New Computer with Disappointing Performance

Hello Crew. I have built another computer at home and this one was constructed solely for the use of flying aircraft sims. I have nothing on the computer other than what is required to run DCS 1.5, 2.0 and IL2 Battle of Stalingrad. (BoS) (I have not flown in the updated DCS 2.1 ) My computer specs. are to follow. After about 3 months of jacking around with this new computer, I am disappointed in its performance. With the hardware I have, I expected to be able to run with all graphics settings set to the highest the sims. have to offer with zero/no issues. However, this is not the case. To get minimal stutter in 2.0/1.5, I have to back off the 4K res. and "de-tune" some specs. in the graphics settings. I still see some stutter at these conditions...trying to get completely smooth rendering would require going further down on settings. So far, with the little bit I have fooled around in IL2 BoS, I have noted the same general stutter issues.

The above rant is to basically question if these sims. are capable of pushing 1080 cards and the like beyond what they can handle, or do I have a hardware mismatch? I understand there is a relation between the Nvidia Control Panel settings and the internal DCS/BoS settings, but fooling with them only leads to more de-tuning which I find hard to believe is required to get smooth performance. Flickering buildings, shadows, air strips, etc. are also present and annoying.

I have done some over clocking and frequency changes using the MSI Afterburner software.

My apologies for the long post, but I do appreciate any help/ideas.

Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake Quad-Core 4.2 GHz LGA 1151 91W

MSI Z270 GAMING PRO CARBON LGA 1151 Intel Z270 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 DirectX 12 GTX 1080 GAMING 8G 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5X PCI Express 3.0 x16

Toshiba OCZ RD400 M.2 128GB PCI-Express 3.0 x 4 MLC SSD (For operating system)

Corsair Force MP500 M.2 2280 480GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 SSD (For sims.)

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3866 (PC4)

750W Modular Power Supply

28” 4K Monitor plugged into “Display Port” on 1080 card.

Everything is fine with your computer. However, using 4K resolution is something that is still somehow a bit over technology limit. So, one of the first steps is to not use antialising at all. Make sure that all games played in 4K have the the antialising on 0. Then start playing with some other options like drawing distance... etc.

BTW: your CPU needs to be overcloked ;)

With the hardware I have, I expected to be able to run with all graphics settings set to the highest the sims. have to offer with zero/no issues.

You know by now, you're expectations were too high. ;)

But to check if your 1080 is working full steam ahead you could monitor your GPU activity with MSI Afterburner when running the sims and see for yourself if the GPU is working @100% or less.

Thank you both for the advice. I do have all antialising off and my CPU is clocked to 4.8 Ghz and is stable. I will also check the AB software to see how taxed my 1080 runs.

But, it seems to me form your respective replies above, that these sims. just push my hardware beyond their limits...requiring lowered expectations and playing with some other options like drawing distance... etc. (De-tune) I can handle that as long as I know it is not a flaw in my system. It is disappointing, but impressive that the sims. can overpower current computer capabilities.

4k and max settings usually don't match, currently. You could sell your 1080 and get a 1080ti if you're so disappointed.

Have you ensured that you've selected "high performance" in the Windows power settings? Depending on how a game is coded, this can impact gaming performance, as the system will sometimes put cores to sleep when they're not active if you're not in high performance mode. It's an easy thing to overlook. Also, what kind of monitor are you using?

yes, I do have my power set to High Performance in Windows 10 X64. My monitor is an AOC, 28" 4K.

yes, I do have my power set to High Performance in Windows 10 X64. My monitor is an AOC, 28" 4K.

Assuming your monitor is the AOC U2879VF, you may need to enable V-sync in your games. The monitor's refresh rate is only 60hz, and I expect your GPU is pushing frames at a much higher rate (at least at resolutions below 4K). The monitor has FreeSync, but FreeSync is incompatible with Nvidia cards, and since FS is a competing technology, Nvidia has no plans to change that as far as I know.

GhostDog, My monitor does have FreeSync and I realize the incompatibility with Nvidia. I actually have been running with V-sync enabled because I get a very noticeable performance increase with it on. Thanks for the ideas; even though I believe I have tried them all, perhaps we can stumble on something I missed.

Here is quite a good simple guide which explains graphics settings :

https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/pc-graphics-settings-explained-anti-aliasing-v-syn/2900-1100/

For example for hose of us that use 4k, antialiasing is not so important, you can keep it a t 2x and the result is excellent without taxiing on your system.

Hope it helps.

rajdary, thanks for the link. I've researched such explanations in the past, but I looked up individual settings. By the time I read about 3 or so different ones, I had forgotten what they all controlled/changed. It's worth another look; especially when the information is all in one place. I'll have to walk through these explanations and test real time on my computer how they effect my sims.

Karetaker, here are my exact settings for you to try out, we have very similar settings and i get a solid 60fps. Its very smooth and the picture quality is very very good, seriously, in 4k Msaa and Antialiasing dont make too much difference when they are off.

Textures : High

Terrain Tex : High

Civ Traffic : Medium

Water : Medium

Visib Range : High

Heat blur : Low

Shadows : Flat

Resolution : 3840x2160

Aspect ratio : 1.77777777

Monitors : 1 Screen

Res of Cockpit Displays : 1024

MSAA : off

Depth of Field : off

Lens Effect : Dirt + Flare

HDR : on

Deffered Shading : on

Clutter/grass : 150

Trees Visibility : 10.000

Preload Radius : 150.000

Chimney smoke dens : 8

Anisotropic Filtering : off

Terrain shadow objects : Flat

Cockpit global illumination : off

Tick Vsync

Tick Full Screen

I can also give you my Nvidia control Panel settings if you want. You should get 60fps all the way:)

Much obliged! Your settings above look like they come from 2.1? I have updated to 2.1 last week, but am not familiar with some of the new setting options. Here is what I can draw from memory on my 2.0 settings:

Textures : High

Terrain Tex : High

Civ Traffic : Max Setting

Water : Max Setting

Visib Range : Max Setting

Heat blur : Max Setting

Shadows : Flat

Resolution : 3840x2160

Aspect ratio : 1.77777777

Monitors : 1 Screen

Res of Cockpit Displays : Max Setting

MSAA : X2...lowest setting but not off; see below

Depth of Field : off

Lens Effect : Off

HDR : on

Deffered Shading : ?

Clutter/grass : Max Setting

Trees Visibility : Max Setting

Preload Radius : Max Setting

Chimney smoke dens : ?

Anisotropic Filtering : off

Terrain shadow objects : Flat

Cockpit global illumination : ?

Tick Vsync

Tick Full Screen

Max Setting above means those items with "extreme" and "ultra" options were selected.

(?) Above means I do not remember seeing such an option...perhaps there are in 2.1 only?

MSAA I believe one item this setting effects is the image in the SU-27 mirrors. With this off, the mirror images are nasty, with this at max the images are quite nice. I use the lowest but not off setting. Sometimes in 1.5 with a ton of trees and ground clutter I have to turn mirrors off all together.

By all means...I would love to see your Nvidia settings as well. Right now, I have all/most GLOBAL Nvidia settings to "Application Controlled" or OFF. There are a couple, (don't remember which) that are the exception. The Nvidia GAME SPECIFIC tab seems to only point to my 1.5 exe.; even if I try to add 2.0, it seems to default to 1.5 only. So in this tab, I set all settings to "Use Global". In my mind, I have basically tuned off Nvidia and use the in game settings only.

Fire away.

Deferred Shading is the biggest "new thing" and a "selling point" introduced in 2.1, but unfortunately, also the biggest performance killer, especially with any in-game MSAA, Aniso Filtering and shadows. Sure, one can turn all them off and regain crapton of fps back - but it's not easy decision to reduce eyecandy when one bought a powerful card rather to crank it up :D. The only alternatives are waiting for game patches with further optimizations, or using shader injecting apps to add some "external" anti aliasing and AF, while keeping the in-game ones off.

Deferred Shading is the biggest "new thing" and a "selling point" introduced in 2.1, but unfortunately, also the biggest performance killer, especially with any in-game MSAA, Aniso Filtering and shadows. Sure, one can turn all them off and regain crapton of fps back - but it's not easy decision to reduce eyecandy when one bought a powerful card rather to crank it up :D. The only alternatives are waiting for game patches with further optimizations, or using shader injecting apps to add some "external" anti aliasing and AF, while keeping the in-game ones off.

Yes but OP only has 1 video card :P

However I don't think it's a realistic expectation to max out the video settings just because xy &z hardware, there are threads where people have OCd CPU to nearly 5Ghz and SLI 1080ti's blah blah blah and still not able to run with anything near high settings. Besides DCS 2.1 is also alpha so code will not be fully optimised.

Don't get me wrong it's decent build and all and would run many games at high settings but probably not at all max settings. ;)

Karetaker,

If you don't know, DCS is at a bit of a crossroads at the moment in development, just like the other new civi sim's are too now.

Guy's that I follow are playing around with very powerfull systems are still needing to pull back on some settings in these now 64bit sims, even more so at 4K!. The big ones are view distance and msaa, they can turn them up when not in built up areas etc.

?©:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World 2 OpenAlpha\Doc \ DCS User Manual EN.pdf

The DCS manual has not even had the chance to be updated, now we have things added such as Deferred Shading which adds great eye candy and even more load on our PC's.

Just built a new Kaby 7700K @ 4.9 overclock | 16GB RAM 3466Mhz XMP | GTX 1070 Stock clock

I can max all the settings in DCS, change view distance to Ultra, MSAA OFF and force some settings in NIVIDA control.

We will be much different here tho.

See, I'm only trying to find my max settings for my ASUS 27-inch, 2560 x 1440, 144Hz, 1ms, G-SYNC

Not 4K here, I'm after smooth fluid track ir movement pliability at 1440p

Frames are around 60 to 70 flying around vegas full speed low F15 takeoff quick mission..

View distance to Ultra OR high

Testing this on high for big AI unit missions, the bigger the mission the lower your settings will need to be etc. Trying to find that sweet spot with different settings.

We also are waiting on the big merge of 1.5, 2.1 into the 2.5. Then ED will be doing even more spit and polishing to optimize the sim for better performance, this will go on for a long time with all the new tech that's been added, it may get way better for 4K down the road with more optimizing? Some here say 4K is next gen graphics gpu for intense games at this high res. Even if 4K was standard, I would still go 3440x1440 165Hz etc, and love the extra 50 frames for smooth flight simming.

1) Pull back the view distance on your 4K screen (High is still good) shadow medium/High, Terrain shadow objects Flat, and turn off MSAA if using Deferred Shading, until ED can fix this.

2) Fly the same medium density mission for testing the settings.

3) Make sure your in full screen by hitting (Right Alt + Enter) once sitting in your aircraft. This forces DCS into full screen, test this.

It's about finding the right balance with the ED's cutting edge tech, that's constantly evolving at the moment, yep it can be annoying sometimes:)

Try a 144Hz G-SYNC screen if you get a chance at 1440p, I would definitely not go back and it's a good speed and eye candy balance across the board, for fast fun gaming, just sayin. :)

-

I have 4k and currently see really good picture with MSAA set to off and FXAA turned on in NvidiaPanel.Also have Transparency setting to off in Nvidia Panel.

Greatly appreciate the comments. I realize my expectations were high and I see that even the most robust computers may still need some graphics de-tuning to perform well. I will be looking into some of the above ideas and continuing to tweak and adapt.

Thank you.