After upgrading my graphics card from an RX 480 to an RX 6800, I had a very strange bug where after ~5 minutes of flying in VR, my framerate would tank from a stable 90fps down to 25-30fps along with a really bad stutter (pink bars in fpsVR) and 100% GPU utilization. This issue would persist between game sessions, restarting Steam VR or the game would not fix the issue, as the next mission would start with this performance. Obviously since it's a brand new graphics card I tested it in other games and no problems in any game other than DCS.
Here's a screenshot of what fpsVR was telling me
The only way to temporarily fix this was by rebooting or signing out and back in to windows. This didn't fix the problem, only restarted it. Another 5 minutes of flying and the framerate dumped again.
These are the relevant troubleshooting steps I took (I took a LOT more, but these are the ones that told me anything valuable):
-Disconnected my ethernet cable, problem went away completely without needing a restart. Can narrow it down to a networking problem.
-Monitored my traffic with glasswire. Nothing abnormal coming from any applications. Turned off hotplugging as well.
-Used USB tethering on my phone with my ethernet cable disconnected. Problem persisted. Not my ethernet hardware or drivers.
-Tried launching steam in offline mode, no change. Also didn't see any traffic coming from steam. Likely not SteamVR.
-Tried SFC scan. Found a few corrupt files, but that didn't fix it.
-Updated to Windows 11 hoping to get a clean windows build without having to reformat. Didn't work.
-Cleaned and reinstalled my drivers one last time, just to be safe. No dice.
Finally, I bit the bullet and reformatted my entire drive using the windows Reset your PC tool. Deleted all of my user files on that drive as well just to be safe, and downloaded from the cloud to make sure nothing I was rebuilding windows from was a local file. This did the trick, I can now play DCS normally.
I created an account to post this because I believe it's some kind of issue with windows that's effecting DCS specifically. I'm not familiar with the nuts and bolts of windows to pinpoint the problem, however seeing that SFC scan and updating to windows 11 didn't fix it, it's probably a rare issue in the windows kernel that's causing it. I wish I could narrow it down more than that, but troubleshooting in windows is just a nightmare and I'd rather just reformat and play my funny plane game. I'm hoping there's some way for ED to fix this as it did require me to nuke my windows drive in order to play DCS again so others with the same issue don't have to do that, but with how hard it is to identify, I honestly wouldn't hold it against them if it's not fixable.
Here are my specs for reference:
Asrock B450m Pro4 mobo
Ryzen 5 3600
XFX SWFT 319 Radeon RX 6800
32GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200Mhz DDR4 RAM
Samsung SSD980 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD
My headset is the original HTC Vive
After upgrading my graphics card from an RX 480 to an RX 6800, I had a very strange bug where after ~5 minutes of flying in VR, my framerate would tank from a stable 90fps down to 25-30fps along with a really bad stutter (pink bars in fpsVR) and 100% GPU utilization. This issue would persist between game sessions, restarting Steam VR or the game would not fix the issue, as the next mission would start with this performance. Obviously since it's a brand new graphics card I tested it in other games and no problems in any game other than DCS. Here's a screenshot of what fpsVR was telling me The only way to temporarily fix this was by rebooting or signing out and back in to windows. This didn't fix the problem, only restarted it. Another 5 minutes of flying and the framerate dumped again. These are the relevant troubleshooting steps I took (I took a LOT more, but these are the ones that told me anything valuable): -Disconnected my ethernet cable, problem went away completely without needing a restart. Can narrow it down to a networking problem. -Monitored my traffic with glasswire. Nothing abnormal coming from any applications. Turned off hotplugging as well. -Used USB tethering on my phone with my ethernet cable disconnected. Problem persisted. Not my ethernet hardware or drivers. -Tried launching steam in offline mode, no change. Also didn't see any traffic coming from steam. Likely not SteamVR. -Tried SFC scan. Found a few corrupt files, but that didn't fix it. -Updated to Windows 11 hoping to get a clean windows build without having to reformat. Didn't work. -Cleaned and reinstalled my drivers one last time, just to be safe. No dice. Finally, I bit the bullet and reformatted my entire drive using the windows Reset your PC tool. Deleted all of my user files on that drive as well just to be safe, and downloaded from the cloud to make sure nothing I was rebuilding windows from was a local file. This did the trick, I can now play DCS normally. I created an account to post this because I believe it's some kind of issue with windows that's effecting DCS specifically. I'm not familiar with the nuts and bolts of windows to pinpoint the problem, however seeing that SFC scan and updating to windows 11 didn't fix it, it's probably a rare issue in the windows kernel that's causing it. I wish I could narrow it down more than that, but troubleshooting in windows is just a nightmare and I'd rather just reformat and play my funny plane game. I'm hoping there's some way for ED to fix this as it did require me to nuke my windows drive in order to play DCS again so others with the same issue don't have to do that, but with how hard it is to identify, I honestly wouldn't hold it against them if it's not fixable. Here are my specs for reference: Asrock B450m Pro4 mobo Ryzen 5 3600 XFX SWFT 319 Radeon RX 6800 32GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200Mhz DDR4 RAM Samsung SSD980 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD My headset is the original HTC Vive