Malefic Rage

Hi Mate. What kind of money are you looking for because you can go from $100 to $1500 without much effort. A 27" monitor is great for size/price right now. Better value would be a 24" The best part of 27" monitors are the fact that most of the decent ones can do Quad HD (2K) at 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. You DEFINITELY want either AN IPS or MVA based panel if you want to do both multimedia and gaming. The older TFT types redraw faster for slightly more responsive gaming however they tend to have poorer colour representation and suffer from side-view contrast shift where you can only see the picture from straight ahead. The downside to cheap IPS/MVA panels is slow redraw rates and fast action games can blur a bit. A slightly more expensive one will give you a much better redraw rate of 3-6ms rather than 8ms+. Don't bother with OLED. They are expensive and while pretty are still potentially susceptible to burn-in effects. If budget is a concern, stick with a standard 60Hz refresh rate and don't bother with G-Sync or FreeSync because they come with a premium. Things like colour accuracy and backlight uniformity are nice but probably come at a price premium. DEFINITELY check the website TFTCentral which gives you incredible detail on how monitors work, what is best to look for for particular uses and detailed reviews and recommendations for various needs. Tom's Hardware Guide also reviews new and recent monitors with lots of detail and usage recommendations. Sorry if it's a lot but this should give you everything you need to research. If you just want some model suggestions. Give us your price range and a general idea of what kind of features you want/need as well as your main usage patterns (games, work, movie, etc) Cheers Mate.

Hello. Instead of buying a new 27" monitor, what I did was purchase two additional cheap second hand 19" 4:3 monitors (people are almost throwing them away) and place one each side of my main one. I use the centre 24" monitor to play DCS, the one on the left for referencing the manual or mission information and the one on the right for keyboard controls, HOTAS configuration or web browsing. When not playing DCS I get the advantage of an extended desktop. That being said, I work in IT so part of of my decision was practical as I find multiple monitors useful for work.

It's designed to sneak around enemy lines and penetrate their rear.

Actually, that is something I've been wondering about. What do you all think the general DCS community feel about a theoretical aircraft. Something done to the level of detail of the modules such as the A-10C or the upcoming F/A-18C. I would say many people are interested in the new 5th generation aircraft (myself included) however a DCS study sim quality module emulating one of these would be impossible. So instead of trying to create an F-22 or PAK FA, create a hypothetical aircraft, perhaps base it on something with very well known characteristics such as a Hornet or Typhoon then construct new generation systems for it such as helmet-mounted displays, touchscreens, integrated sensors and avionics, weapons systems, etc based on publicly known data and theory. I image it would be a substantial effort so assuming it were possible, wouldn't that be suitable for the DCS audience? After all, DCS appeals to many people from the hardcore grognards wanting hard data and historical accuracy to the more moderate players who are more interested in experiencing the challenge of something new and fascinating.

Fair enough. With respect to approximation I was thinking of something that achieved the fidelity of the more thoroughly modeled aircraft such as the A-10C or KA-50. I understand what you mean by it being too open to individual interpretation. I actually tried to collate options 3 and 4 after creating the poll but couldn't work out how (if it is even possible). That is actually what I had in mind but have done a poor job elaborating upon. The complex modelling of cockpit systems is what I enjoy most about the A-10C and KA-50 (the two modules I own). That's what I had in mind when saying 'approximate' for an authentic experience.

Hi Art-J. Thanks for your response. I actually agree with you. The poll was an afterthought to writing the post so I admit I've mushed together something that should have been separate. Taking out personal frustrations from the argument, what I really want to know is whether or not people in the DCS user community believe that a degree of imperfection and/or interpretation is acceptable in a study sim to be able to implement aircraft such as the F/A-18C or Typhoon tranche 1, or possibly even the F/A-18E (which is what I mean by modern aircraft, not cutting-edge such as Gen 5). The impression that I have is that some (be no means all) people believe that this should not be so which I disagree with so I wanted to know what others think.

I'm going to clarify. I have no expectation that ED or a third party would implement a 5th generation aircraft such as the F-35. I specifically stated "I understand not attempting to model aircraft such as the F-35A in a study sim since the degree of information classification prevents even an estimation of it's capabilities" The only relevance to the F-35 in my argument is the fact that my observation began from a response on a post regarding the cancelled project. I don't think I can make that any clearer.

I said I was concentrating on LOMAC when I said that DCS was predominantly an aircraft simulator. I did not claim it was part of the new DCS product. I also conceded that point was incorrect. Don't fabricate. I'm not even sure what you are trying to argue here. I think my statement was clear enough. LOMAC was closer to a survey sim rather than a study sim. AFAIK ED converted the FC aircraft to the DCS system so that users who had purchased Flaming Cliffs could use their aircraft in DCS. I never at any point suggested that lower fidelity aircraft should be developed. Again, don't fabricate. My point is that if the simulation produces an accurate representation, simplification/abstraction/approximation of the internal calculations are perfectly acceptable. If every conceivable system, component and physics calculation to were done to an infinitesimal level you would eventually have to simulate the entire universe.

I understand your point there, with respect to IFF what I remember (very, very, vaguely) I think ED was asked not to implement that system at all. I mentioned IFF since removal of a complete system did not detract from the user experience or quality of the product as a whole.

As I said in the first post I understand not selecting a very new aircraft such as the F-35 since it is impossible to simulate with any accuracy whatsoever. It would be purely guesswork and could not be considered a study sim With respect to the term 'approximation', I'll clarify my intention - I mean enough data to estimate a solution that represents the real-world equivalent. For example, I doubt every bit of the data desirable for the upcoming F/A18-C is unclassified, take the A-10C's IFF system which was not included. This did not prevent the developer from creating an excellent and highly-detailed representation of the A-10C and I'm sure the same will apply for the F/A-10C Edit: As an aside I want to clarify that this applies to a consumer-grade study sim, not an industry/customer specific project such as with a military client where the precision is critical (and the data is available to the developer).

That's fair. I was concentrating on LOMAC so yes, the base DCS product is not platform-specific. What I argue is that 100% fidelity is not required for accurate representation. As the saying goes... if it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and flies like a duck then it's a duck. Whether the full functioning of the internal organs are simulated or simply approximated with an algorithm doesn't matter as long as the behavior, interaction and subsequent consequences emulate the real-world equivalent.

Edit: I really wish I'd picked a better title. Prompted by a recent DCS user's Facebook comment I read regarding the aborted F-35 project, I wanted to comment on something I've come across numerous times now. The user stated that they would rather not see modern aircraft developed for DCS. Their desire is based on the notion that modern aircraft cannot be modeled to the degree of quasi-perfect fidelity that can be achieved with WWII and Cold War aircraft as approximating classified systems somehow diminishes the simulations purity. I really don't understand that notion since I have always inferred that the primary focus of the Digital Combat Simulator was the simulation of modern aerial combat (particularly generations 4 and 4.5), especially considering the types of aircraft, ground units, avionics systems and weapons included and modeled with the software. So long as the sim provides an accurate representation of its subject then it is irrelevant (to myself at least) whether some background calculation that has little bearing on the quality of the user experience is calculated to the twenty-third decimal place or simply approximated sufficiently. For myself the primary attraction is the ability to experience an authentic application of modern military aviation technology rather than fixate on past generations. I understand not attempting to model aircraft such as the F-35A in a study sim since the degree of information classification prevents even an estimation of it's capabilities, but not the notion that anything that cannot be simulated with God-like perfection is somehow unacceptable and should be relegated to the ignorant peasants. As an aside, I'm not knocking the development of the WWII modules or the people anticipating them, rather this puritanism I've been seeing. I'm curious about other people's opinions on the issue. I suppose my question to people is "What degree of approximation is suitable for a study sim? Should accuracy be nothing short of perfection or is approximation acceptable so long as the user experience is authentically represented?"

Hello there. To check if there are any issues with your RAM, download and burn to DVD a program called Memtest86+. Boot off the DVD and it will do a comprehensive test of your RAM.

Oh VR, sorry. I do think the core i5 6600K would be fine. As for motherboards, you don't need an expensive one unless you want to go SLI/Crossfire. Just as long as it uses the Z170 chipset which is required for overclocking (along with a K CPU)

Hi Mate. You can actually get quite a decent DCS system without going overboard on price. I assume you aren't planning to run it on a huge monitor at 4K resolution so here's my opinion. CPU: A core i7 won't get you much benefit beyond a good core i5 because of the way DCS is programmed. I suggest getting a core i5 6600K and overclocking it to 4.2 Ghz to get the most out of it. At this point in time, don't use an AMD CPU as the current architecture is rather old and does not perform well with DCS. Cooling: If you want to overclock, a better fan is required. I use a Be Quiet! Pure Rock CPU Cooler. It is a great cooler for a good price. Don't bother with liquid cooling, it doesn't help unless you want to do extreme overclocking and/or want a quiet PC. It is also much more expensive. Motherboard: If you don't overclock, pretty much anything will do for a budget system. You don't need much at all. If you overclock, just make sure you have a motherboard with the Z170 chipset. It is required for Intel CPUs. One nice option would be a high quality on-board sound card. I use an ASRock Z170-Pro4 which is perfect for my needs/budget. RAM: DDR4 is needed for the latest motherboards/CPUs. Don't pay any attention to latency, the difference it makes is tiny. Frequency overclocking helps a bit but not enough for me to bother. Just get some stock standard DDR4 2133. 16GB is recommended for DCS. Graphics Card: You don't actually need a monster for DCS to work well at medium-high settings. I have a Radeon R9 290 and get up to 120FPS with a minimum of 60. Buying one of those second hand would be a good bargain. A Radeon R9 390 or a Geforce 970 would do everything you need. A Radeon R9 380 or Geforce GTX 960 might be adequate if you don't go for the highest detail settings. Storage: If you don't have on already, I strongly recommend a Solid State Drive. They'll make your computer sing. Unless you do a lot of disk writing, any will do. Good luck with it mate.

Interesting. I didn't know that. I'm used to my old AMD CPU that just scales down every core at once. Thanks.

Does the stuttering only work on an overclock? That is odd, I'm not aware of anything that should cause that. If the CPU is unstable the whole system should become unstable with software and even the OS crashing. Do you know what specs overclocking utility is actually changing? Have you manually overclocked other parts of the system such as the bus speed? If so, there may be a timings issue somewhere.

Yes. An Intel CPU should not exceed 80C or you risk damage. On full load when load testing using IntelBurnTest, if you exceed 80 then you'll have problems. Do you have thermal protection enabled in the motherboard? I'm not sure about intel CPUs but with AMD it get's very assertive and tries not to let the CPU go above 75. BTW: What frequency have you overclocked to?

First off, if you wanted to change you would need a motherboard capable of handling socket 2011-3 since they don't use the standard 1150/1151 sockets. Contrary to the impressions the marketing gives, the new group of high core count Core i7s are actually likely to perform substantially worse than a standard 6700K in DCS. DCS is not multi-threaded so the main (generally) metric of performance is single core performance. Anything more than 2 cores will not get any use by DCS so that $2100 Core i7 6950X Extreme Edition with 10 Cores is actually doing nothing at all for the money. In fact, at 3.0GHz stock speed, it is only 3/4 as effective as a Core i7 6700K at stock speed. Even a plain Core i5 6600 would be faster at 3.5 GHz. As for overclockability. I don't think you would get anything more than you would a standard Skylake CPU; furthermore you would have less headroom for temperature management due to the extremely high TDP rating which would require some pretty serious cooling. All in all, I'm not sure if these CPUs are optimal for gaming since game developers will develop their products to run on the average consumer's CPU. You'll certainly get benefit from a high-end CPU like a Core i7 6700K but unless you have something with a heavily threaded design which specifically requires as many cores as possible then you probably won't get much out of it. I doubt I would ever buy one myself. Hope it helps. :)

As dbrurne said, overclocking your CPU is quite feasible. Especially with a liquid cooler. I've heard of people getting 5Ghz stable. IMO the best way to test stability is the Intelburntest. That completely murders your CPU. If anything is going to test if it is stable, run that for a few hours. You'll know. Use a program called Speccy. It gives you real-time readings of the individual core speeds and temperatures. You essentially want it to stay in the low-mid 70s (Celcius). Going above 80 is bad. It will shorten the life of your CPU and potentially damage it if exposed to that temperature for longer periods. As for your 980Ti. That should be fine. P.S. I'm envious of your specs. :)

Hello there. I think in your circumstances the CPU is the primary bottleneck. DCS requires high single-core performance and looking at benchmarks your old core i7 CPU provides barely half of the performance of a current core i5 6600. The problem with upgrading is that you need a new motherboard to handle the current socket 1150 or newer 1151 so you would have to pay for that as well. Another limiter is likely your GTX 650 Ti. Currently DCS works very well on either a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or an AMD Radeon 390 at reasonably high detail settings. Hope it helps.

I agree with Demon. The 950 Pro would be nice but you won't really get much of a performance improvement for DCS beyond the 850 Pro. Really, unless you do an unusually large amount of disk writes as part of your daily usage, even the 850 EVO would be fine.

Hello there. Memory can be confusing, especially with the hype going around overclocking nowadays so I'll keep it simple. Basically, you current configuration is perfectly fine. Firstly, timings/latency is mostly a marketing gimmick. The difference timings make in both real-word performance and theoretical tests is tiny. Secondly, 1600Mhz is the highest of the standard DDR3 clock speeds. Anything over that is overclocking. Since CPUs are designed to work optimally at the standard speeds, overclocking isn't necessary unless you want to squeeze in a few extra FPS. Also, the further you overclock, the less advantage you get. Third, DDR4 is only needed if your CPU requires it. You'll get some advantage with a new CPU that supports it but tests have shown that the performance of DDR3 is almost identical to DDR4 at the same frequencies. Stick you whatever your CPU needs. Finally with respect to the reading of 666Mhz, this is referring to the base IO rate of the memory. Since DDR is Double Data Rate RAM, two bits of data are sent per cycle so the effective bandwidth you are getting is actually 1333. While your RAM is capable of more, it may be that your motherboard is only able to run at 1333 with your current configuration. The difference between 1333 Mhz and 1600 Mhz is pretty small so don't sweat over it. If you want to get some faster ram, you'll get a small FPS increase but you'll need to enable what is called the XMP profile. There is plenty of info about that if you google. I don't think you really need to though; the main performance limiter in DCS is the CPU itself and since you have a recent Core i7, you'll be fine.

It sounds like a corruption issue somewhere within Windows. Have you run a system file check? If not, go into the command prompt and type: sfc /scannow Also... Do you use a program called Synergy by any chance?

Do you run in full-screen or windowed mode? Windowed mode makes switching among other windows and programs much cleaner and easier.