NoName73

Me again... was curious... VRAM consumption with the Apache much higher than with the old A-10C (I) for example. Given my current settings 9 GB (A-10) vs. 12 GB (AH-64) on the Syria map. Single aircraft, otherwise empty map. Wow. Just gifted myself a 3080-12 GB and reevaluated my system (the thread in this sub-forum). I only use one monitor for DCS. 1920*1200@60Hz.

... settings seem perfectly fine. Probably even a bit on the low side. Only thing that would make me think is the relatively high resolution. But I guess a 3060Ti should be able to handle that.

You might want check out this detailed comparison video, helped me a lot to balance my DCS settings. There might be one or two settings that are affecting your overall performance significantly. I tried to dail back in those areas where 1% low dropped the most. Judging from a far, the Xeon E5-1630 is on par with a i7-4771 (2014) I hab in my old system til recently (according to userbenchmark.com). My 1070Ti (2018) migrated to the new system with an i7-11700K (2021) which inproved performance a lot. It seems my old CPU did not utilze the full potential of the graphics card. Difficult to balance things out given the nature of the DCS engine in its current state. Edit: userbenchmark.com listed an E5-1630v3; was not aware of the v-designation You might also want to take a look at this video on CPU bottlenecks.

Hello, this is kind of a follow-up to a follow-up. Given the recent price drop I upgraded to a 3080-12GB and reevaluated the memory consumption of the currently available DCS maps to get a feel for the performance increase. Maybe its helpful to anyone, link to the orginal thread down below. Management summary New graphics card: ASUS 3080OC-12 GB TUF; using Gaming Profile @1785 MHz Old graphics card ASUS 1070Ti (8 GB) Cerberus; using OC Profile @1746 MHz System is i7-11700K, 32 GB DDR4-3200, 980 Pro (OS Win10 Pro), 970 Evo (DCS 2.7.16.28157), 24" 1920*1200@60 Hz. All FPS-Values on new card taken with Vsync enabled (*). Anybody notice lately how beautiful DCS can look at times?! 1070Ti (OC Profile); Vram relative and absolute rel [%] abs [MB] Sys.Mem [GB] FPS Disk Caucasus 81 6700 14 60 16,3 Channel 95 7800 16,5 60 21,7 Marianas 98 8000 14 45 to 55 13,8 Nevada 82 6750 14 40 to 60 34,3 Normandy 98 8100 15 60 15,6 Persian Gulf 86 7100 16,5 60 33,4 South Atlantic 99 8150 18,5 40 80,1 Syria 99 8100 24,5 60 65,6 3080-12GB (Gaming profile) rel [%] abs [MB] Sys.Mem [GB] FPS* Disk Caucasus 55 6800 14 60 16,3 Channel 64 7850 16,5 60 21,7 Marianas 65 7950 13,5 60 13,8 Nevada 55 6800 13,5 60 34,3 Normandy 69 8550 13 60 15,6 Persian Gulf 58 7200 16 60 33,4 South Atlantic 69 8550 17,5 60 80,1 Syria 72 8900 23,5 60 65,6 Aditional remarks - base memory consumption around 4 GB, clean start - FPS capped to 60 via Nvidia control panel, very fluid experience in combination with Vsync - Vsync now possible, with SSAA = 1.5 FPS drop significatly; still experimenting with AA und texture filtering - usage of system memory seems to be higher when VRAM is maxed out (see Normandy map) - test done with single A-10C (i), memory consumption with F18 oder F16 is a bit higher - settings could be turned up without any FPS drop so far; vis. range = extreme, water = high, scenary detail = 1 - CPU usage tends to be higher with the new card - even a (naivly created) mission with a massive MLRS M270 and M109-barrage now delivers 20 FPS with Vsync during the attack sequence; old system with i7-4771 basically frozen - Time Spy score: 1070Ti = 7149, 3080-12GB = 16809 (OC Profile @1815 MHz); FSE: 9073 vs. 20762 (OC profile) Settings (for both cards) Textures high Terrain high Water medium Vis. range ultra Shadows flat MSAA 2x SSAA off SSLR on SSAO on More details NVIDIA Driver 516.59, Asus GPU Tweak II 2.3.9.0

Hello, this is kind of a follow-up to a comparison I did with my old system to evaluate a possible memory expansion (more details in the old thread). Maybe its helpful to anyone. Management summary New system is i7-11700K, 32 GB DDR4-3200, 1070Ti (8 GB)@1746 MHz, 980 Pro (OS Win10 Pro-2H21), 970 Evo (DCS 2.7.9.18080), 24" 1920*1200@60 Hz. Old system was i7-4771, 32 GB DDR3-1600, 1070 Ti, 860 Evo (OS Win7 Pro), 840 Evo (DCS). Former values (DCS 2.5.6) more or less confirmed in terms of relative memory usage. FPS now basically at a stable 60 (capped, see details), even at tree-top level. New clouds + lighting = WOW! New system, old settings (base memory 4.5 GB) Map VRAM (rel.) Memory (GB) FPS Disk usage (GB) Nevada 60 13 40 to 60 34,3 Syria 89 22 60 60,6 Persian Gulf 69 16 60 33,4 Caucasus 68 13,5 60 16,3 The Channel 75 16 60 21,7 Normandy 58 12 60 15,6 Marianas 75 13,5 45 to 55 13,8 New system, balanced settings Map VRAM (rel.) Memory (GB) FPS Nevada 80 13,5 45 to 55 Syria 98 23 60 Persian Gulf 85 16,5 55 to 60 Caucasus 78 14 60 The Channel 94 16,5 55 to 60 Normandy 98 14,5 60 Marianas 93 13,5 45 to 50 Aditional observations - After being left behind with 2.5.6 on Win 7 and only having seen the new clouds on YT its really jaw-dropping experiencing them for the first time in game. Well done. - Following the suggestion by The Air Warfare Group ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPCg1JU-ULI ) I capped FPS to 60. Personally, I think its more pleasing and gives a more fluid feeling of motion in my case. The internal FPS-counter would even go up to 80 FPS if un-capped. But the image seems to be more blurred. - Balanced settings inspired by the side-by-side comparison provided by Commander Steinsch ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6-M_05Kxp8 ). Thanks a lot. - Memory consumption with F18 oder F16 is a bit higher. FPS mostly identical. - There seems to be an anomaly when nearing Las Vegas on the Nevada map. FPS drop down to 40 in some situations. - Vsync still not really an option. SSAA out of the question. - These newer CPUs do get warmer than the older generations, but with more dynamic. Settings old // balanced Textures high Terrain low // high Water medium Vis. range high // ultra Shadows medium, flat MSAA 2x SSAA off SSLR off // on SSAO off // on More details NVIDIA Driver 497.29, Asus GPU Tweak II 2.3.8.0 (using OC Profile) Components ASUS Prime Z590-A Intel i7-11700K Corsair Vengeance 32 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 (2 * 16 GB) ASUS 1070 Ti-A8G Cerberus Samsung 980 Pro-1 TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus-2 TB Alpenföhn Brocken 3 bequiet Dark Power 12-1000 W Fractal Design Define 7 XL additional drives (SSD, HDD, optical) RME AIO

Hello, the regular upgrade strategy gives more options. You can reevalute where you´re at and how things have evolved. Unfortunately, there might a lower bound on how much you have to spend to get to certain level. I personally don´t like to migrate my complete software packages to a new system. Therefore I invest more and stick with that for longer. A graphics card upgrade along the way gives you a bit more life for your other components and you could carry it over to a newer CPU. I guess, the used market is no real option?! 800$ new -> sell for 200$ and get a new one? :juggle:

Hello, I found this quite helpful. How to get the best Anti-aliasing graphic settings in DCS DCS NVIDIA GRAPHICS PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION SETTINGS GUIDE V.2 for DCS 2.5 Thanks to the creators. I then optimized my in-game setting to get reasonable CPU-frametimes; given the custom-presets I have a "beauty-setting" and a "performance-setting" --- i7-4771, 1070Ti, 32 GB-DDR3 (Win7, 451.67-driver)

Just one more out of curiosity... ... turns out that things are different when keeping DCS running compared to a fresh start. :music_whistling: So, all values were taken with an inital start of DCS, loading and starting the mission, and after 5 minutes of flying around. Clean aircraft, straight from the mission editor. "Warm start" with just changing the aircraft gave up to 10 percentage points higher values for VRAM-usage. Not sure what to make of that or if it would be relevant for in-game performance. That would require a more knowledgable person than me to figure out. Textures = high, Terrain Textures = high Nevada [TABLE]Plane // VRAM (rel.) // RAM [GB] F/A-18C .. 63% .. (11,5) F-16C .. 77% .. (11,5) F-14 .. 82% .. (11,5) F-86F .. 53% .. (11,5) [/TABLE] Caucasus [TABLE]Plane // VRAM (rel.) // RAM [GB] F/A-18C .. 68% .. (11,0) F-16C .. 83% .. (11,0) F-14 .. 90% .. (11,0) P-47D .. 70% .. (11,0) [/TABLE] Persian Gulf [TABLE]Plane // VRAM (rel.) // RAM [GB] F/A-18C .. 73% .. (13,5) F-14 .. 94% .. (13,5) [/TABLE] --- Nevada in the morning hours with some dramatic shadows is still a really nice map.

@LucShep A bit off-topic... Casmo had a great point about Nevada vs. Persian Gulf. No carrier operations with the Nevada map, but more terrain to fly over.

Let's see what the trade-off would be for an alternative texture-setting. Open Beta 2.5.6.53756 Textures = high, Terrain Textures = low [TABLE]Map // VRAM (rel.) // RAM [GB] Nevada .. 60% .. 12,0 Caucasus .. 65% .. 11,5 Persian Gulf .. 70% .. 14,5 Normandy.. 65% .. 11,5 Channel .. 95% .. 17,5 Syria .. 85%.. 15,5[/TABLE] Textures = high, Terrain Textures = high ... just for reference (my original setting) [TABLE]]Map // VRAM (rel.) // RAM [GB] Nevada .. 75% .. 11,5 Caucasus .. 80% .. 11,5 Persian Gulf .. 85% .. 14,0[/TABLE] FPS were not noticeably different. Maybe two or three frames more. Setting values to Textures = high, Terrain Textures = low might actually be a better compromise. Terrain Textures = high did look a bit better from what I can tell, but might not be enough to sacrifice cockpit detail. I have experimented with flat shadows. That didn't do much for me. What made a difference was going with Visible Range = medium. FPS were in the 50+-range and more stable. But I just don't like the resulting pop up-effect down low.

Glad that the comparison was helpful. :) Personally, I always liked the Persian Gulf a bit better. But Nevada surely has it's nice places, too - Hoover dam never gets old. Regarding my results, you could always try to dail back some settings. Terrain textures on low had a significant effect on VRAM-usage if remember correctly. --- Maybe some additional information that might be of interest (rounded values). [TABLE]Map // disk space Caucasus .. 16 GB Nevada .. 34 GB Normandy .. 15,5 GB Persian Gulf .. 33 GB Syria .. 47 GB The Channel .. 18 GB[/TABLE]

Had the chance to download the new Syria map right after release. Here is a first update on memory consumption. Settings and driver unchanged. [TABLE]Map // VRAM (rel.) // RAM [GB] Syria // 95% // 17,5[/TABLE] FPS as reported above; avg 40s, down to 20, 60 at high altitudes I took a quick look around the HOMS-area in an F-16, RAM shot up to over 20 GB after a short while. The map-folder is about 47 GB in size. --- Great map, the level of detail and variation is really stunning. :thumbup:

Some additional questions to consider - no need to answer publicly. Can you monitor VRAM-usage to narrow the problem down? Would you carry over the card to a new system? How long will it realistically take until you can switch to a new system? How much of a financial stretch would a new graphics be? Is DCS the only application that requires more performance? How long will you stay with DCS? Started with a GTX760-2 GB back in mid-2014 myself, revisited DCS in 2018 and decided to upgrade to a 1070TI-8 GB after quite some time of getting to know the simulation. A bit too much for my old i7-4771@3.5 and a bit too expensive for my taste. But, I guess that's the nature of that beast right now. The card will most likely be carried over to a new system, which is not planned before late 2021 at the moment.

I assume it depends on how much you're "over" 100%. After a while on the Channel map I too see 99%. If DCS would request 120% (rel.) the amout of shifting the memory around should increase, resulting in some form of freeze or stutter. I just wanted to share the informance since I am not aware to have seen this kind of data in comparison before. Up to now, most things where fine for me and I shied away from upgrading to 32 GB. With the Channel map it was mostly about VRAM-usage. But, I guess there is nowhere else to go with the base system. I might as well take the last step in terms of an hardware upgrade. A new build is about 18 month or so away. Transitioning to Win 10 on the existing hardware comes first. - Yes, I am looking forward to those optimzations. On the other hand, the upcoming features will demand their share of the ressources as well. Let's see what Vulkan will be able to do for us. I plan to wait with a new build until things have settled down in that regard.

Thank you for the suggestion - will give it a try. FPS are not my main concern at the moment. I do not have the time to fly DCS that often and am still in the learning phase. The Channel map is done by ED, not Ugra Media. My VRAM had simply been maxed out. That had caused freezes while looking around in the cockpit and had not been present before. After checking the different monitors, I realized that RAM also peaked at 16 GB. With 32 GB already installed and 11 GB of VRAM on some cards I guess one wouldn't directly notice the higher memory consumption since the other maps don't take that much.