Low GPU usage on land area

[Kovee]

Hi!

I have a problem with GPU usage over land area. When is sitting on an airfield,dubai for example.

Myí gpu usage is at 50% and my fps is low too.

I have an RTX 2080 with Ryzen 2700X, 32Gb of ddr4 ram, DCS installed on 512Gb SSD.

Drivers are up to date, windows 10 1809.

 

Settings: https://i.imgur.com/8ODHJbL.jpg

 

Sitting on ground : https://i.imgur.com/TsSZ6Qj.jpg

 

over sea : https://i.imgur.com/kkj0dhf.jpg

 

There is no bottleneck from cpu or gpu. I tried lower the settings and the results is worst... lower settings,much lower gpu usage. Tried shadows turning off..same results.

Any other games ar running fine in 4k ultra settings.

If anyone has an idea, please dont hold it back.

Thanks

[BitMaster]

1st thing to check that comes to my mind: Have you made sure your GPU runs in High Performance mode ? It's in NV-cpanel.

[FragBum]

Or is it something to do with having static FA 18 on the tarmac, I have heard others say there is some FPS weirdness associated with static objects.

 

Perhaps try creating a simple mission and see if you have the same issue.

[Kovee]

1st thing to check that comes to my mind: Have you made sure your GPU runs in High Performance mode ? It's in NV-cpanel.

 

Its in high performance mode.

Windows too :(

 

I have really no idea :(

[Kovee]

Or is it something to do with having static FA 18 on the tarmac, I have heard others say there is some FPS weirdness associated with static objects.

 

Perhaps try creating a simple mission and see if you have the same issue.

 

Give it a shot, maybe thats the reason.

[Mr_sukebe]

IMO your bottleneck is you CPU.

At casual glance, it will appear underused.

However, DCS is primarily single core. What you’re seeing in windows task manager is DCS being deliberately shunted between cores.

 

So what you’re seeing is the sheer number of calculations for the various ground objects in game, which is why you’re getting better frame rates over water or in heavily wooded areas, which is handled by speed trees.

 

On a positive note:

- Vulkan is expected to reduce CPU loading a bit, thus reducing bottleneck

- you have spare GPU capability, which means that you can push up graphics settings without affecting frame rates. Those include textures, trees,ground clutter and in VR, the Pixel density

[Kovee]

IMO your bottleneck is you CPU.

At casual glance, it will appear underused.

However, DCS is primarily single core. What you’re seeing in windows task manager is DCS being deliberately shunted between cores.

 

So what you’re seeing is the sheer number of calculations for the various ground objects in game, which is why you’re getting better frame rates over water or in heavily wooded areas, which is handled by speed trees.

 

On a positive note:

- Vulkan is expected to reduce CPU loading a bit, thus reducing bottleneck

- you have spare GPU capability, which means that you can push up graphics settings without affecting frame rates. Those include textures, trees,ground clutter and in VR, the Pixel density

 

Cpu is running fine, not even one core is maxed out. I cant push higher the settings.. its already maxed out.

When i start using combined arms, gpu load go for 98% and have 70-80fps.

The pictures has an msi afterburner overlay with cpu usage and gpu load.

Newest games running like charm in 4k ultra settings.

I think is the poor optimalization from dcs..

[Xtacy]

if your settings are maxed, try turning off shadows or at least setting them to flat only. I believe shadows hit the CPU hard.

[Kovee]

if your settings are maxed, try turning off shadows or at least setting them to flat only. I believe shadows hit the CPU hard.

 

Already made it, shadows off, redolution 1920*1080

Gpu usage 15% fps 10....

[Mr_sukebe]

Cpu is running fine, not even one core is maxed out. I cant push higher the settings.. its already maxed out.

When i start using combined arms, gpu load go for 98% and have 70-80fps.

The pictures has an msi afterburner overlay with cpu usage and gpu load.

Newest games running like charm in 4k ultra settings.

I think is the poor optimalization from dcs..

 

What is your apparent CPU usage? Would I be right in guessing 15-20%

[Kovee]

What is your apparent CPU usage? Would I be right in guessing 15-20%

 

in general 40-60%. Every cpu cores. not summary.

 

This is in instant mission on caucasus.

98% usage from GPU

 

https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=_ou5rE6oC5g&feature=share

[Mr_sukebe]

Maybe I'm wrong, but my understanding is:

- All of the standard tools that we use (e.g. MSI Afterburner and similar) will "poll" for data, but they're not truly "live". After all, they need to readable, whereas your CPU is running at 3+ GHz, so you're not going to get an exact picture of what your system is doing

- Linked to the above, windows will "bounce" applications across cores, potentially giving the impression of using multiple cores

- DCS is at it's heart, still a single core application, from which they've offloaded the audio to a secondary core

- In addition to DCS, you'll be running a number of other background tasks. For me, that would include the many Windows built in tasks, Oculus, Teamspeak, MSI Afterburner, simshaker, a host of drivers for my devices, etc etc, all of which will be spread out over your cores

 

That's why I believe that you're currently CPU bound and why the typical recommendation for DCS right now is still high speed Intel chips, almost regardless of how many cores they have.

 

For all that, and as mentioned, I do believe that Vulkan will at some point arrive and result in lowering CPU usage (thus reducing the bottleneck and offloading more effort to other cores), meaning that at that point, your Ryzen will really start to show it's capabilities.

 

In the meantime, try taking advantage of your free GPU available resources by upping your niceties, you might aswell.

Even with just a 1080, my own PC is so CPU bound that I'm running with a PD of 1.3 in VR and max textures in most areas.

[Kovee]

Maybe I'm wrong, but my understanding is:

- All of the standard tools that we use (e.g. MSI Afterburner and similar) will "poll" for data, but they're not truly "live". After all, they need to readable, whereas your CPU is running at 3+ GHz, so you're not going to get an exact picture of what your system is doing

- Linked to the above, windows will "bounce" applications across cores, potentially giving the impression of using multiple cores

- DCS is at it's heart, still a single core application, from which they've offloaded the audio to a secondary core

- In addition to DCS, you'll be running a number of other background tasks. For me, that would include the many Windows built in tasks, Oculus, Teamspeak, MSI Afterburner, simshaker, a host of drivers for my devices, etc etc, all of which will be spread out over your cores

 

That's why I believe that you're currently CPU bound and why the typical recommendation for DCS right now is still high speed Intel chips, almost regardless of how many cores they have.

 

For all that, and as mentioned, I do believe that Vulkan will at some point arrive and result in lowering CPU usage (thus reducing the bottleneck and offloading more effort to other cores), meaning that at that point, your Ryzen will really start to show it's capabilities.

 

In the meantime, try taking advantage of your free GPU available resources by upping your niceties, you might aswell.

Even with just a 1080, my own PC is so CPU bound that I'm running with a PD of 1.3 in VR and max textures in most areas.

 

Than its simple dcs "feature".

I think its shame in 2019, running a game on one core (its equal intel or amd)

Thanks for your reply.

[BitMaster]

There are many Ryzen Pilots among us that run a fluent DCS, even with 1st gen Ryzen 5's.

 

So no, the CPU isnt the reason why you see 10fps, it must by logic be something else or all ryzen Pilots would join your thread, and they havent.

 

Simple logic applied

[Kovee]

I made changes in settings(shadows low, globalcockpit illuminaton off, in air now i have 80-120Fps, ground in dubai 40-50. But the one core from cpu cant render enough for an rtx 2080.

 

But its only on persian gulf. Caucasus running fine.

[FragBum]

I made changes in settings(shadows low, globalcockpit illuminaton off, in air now i have 80-120Fps, ground in dubai 40-50. But the one core from cpu cant render enough for an rtx 2080.

 

But its only on persian gulf. Caucasus running fine.

 

All the maps have slightly different CPU/GPU usage so results will vary between maps and the modules you use and situation. :)

[Xtacy]

also, make sure when you make any changes to your graphics settings, close the game and delete the fxo and metashaders2 directory

[Kovee]

also, make sure when you make any changes to your graphics settings, close the game and delete the fxo and metashaders2 directory

 

Okay!

Thanks!

[DflippinK]

Definitely not a Ryzen problem.. i dont even oc the 1800x.. heavy missions dont even hint at core saturation anymore.. everything is maxed except flat shadows for me... Overall CPU utilization is at 8-9% on Caucus missions... and that is spread quite evenly across 8 of the 16 cores with no core going anywhere near full saturation.. 2 of the cores do act as the primaries but they usually stay under 40% on the graphs.. I do keep it vsyncd at 60... but it is solid as a rock and not even comin close to a hiccup... as for GPU utilization.. its average range is 65-75% with a few 85-92% spikes... and i some times fly in 4k with msaa x2... or 1440 with msaa x4... little bit easier on the GPU in 1440... but pretty close to the same.. and this is all running around 3.7ghz on the cpu.... most of the issues ive seen have been game optimization issues and not really hardware issues... but it has gotten a helluva lot better lately than it had been.... in any case,... i don't think your CPU is your problem.. but if you are chasing max fps for some reason, then i guess it could be an issue..

[Kovee]

Definitely not a Ryzen problem.. i dont even oc the 1800x.. heavy missions dont even hint at core saturation anymore.. everything is maxed except flat shadows for me... Overall CPU utilization is at 8-9% on Caucus missions... and that is spread quite evenly across 8 of the 16 cores with no core going anywhere near full saturation.. 2 of the cores do act as the primaries but they usually stay under 40% on the graphs.. I do keep it vsyncd at 60... but it is solid as a rock and not even comin close to a hiccup... as for GPU utilization.. its average range is 65-75% with a few 85-92% spikes... and i some times fly in 4k with msaa x2... or 1440 with msaa x4... little bit easier on the GPU in 1440... but pretty close to the same.. and this is all running around 3.7ghz on the cpu.... most of the issues ive seen have been game optimization issues and not really hardware issues... but it has gotten a helluva lot better lately than it had been.... in any case,... i don't think your CPU is your problem.. but if you are chasing max fps for some reason, then i guess it could be an issue..

 

Thanks for the reply'

 

It works :) all maxed out, shadows just flat, and had a good framerate. I dont wanna chase very high fps, but i want a playable game :)

I think too this is game optimization problem, because all of the new titles are running great.

Thanks again! You helped a lot :) _I owe you a beer!

[DflippinK]

Thanks for the reply'

 

It works :) all maxed out, shadows just flat, and had a good framerate. I dont wanna chase very high fps, but i want a playable game :)

I think too this is game optimization problem, because all of the new titles are running great.

Thanks again! You helped a lot :) _I owe you a beer!

 

 

Free of charge friend!! glad its runnin great!!:thumbup:

[BitMaster]

also, make sure when you make any changes to your graphics settings, close the game and delete the fxo and metashaders2 directory

 

Okay!

Thanks!

 

 

Do this after every DCS update, after every NVidia/AMD GPU update, after every Win10 Build upgrade.

 

Make a batch script ;) think I do this sooner or later, as a startup script

[Worrazen]

Remember, with DX11 the GPU heavily relies on the CPU to feed it work, also called handholding or babysitting.

 

There might not be enough work being fed or not efficient enough, and the GPU may already doing everything it can, it depends on CPU beef not just the engine.

 

But Mr_sukebe summarized it up nicely, ofcourse counting in case you don't have a specific scenario in which case it would be either game's fault or your drivers/sofware configuration which usually could point to that some parts of the system/OS/drivers may not work well right with that particular hardware combination you have, however not the indivudual hardware pieces, those are more complicated things to figure out and requires more computer expertise and may be time consuming and costly if you want to experiment with different pieces.

 

The first thing you can do to rule out a hardware combination, well not necessairly, but to also at the sametime redo the software installation, is to, not touch your existing OS, but to get a separate SSD/HDD storage device and cleanly install your copy of Windows on that new drive or use one of the trial/free preview versions that Microsoft provides online, you do this, by first knowing if you PC doesn't have warranty still and checking that replacement of HDD is okay (not sure maybe, but i never had alienware or any kind, I was DIY all the time) and by disconnecting everything else and connecting that new drive, install OS, drivers, you shouldn't need much of anything, just use the latest default drivers for onboard audio but no other peripherals, then straight to DCS and first test without any kind of MSI afterburner or similar, do not install MSI afterburner for the first few days at all, just use the DCS internal FPS counter

 

That's how you would get rid of most of the external variables and that would be a good test of your machine and whether DCS itself has any problem with that setup, now you can make comparison between the two setups, including the suspected static objects stuff.

 

 

I might have been a bit late with the above post but remember this is not a "game", you can't compare DCS to any western game engine, even if the engine was some top line Carmack/Sweeny masterpiece, it's still about simulation, all the optimization benefits would go into making simulation more realistic and resource hoggy, you wouldn't have 300fps, that extra CPU headroom would be spent for all kids of physics and AI logic, which makes sense.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Worrazen

[Vitormouraa]

You can try this as well, not sure if it works with AMD that well, I don't remember getting any boost from this doing when I had AMD, but you never know. I get about 10~ to almost 20 FPS sometimes.

 

https://youtu.be/ibZfXboNMxks