loaded.

I experience similar issues on multiplayer servers with max 10 FPS since 2.5.6. SLR is off, metashaders and fx folders deleted and did a dcs repair then...

Specs: I5-2400 @ 3.6GHz, 16GB DDR3, GTX1080ti

I know that the CPU is pretty old, but the FPS on 2.5.5 were around 30-40.

I have so far tested the following:

Singleplayer on PG flying alone: more than 60FPS, GPU usage around 80-90%

Singleplayer F16 Night attack mission: 50 FPS, same GPU load

Multiplayer Blueflag persian gulf sitting in cockpit (F16 and J11 tested till now): 10FPS, GPU load 30%

Multiplayer Blueflag persian gulf after ejecting = camera floating in the air and im looking around: 30 FPS, GPU load around 80%

Multiplayer 104th sitting in cockpit: around 20 FPS, GPU load aroun 30%

So far i experience constant low FPS on multiplayer servers when sitting in a cockpit. Which comes with a low GPU usage. It is possible, that the GPU has to wait for the CPU. Again this did not occur on 2.5.5!

I would really love to have the performance of 2.5.5 back...

Next thing i will try is playing the same mission on SP and MP and compare...

Everyone of you reporting perf should be posting what you're actually doing in the game, what mission, it's heavily relevant.

Are you actually logging the FPS, or just peeking on the FPS counter here and there?

I experience similar issues on multiplayer servers with max 10 FPS since 2.5.6. SLR is off, metashaders and fx folders deleted and did a dcs repair then...

Specs: I5-2400 @ 3.6GHz, 16GB DDR3, GTX1080ti

I know that the CPU is pretty old, but the FPS on 2.5.5 were around 30-40...

In SP I am getting 40FPS sustained and higher. In MP I do not go above 10FPS. I have done the reinstall, tried multiple servers, and I just cannot pin it down. I am waiting on some sort of update or acknowledgement from DCS that it is a problem. This 2.5.6 has really caused some issues and it baffles me as to this but like a good little boy, I wont convey too much sadness as many will remind me that it is an Open Beta. I have the stable installed and no issues like 2.5.6. Good luck to all of us. :(

Omg ... what I just possibly discovered, I need to make sure I'm seeing that right ... but it's, holy smokes and that's quite fitting term as it also has to do with the now (in)famous Black Smoke, I need to write the post, make screenshots, edit and upload the videos ... but I need a break while the weather, later.

EDIT: and that may be a dud, a false alarm, thankfully, I'll keep an eye on it tho, it's very similar but something else may be going on.

I'm bit late, but thank you everybody so much for your replies, it really seems to be the CPU,

Stay safe!

One question ... do you use TACVIEW ??. If so, deactivate the data capture in the special menu of said module, because the more units the more impact it produces, especially in MP.

I suffered a loss of more than 30% of performance, I deactivated it and I recovered it entirety