Solved: New Computer, Horrible Performance

I just upgraded to an i9-7900x 10core, 32g RAM HyperX at 2933, 1tb M.2 drive, 1tb SSD, EVGA 1080ti FTW3 overclocked, CPU/GPU water cooled.

With that hardware, I fully expected to max out on FPS. On first run my performance was horrible, and just a small fraction of what my 3yr old system was. I checked my DCS settings, removed and reinstalled the app, checked my nVidia settings.. everything, to no avail. 3dmark Timerunner benchmarks were showing me with a top 100 score of over 13k.. so why was DCS running at an average of 15fps? The answer is: Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology. This software was on by default. It claims that it can find your best cores and redirect chunks of code to them to span the workload out, even if the app doesn't support multithreading. DCS hates this...

Loading DCS the first time, my symptoms were as follows:

• Canopy glass was black for 2+ minutes
  
• Hitting F11 to look around at bases showed buildings hovering over water.. textures weren't loading
  
• My FPS never went above 30, even at the lowest settings
  
• My CPU was getting uncommonly hot, and my GPU utilization was jumping all over the place.
  

To be clear, the 3dMark Timerunner benchmark was running fine. I ran hardware scans and found nothing. I had reloaded DCS and tweaked my settings, but nothing worked. When I unchecked ENABLED on Intel Turbo Boost Max on my systray, my performance shot up to 100+ FPS at full settings.

See attached pics.

After resolving the problem, I searched the DCS forums and found that MackTheKnight had already figured it out here https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3517089#post3517089, and he did a good write up, but it was buried in a thread about CPU affinity. The symptoms from TBM are similar to customizing your CPU affinity for DCS, so if TBM is off and you still have a problem, check your affinity.

To learn more about Intel Turbo Boost Max, look here https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/turbo-boost/turbo-boost-max-technology.html

turbo boost max, is that a software that come along with the new i9 series?

on my 6600k/770k/8700k I never had the need to change cpu affinity, it seems that only some particular cpu's are affected.

Yeah, I think the software comes with i9 and extreme edition processors. My 7900x is both. Great processor. Previously extreme edition processors had great multithread performance, but poor single core (making them bad for DCS). The fastest chip on the market now, the i9-7980XE benches at #20 for single core performance, but #1 for multicore and overall bench. The 7900x is #7 for multi and #7 for single, having the fastest single core speed of the i9s (i7s still hold top scores). Most chips that are high in one category are very low in the other. I got this one because it's high in both while having the new i9 architecture, and I wasn't sure if ED will be introducing multithread capabilities in the near future. I sure hope so. Bit off topic.. but FYI.

yes it looks like the cpu affinity issue sometimes popup in between some dcs updates specifaiclly for some particular cpu's only like yours.

You can also set up the cpu affinity manually from taskmanager or alternatively you can use processlasso which will set autoamtically the affinity for a specific application / .exe so you don't have to always change it manually.

I also highly reccomend to change windows power plant to "maximum performance" instead of "balanced".

I'm leaving affinity to auto and performance is extremely good. Yes, max performance on power management and also 'Prefer Max Performance' on the vid card power management. I have a 1500watt power supply, it's not like I'm trying to maintain a good carbon footprint :)

Why don't you lock your cores via Bios ? Sync_all_cores and set them to 47 multi or whatever your oc is. You can still change the Powerplan and let it throttle all the way down to 800MHz for everyday work. For DCS you kick in HighPerformance and the cores get all locked at the set frequency in bios.

For the GPU I think this is even more important to lock it in HP mode via nv-cpanel.

BitMaster, that's a different thing. You're referring to dynamic core *frequency* (and Intel Speedstep). We're discussing core *affinity*. You can change the affinity of individual applications to only use certain cores. Apparently DCS doesn't like to be told which core to use and when. As a loose example: Overriding dynamic frequency would be setting Core0 and Core6 to a 47 multiplier, and leaving all other cores at 43 in your BIOS. CPU Affinity would be right clicking on a process in task manager, selecting 'Set Affinity' and unchecking all other cores to force the app to only use Core0 and Core6. In the case of Intel Turbo Boost Max, it does something like dynamic affinity by taking over which cores are used by the application instead of letting the application do it. In other words, TBM might favor Core0 and Core6 where DCS is trying to use Core1 and Core3. Something about the way DCS is coded makes the performance degrade severely if it doesn't have exactly the core it wants when it wants it.

I just upgraded to an i9-7900x 10core, 32g RAM HyperX at 2933, 1tb M.2 drive, 1tb SSD, EVGA 1080ti FTW3 overclocked, CPU/GPU water cooled.

 

With that hardware, I fully expected to max out on FPS. On first run my performance was horrible, and just a small fraction of what my 3yr old system was. I checked my DCS settings, removed and reinstalled the app, checked my nVidia settings.. everything, to no avail. 3dmark Timerunner benchmarks were showing me with a top 100 score of over 13k.. so why was DCS running at an average of 15fps? The answer is: Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology. This software was on by default. It claims that it can find your best cores and redirect chunks of code to them to span the workload out, even if the app doesn't support multithreading. DCS hates this...

 

 

Loading DCS the first time, my symptoms were as follows:

 

• Canopy glass was black for 2+ minutes
  
• Hitting F11 to look around at bases showed buildings hovering over water.. textures weren't loading
  
• My FPS never went above 30, even at the lowest settings
  
• My CPU was getting uncommonly hot, and my GPU utilization was jumping all over the place.
  

 

To be clear, the 3dMark Timerunner benchmark was running fine. I ran hardware scans and found nothing. I had reloaded DCS and tweaked my settings, but nothing worked. When I unchecked ENABLED on Intel Turbo Boost Max on my systray, my performance shot up to 100+ FPS at full settings.

 

See attached pics.

 

After resolving the problem, I searched the DCS forums and found that MackTheKnight had already figured it out here https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=3517089#post3517089, and he did a good write up, but it was buried in a thread about CPU affinity. The symptoms from TBM are similar to customizing your CPU affinity for DCS, so if TBM is off and you still have a problem, check your affinity.

 

To learn more about Intel Turbo Boost Max, look here https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/turbo-boost/turbo-boost-max-technology.html

WOW...thank you so much for this. I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my performance in DCS is SO bad compared to everything else. I now have a good idea why!

You're welcome Whirlaway. I struggled with this for a long time before realizing it was something simple. I've linked this thread in other discussions and it's corrected issues for a number of people. I hope that ED starts performing some sort of process detection to see if TBM is running so they can pop a warning during DCS start that advises deactivating it. I can't imagine how many people simply think DCS is bad software because they're experiencing this problem but lack systems analysis expertise to be able to troubleshoot it on their own.

Not that I have much useful info to add, but this is such a CLASSIC forum post title for DCS World ;)

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WOW...thank you so much for this. I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my performance in DCS is SO bad compared to everything else. I now have a good idea why!

As others have suggested, this should be a sticky! I discovered only one of my cores was being used, and my VR performance was terrible. I now use all cores, and the VR performance is brilliant!

As others have suggested, this should be a sticky! I discovered only one of my cores was being used, and my VR performance was terrible. I now use all cores, and the VR performance is brilliant!

It's even possible the DCS dev team was doing something with the thread affinity in response to our discussions about optimizations and it may had an unintended side-effect, just speculating.

I think people really need to check with Process Lasso what kind of affinity is set on all of the other programs/games and make sure, so we at least know it's not something DCS specific or not.

It's even possible the DCS dev team was doing something with the thread affinity in response to our discussions about optimizations and it may had an unintended side-effect, just speculating.

 

I think people really need to check with Process Lasso what kind of affinity is set on all of the other programs/games and make sure, so we at least know it's not something DCS specific or not.

actually cpu affinity can be checked from task manager, there is no need to use process lasso, you can also change the cpu affinity as well.

It's even possible the DCS dev team was doing something with the thread affinity in response to our discussions about optimizations and it may had an unintended side-effect, just speculating.

 

I think people really need to check with Process Lasso what kind of affinity is set on all of the other programs/games and make sure, so we at least know it's not something DCS specific or not.

Yes, Once I found this I checked Prepare3d, Xplane and even SteamVR - they always load up using All cores.

Since a DCS OpenBeta update in June, DCS now randomly starts on my PC only using either 1 core, or ALL cores. No idea why it is random, and I wonder if this is what is making it so hard for them to work out their VR issues? It would make it difficult to get consistent results on some PCs.

How DCS behave nowadays concerning to this issue? Does it make sense to turn off Turbo or adaptive boost in 11900k? (it throttles little bit, but system works stable)