What Can I Do to Get Better Graphics and Performance?

[Kenpilot]

Hey guys, I'm looking to get the best possible performance and graphics as I can while playing DCS. Who isn't right? It's pretty good as it is now but I'd really like to be able to turn all the graphics on HIGH and add all the extra stuff that really makes this game shine. I'm a graphics snob so I want all the detail possible, but of course, I want my cake and eat it too so I want the performance to be smooth as can be as well.  Here is what I have in my PC now:

Motherboard - ROG STRIX Z390-F GAMING

CPU - Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I78700K (NOT OVERCLOCKED)

Memory - Corsair Vengeance LPZ 32 GB DDR4 DRAM 3200Mhz 

Hardrive - Samsung 960 EVO 500 GB SSD

GPU - EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC Black Edition GAMING, 11G-P4-6393-KR, 11GB GDDR5X

 

I'm also using 2 Benq HT2150ST Projectors on to a 180 degree curved wide screen that I built. Yes, I know I'm not going to get as good as graphics and performance as I would on let's say a gaming monitor, and that's one of the reasons why I want to be able to max out everything so that I can get it to look as good as I can. 

 

Is it worth it to upgrade any of the hardware that I have now or should I just keep what I have and wait for the newer processor or GPU to come out? If I can actually get my hands on one that is. 

 

As far as overclocking, I've never done it before. I'm sure there are plenty of videos and how-tos on youtube these days, and I'm not afraid of trying it if you guys think it would make that big of a difference in what I'm looking for. 

 

Thanks for any help and suggestions!!

[Beirut]

From what I've seen it's 90% about the GPU. I've watched a ton of comparison videos, and assuming your rig has at least decent specs, the real change lies in the GPU. 

 

If your CPU is "good enough" and you have at least 16 or 32GB of RAM, it's all about the GPU. That's where you get the 25% or 50% or 100% FPS increase. I've seen game comparison videos where a decent mid-level CPU goes against a monster high-end CPU and the difference sometimes is marginal. The RAM certainly helps but 32 is enough except for really big scenarios.

 

It's all about the GPU. 

[Kenpilot]

1 minute ago, Beirut said:

From what I've seen it's 90% about the GPU. I've watched a ton of comparison videos, and assuming your rig has at least decent specs, the real change lies in the GPU. 

 

If your CPU is "good enough" and you have at least 16 or 32GB of RAM, it's all about the GPU. That's where you get the 25% or 50% or 100% FPS increase. I've seen game comparison videos where a decent mid-level CPU goes against a monster high-end CPU and the difference sometimes is marginal. The RAM certainly helps but 32 is enough except for really big scenarios.

 

It's all about the GPU. 

Thanks for the feedback. 3 years ago when I got my GPU, the 1080 ti was one of the best out there. Do you know if the 3080 or 3080 ti is worth upgrading to from the 1080 ti? Again, if I can even get my hands on one. 

[Beirut]

The 3080, if the Heavens bless you and you can afford it or find it, is 100% worth upgrading to. The 3080ti, as I understand it, is only marginally better (10%?) than the 3080 but much more expensive. 

 

I have a 2060 Super and from what I've seen, the 3060 would get me about 25% better FPS, the 3070 would get me 50% better, and the 3080 would get me 100% better.

 

This video shows the 1080ti to be on par with the 3060. That might help a bit.

 

 

[Kenpilot]

Ha! You ain't kidding. Looks like I'll be on the lookout for a 3080, wish me luck!! Do you think overclocking my CPU will help much or should I just leave that alone? 

[Beirut]

1 hour ago, Kenpilot said:

Ha! You ain't kidding. Looks like I'll be on the lookout for a 3080, wish me luck!! Do you think overclocking my CPU will help much or should I just leave that alone? 

 

All I know about overclocking is that I know nothing about overclocking.

 

Also, with "inexpensive" mid-level CPUs hitting high 3Ghz and low 4Ghz, I don't see the need. As stated, the difference in games with CPUs seems to be marginal. I have a $400 3700X, 8-core/16-thread. If I spent $1000 and bought a 3950X, 16-core/32-thread, I'll bet the difference in the sim would be small. Certainly in comparison to the money spent.

[Kenpilot]

8 minutes ago, Beirut said:

 

All I know about overclocking is that I know nothing about overclocking.

 

Also, with "inexpensive" mid-level CPUs hitting high 3Ghz and low 4Ghz, I don't see the need. As stated, the difference in games with CPUs seems to be marginal. I have a $400 3700X, 8-core/16-thread. If I spent $1000 and bought a 3950X, 16-core/32-thread, I'll bet the difference in the sim would be small. Certainly in comparison to the money spent.

Roger that, thanks for all your help! Definitely going to be keeping an eye out for the 3080. 

[BitMaster]

Depending on your CPU cooler you can get some better frametimes if you overclock the CPU towards 5GHz, which many of the 8700k are capable of.

 

As a guideline, the upper Volt limit should be 1.35ish Volts for the CPU and when you do stresstests, have an eye on the watts ( HWinfo ), you can go well north of 200w and the heat will spike like mad.

 

A good start could be MCE, MultiCoreEnhancement, which will likely put all cores to a static 4.7G at around 1.35ish Volts. You can use that ( activate in Bios ) to get a feeling how your CPU

clocks.

 

It's a very time intense thing if you are new to oc. Take your time, watch YT vids and dont hesitate to ask.

 

 

 

[Voyager]

On 7/4/2021 at 6:36 PM, Beirut said:

 

All I know about overclocking is that I know nothing about overclocking.

 

Also, with "inexpensive" mid-level CPUs hitting high 3Ghz and low 4Ghz, I don't see the need. As stated, the difference in games with CPUs seems to be marginal. I have a $400 3700X, 8-core/16-thread. If I spent $1000 and bought a 3950X, 16-core/32-thread, I'll bet the difference in the sim would be small. Certainly in comparison to the money spent.

 

Given that DCS only uses a limited number of threads, I'd agree going to a higher core count CPU isn't going to get you much. 

 

But if DCS is sensitive to ram latency the way some other flight sims are, going to. 5600X or 5800X may have a measurable benefit. Not so much if you're transferring from a Sky Lake chip, though. Those has very good memory latency. 

 

But to the OC's question, a 3080's going to give the biggest bang, if you can wait long enough for the buck to drop. 

 

Personally, given the GPU crash that seems to be happening in China right now, I'd guess we're about 1-2 months* out from discarded mining GPUs kicking the bottom out of the market. 

 

*It's about 1-2 months to bulk ship stuff to the US from China. Air mail is expensive, so thinking the ones that fly are going to keep prices higher, until the boats start hitting the shores. 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Voyager

[Ozmandi]

On 7/4/2021 at 6:44 PM, Kenpilot said:

Roger that, thanks for all your help! Definitely going to be keeping an eye out for the 3080. 

 

You are in a similar situation I was in last year.

When I downloaded DCS last May I had the following rig: AMD 2600K (3.4GHz), Nvidia 1060 3GB, 16 GB Ram and an SSD.

Although it ran DCS fine and the graphics were OK, I was constantly trying to improve the graphics and performance.

First thing I did was expand the ram to 32GB, overclocked the CPU and the video card.   With those 3 changes my graphics performance only moved from Low-Low-Mid range to Low-Mid-Mid range.  No matter what I changed the QUALITY of the graphics didn't improve enough for me to enjoy. I still wanted MORE!

 

I knew that the only way to truly improve on my graphics was to upgrade my Video Card.  Going from a 1060 to a 1080 just didn't make sense to me, so I started looking at the 3080.  Putting a 3080 in an old computer like mine didn't really make sense so I jumped and purchased a new computer. (decision to purchase pre-built verses build my own, is another story)

 

Now I've got an AMD 5800X with a NVIDIA 3080 and 64GB of RAM. 

On default settings my new rig performs three and a half times better than my overclocked\upgraded\overworked\old computer.
I don't worry about graphics settings now.  Sure I still try to tweak the settings but I really don't need to.

 

Long story short.

To truly upgrade the graphics of DCS you will need a better graphics card.

Does that upgrade work in you current system or does it make more sense to upgrade the MB and CPU along with it?

That's a decision between you and your bank account.

 

I upgraded everything and I'm glad I did. If I didn't, I'd be spending most of my time tinkering with my old system and not flying!

 

[Thinder]

On 7/4/2021 at 8:51 PM, Kenpilot said:

Hey guys, I'm looking to get the best possible performance and graphics as I can while playing DCS. Who isn't right? It's pretty good as it is now but I'd really like to be able to turn all the graphics on HIGH and add all the extra stuff that really makes this game shine. I'm a graphics snob so I want all the detail possible, but of course, I want my cake and eat it too so I want the performance to be smooth as can be as well.  Here is what I have in my PC now:

Motherboard - ROG STRIX Z390-F GAMING

CPU - Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I78700K (NOT OVERCLOCKED)

Memory - Corsair Vengeance LPZ 32 GB DDR4 DRAM 3200Mhz 

Hardrive - Samsung 960 EVO 500 GB SSD

GPU - EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC Black Edition GAMING, 11G-P4-6393-KR, 11GB GDDR5X

 

I'm also using 2 Benq HT2150ST Projectors on to a 180 degree curved wide screen that I built. Yes, I know I'm not going to get as good as graphics and performance as I would on let's say a gaming monitor, and that's one of the reasons why I want to be able to max out everything so that I can get it to look as good as I can. 

 

Is it worth it to upgrade any of the hardware that I have now or should I just keep what I have and wait for the newer processor or GPU to come out? If I can actually get my hands on one that is. 

 

As far as overclocking, I've never done it before. I'm sure there are plenty of videos and how-tos on youtube these days, and I'm not afraid of trying it if you guys think it would make that big of a difference in what I'm looking for. 

 

Thanks for any help and suggestions!!

 

Personally I am an advocate of better CPU-RAM bounding.

 

Although the Intel and AMD CPUs are different, their controllers have the same kind of limitations; they will throttle back when the number of ranks and sticks are above what they can cope with.

 

Typically a CPU of the generation of yours or mine shouldn't have to manage more than 4 ranks in total, that would be 4 X 1 rank or 2 X 2 ranks.

 

This is also true for the frequencies, there is a good reason why there are recommanded speeds for them, 3200GHz being the limit above which the controller will throttle back under load, even more so if the number of RAM RANKS is also above what the controller can manage.

 

Lower latency can often give you far better results than higher frequencies for those reasons.

 

To give you an example, I swaped my previous kit of 2 X 2 ranks 3200GHz 16CL for a 4 X 1 rank, Cl14, 3200GHz kit and I gained more than double what I could gain with water cooling O.C of my CPU at 4K:

 

Here are the results (Crucial RAM first. G.GKILL second)

3DMark Pro. Fire Strike Ultra 4K gaming with DirectX 11.  3840 x 2160 (16:9) (4K) MSAA x 2

MSI Afterburner ON. AMD Ryzen Master ON; Game mode.

>>>>>>

Graphics score: 6 496 vs 6 583. +1.33%
 
Physics score: 23 894 vs 25 339. + 6.04%

Combined score: 3 605 vs 3 654. + 1.35%.

 

Note that my GPU also showed better results due to the fact that the CPU-to-GPU bus is no longer limited by the CPU controller, also the CPU is able to use interleaving and make the best of all RAM sticks without limitations.

 

The only issue you can see in this method is the premium you have to pay for this kind of RAM, in my case, about <> £80 more for this kit, but hit pause and you consider this:

 

O.C RAM or CPU will not only limit their service life but also is not under guaranty from CPUs manufacturers (at least AMD are ver clear about this), as for the cost of a good quality liquid cooled kit for your CPU, a Corsair Hydro would cost me £73.98 at least.

 

Getting my new RAM kit was the best option by far, my PC speed is on fire using only under guaranty boosts, it runs at low temperature (no higher than 76.6°C during this CPU-Z 4 Cores test, <> 73°C  in the case of the 3DMark test with an Artic 7X) everything is still under guaranty because it is not O.Ced, Latency is very low, and I havent had a single issue since I upgraded my RAM.

 

 

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Thinder