Stutters, micro pauses, and how I solved them on my PC...

[Raven_Morpheus]

Ever since 2.5 was released, just over 5 months ago now I've had nothing but stutters and micro pauses making the game unplayable.

 

I've also got fed up with the 10gb+ updates that keep getting pushed, because I don't have that much room left on my SSD, and they don't seem to do anything to make the game more playable for me, so the other week I switched to the 2.5.0 Stable release...

 

...That didn't really do much to alleviate the stutters and micro pauses.

 

However, the other day I made one change to my settings, I reduced the visibility distance to Low and I moved my pagefile from the HDD I've had it on since day 0 of owning my PC, to the OS SSD.

 

I also locked the FPS to 40 via the graphics.lua file.

 

DCS 2.5.0 now runs smooth for me, with only the occasional trivial stutter, at least in an A-10C practice mission I have, and the Huey Stray Eagle mission, haven't tried any others yet and I don't fly in multiplayer.

 

Although I don't know which of those three things caused the game to start running smooth, I suspect moving my pagefile was the biggest contributor.

 

This is only on the Caucasus map though, I don't have the Persian Gulf or Normandy maps and I've not yet tried flying on the NTTR as there's nothing really to do there...

 

 

 

This is what I'm running the game on -

 

Intel i5 4690K at 3.9ghz - stock clock, I do have an overclock option (to 4.5ghz iirc) but that's a bit iffy these days, tends to BSOD on me where DCS is concerned.

Gigabyte Mini-ITX GTX 960 2GB - no overclock.

8GB of RAM at 1333mhz - no overclock.

Kingston 240gb SSD with both the game and my OS on it in 2 different partitions.

Windows 7 64bit OS

8yr old 22" 1080p LG tv about 2.5ft away from me, connected via HDMI.

 

 

 

My in-game settings are attached. These are mostly reduced from what I was running in v1.5.8, which is a downside, apart from trees, grass and clutter which I've been able to increase, I could probably run trees at 100% with no FPS hit but I've left them on 70%. But I'll take performance over shiny graphics any day.

 

 

Hopefully this info will be of use to anyone with a similar PC spec who is having problems with stutters and micro pauses, although I doubt it will.

 

 

P.S. - to anyone who's thinking of chiming in and telling me I need more RAM and a better GPU, don't, I'm aware of that and I don't have the $/£/Euro to go buy them. :thumbup:

 

 

Video example showing what the game looks and runs like with my settings, please forgive my flying and gunnery, I don't often fly the A-10C -

 

Edited June 9, 2018 by Raven_Morpheus

[draconus]

SSD was a good choice but why would you partition it?

With 8GB RAM you're pushing it with Medium textures.

Trees to the max and forget about it. Grass - find sweet spot.

Don't even try to compare to the 1.5.

[Raven_Morpheus]

SSD was a good choice but why would you partition it?

 

That's how it ended up after I migrated from a PC without an SSD. I had the HDD my OS was on partitioned into two. Just the way I run my system, I don't like dumping everything on the system partition.

 

With 8GB RAM you're pushing it with Medium textures.

Trees to the max and forget about it. Grass - find sweet spot.

 

I'm sure I am pushing the it with medium textures, however on low textures the cockpit looks like it was done in the year 2000 and the text is unreadable, at least it was like that in the A-10C when I tried low textures...

 

As for the trees, yeah I probably will put them back up to 100%, I've had them on 100% previously but reduced them recently whilst tinkering with the settings.

 

Don't even try to compare to the 1.5.

 

Well 1.5.8 was the last time I could actually enjoy DCS, so...

Edited June 9, 2018 by Raven_Morpheus

[Worrazen]

Yeah, now that you solved most disk stuttering with the 250 GB SSD, but the 2GB of VRAM is quite limiting, I got stuttering from that 2 years ago on the old Caucasus let alone the new maps, it means you'll still be suttering even without using all the GPU power on higher texture or preload setting just because there will be trashing to system RAM.

 

Ordinary RAM, on PCs, should never be considered as backup to VRAM, it won't help if the game requires that chunk immediately that's on RAM, this slowness is a bit unique to PCs, historically many consoles were designed differently that didn't had such a pronounced effect such as PC has between VRAM and RAM and that's why PS4 is quite efficient with it's unified RAM.

 

So I guess you did solve your case, by adjusting it so it doesn't go over 2GB VRAM, you get smoothness with less visuals, some HW horsepower unfortunately stays unutilized, but that's how it is optimal.

 

That said, I don't know how much increasing system RAM would help, more on the low side Imo, since it's it can be as a VRAM substitute I guess more on the negative, if you're not going over it in COMMIT CHARGE (check in task manager, ignore the graphs) and not going into pagefile, then I guess you don't have to upgrade, and rather save that for a new PC and new type of HW.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Worrazen

[Shadow KT]

Why do you have your preload radius on minimun ? You are forcing your SSD and GPU to load everything literally on the moment thus getting stutters....

 

Have you tried increasing it or even maxing it out ?(tho I don't know if maxing it out works for 8GBs, but at least 75%)

 

huh I am playing on higher settings than you with a GTX560Ti and getting 30-40FPS

 

I can tell you my setup to try out and see how it runs if you wish

[Raven_Morpheus]

Why do you have your preload radius on minimun ? You are forcing your SSD and GPU to load everything literally on the moment thus getting stutters....

 

Have you tried increasing it or even maxing it out ?(tho I don't know if maxing it out works for 8GBs, but at least 75%)

 

That's what I've had it on since I was last tinkering with most settings. Something to do with load times being shorter.

 

Please note though - I am not getting major stutters/framerate drops any more. The ones I am getting are negligible and infrequent now and the game is playable for me, on the handful of missions I've tried at least.

 

I've just had a good night's worth, since about 18:30 until about 10 minutes ago (01:20), flying with no problems - I tried Stray Eagle three times for various reasons (all my own fault), and the Ka-50 How to blow stuff up mission by Para Bellum/Yurgon.

 

Maybe I will get problems if/when I try the Huey/Ka-50 campaigns but for the moment it's all running nicely.

 

I won't even touch multiplayer because I'm not that good a pilot.

 

huh I am playing on higher settings than you with a GTX560Ti and getting 30-40FPS

 

I can tell you my setup to try out and see how it runs if you wish

 

Please do. I suspect I can increase a few settings. I was more concerned with eliminating the stutters/framerate drops that were making even the simplest missions unplayable.

Edited June 10, 2018 by Raven_Morpheus

[BigMotor]

GTX 980 here. My microstutters were eliminated by selecting Alt-Enter on the keyboard while in game.

 

 

 

This is widely known but just wanted to include it for anyone new and having problems.

[Fakum]

Alt - Enter did nothing for me regarding microstutters. The only way I could eliminate them was turning MSAA off,, and it looks like crap, but its smooth,,,, sux!

[draconus]

One needs to understand the impact of different graphics options on the hardware. If you put too much workload on the hardware (or use all memory available) it will choke. These go more or less like this:

Textures: RAM, VRAM

Terrain Textures: RAM, VRAM

Civ. Traffic: ALL

Water: some GPU, CPU

Visib. Range: ALL

Heat Blur: some GPU

Shadows: GPU, CPU

Resolution: GPU, VRAM

Aspect Ratio: none

Monitors: GPU, VRAM

Resolution of Cockpit Displays: GPU, CPU

MSAA: GPU, VRAM

Depth of Field: some GPU

Lens Effects: some GPU

HDR: some GPU (discontinued)

Deffered Shading: GPU (not sure how it works, maybe CPU too)

 

sliders

Clutter/Grass: GPU, CPU

Trees Vis.: some GPU, CPU (just max it)

Preload Radius: RAM (VRAM probably)

Chimney Smoke Density: some GPU, CPU

Gamma: none

 

Anisotropic Filtering: some GPU (just max it)

Terrain Objects Shadows: GPU, CPU

Cockpit Global Illumination: some GPU

 

Disable AERO Interface: some RAM in Vista/Win7

Vertical synch.: none

Full Screen: GPU, CPU

Scale GUI: some GPU

 

...

none = no impact

some = just some impact

ALL = impact on all - CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM

 

No disk impact? Right. Unless you're low on RAM then disk reading happens (a lot of new reads can happen in MP) and if it's too slow stutters happen. Other than that disk reading speed just help you with loading times.