TED

I’m using 90hz and found the dx11 forced on had no effect on image with the amd. I did however find the same early in in my testing with other settings, so I’m not 100% sure what caused that. With the settings above however the image is good. I do think, like anything else with tuning, it is a combination of lots of small factors that combine and add up to produce results. There is no single silver bullet that operates in isolation. Everything is working together. The sum is greater than its parts.

Just try to make sure as well that nothing else at all is running in these cores unless it’s absolutely necessary. in PL just need to go to all process and highlight everything except dcs and untick the cores dcs are set to run on.

I just posted another thread in the vr section with my settings and setup. Hope it helps.

I think in vr the new "ultimate clouds" basically doesn't work. There is a bit of a difference though in vr and ultimate look a bit better. In sp I will go for ultimate. In mp to keep some headroom i leave it on standard. Sounds strange that your dcs crashes when u dedicate cores. What cpu do u use and which cores did you use? It is possible one is a bad core and therefore not enough for dcs to run?

Yes apparently but I'm a bit cautious without liquid cooling. A lot of what I've read and tested say up to about 4.4 with air so I just keep a bit of headroom. To be honest I've never seen my cpu hit 100% anyway.

I have been back and forward testing both nvidia 3080 and amd 6900xt and trying to decide which to keep. I’ve done so many hours and learnt so much going through not just dcs settings but all the various components of the pc. There is a lot of info about settings for nvidia and dcs but very little for amd, so here are my findings. I had almost given up on the amd after getting the 3080 nicely tuned, however I had this itch that I must be missing something with the amd as I wasn’t getting the performance I had initially hoped for, so I installed it again and went to work. The first point I have to make is while some of the logic in tuning amd or nvidia is the same, some is very different. Long story short, I now have the amd performing better in vr with a g2 than the 3080, which was also excellent once everything was setup correctly. Some of these processes will be applicable to both amd or nvidia and are generic. system - motherboard - msi b550 carbon gaming WiFi. AMD 6900xt. Ryzen 7 3800xt (8 cores) overclock to 4.3. Air cooled. RAM 32 gb gskill 3600mhz cl14. vr - reverb g2 1. Optimise the CPU. No matter what system you run this will help reduce stutters, increase FPS and reduce frame times. The key thing is that dcs only utilizes 2 cores so you need to dedicate 2 cores (2 physical and 2 virtual) to solely dcs. I used process lasso and went into core affinity and looked at all the processes. Set dcs to only use cores 12-16 and everything else in my pc to only use 1-11. Job done. After further testing the most important areas seem to be separating steamvr, voice attack and Srs from dcs. When adjusting the core affinity be cautious and DO NOT REMOVE ANY SYSTEM processes from all cores. Ideally identify what are the greatest users of cpu and separate them. Typically in dcs this is steamvr, wmr and dcs.exe. You don’t need process lasso for this and task manager will also work. Open details, right click on the process and set affinity. Keep steamvr, wmr, Srs, away especially from the dcs cores. I’ve overclock done my cpu to 4.3 and it’s perfectly stable with air cooling. This seems plenty for my needs in dcs . 2. Optimise RAM. Into bios, enable x-amp profile and make sure you are getting the right ram frequency. Without x-amp enabled your system my be limiting your ram by default to 2133. 3. AMD software settings. My aim is to get a smooth visual with as little stuttering as possible, preferably at 100% resolution in steam vr. With nvidia the best way to do this was use motion vector and motion smoothing. This limits the FPS to 45. ED even say the aim for a good vr experience is a steady 45fps with low frame times. I agree. With that in mind my aim is to just do that. I don’t want it jumping from 80 to 45 and back to 80 as that just induces stuttering. For whatever reason the amd doesn’t like motion vector much, and that initially threw me off. However as I realized later, it doesn’t need it. In the amd software just set maximum FPS to 45 in graphics tuning. Apart from that I have everything else disabled except anti-lag. I found undervolting in preset or default gives good stability. I have since done a custom profile where I adjusted the fan speeds to keep the temp below 75. The amd likes to be under 75 degrees c to operate best. I found the cooling was a little too late so I increased the fan speeds at lower temps. That’s about it. A 10 min job! 4. Steam vr. Nothing special here. Global resolution set to 100%, video setting per app to 100%. Motion smoothing off. Advanced super sampling off. 5 WMR - again fairly straight forward. Motion vector disabled. Force dx11 on. Don’t use the hand controllers in game. Just the mouse. 6. DCS settings . Again keep it simple. MSAA x 2. AF x 16. Shadows flat. Forest visibility 50% forest detail start very low and gradually increase. I think trees look bad anyway so have it really low. Grass and clutter also very low and see how it looks. Everything else - textures, visibility, etc high. Clouds standard. The main ones are all on the right of the dcs settings. So pay attention to those sliders. In my view, trees, grass, clutter etc, doesn’t add an awful lot but can save a ton by turning it right down. 7. General pc health. Make sure drivers are up to date. Minimize the amount of other programs and processes running in the background. Through windows or task manager set priorities accordingly with dcs being highest, and everything else low or normal. Possibly steamvr to high. Minimize all other windows once u r in dcs. Especially wmr and svr windows. If you are coming off an nvidia gpu, make sure you have removed every last bit of nvidia software and programs on your pc. This took me a while and I ended up having to download some removal software to get rid of it all. Some of this nvidia stuff really is like a fart in a space suit! 8. USB ports. Yeah…this one took me a long time to work out. Dodgy power supply from the usb especially to the g2 will definitely cause a lot of stutters. After almost a year I realized the usb power supply to my g2 was not entirely linear, causing small spikes and drops and it increased over time. The cable was basically crap. If you are getting lots of spikes then look into this. Anything that disrupts the power to the headset will cause surges and drops. It can be the reverb cable or the USB ports themselves. First check is to try different ports. Ideally for the headset a usb 3 port if you don’t have a usb c port in your gpu. However I think most 6900 have a usb c in the gpu. 9. cooling. Sounds obvious but also took me while to work out. Keeping those temps down will go a long way. I don’t have any liquid cooling but put a bit of planning into decent air cooling with decent amount of cooling fans around the chassis and 2 fans in the cpu. Rising temps will cause the system to throttle back and ultimately cause performance issues and stuttering. With all this done I am able to fly sp with basically zero stuttering. It looks amazing and is very smooth. In mp it is a little more server dependent but in general very good with very little stutter. Especially if I am in a server with a ping well below 100. Dcs performance does vary a bit between modules. Most if my testing was in a10c2, AV8B and ka50. The a10 is the most demanding and even with that I was getting very good performance. Finally fpsvr! A great tool for diagnostics, but I have found it to be not always completely reliable. In fact sometimes it is actually FPSvr that causes the frametimes increases and fps drops. So i uses it cautiously for comparison , then run with it off. Almost always a better appearance of performance once it’s off. There is probably more fine tuning that can be done, but I will now likely sell my 3080 and be sticking with the 6900xt. I am extremely pleased with the results. I have read a lot of reports of people dismissing the 6900xt and to be honest I nearly did the same myself. The problem is that you can tune and run the amd and nvidia in the same way, however with a bit of work and learning it’s my belief now that the 6900 outperforms the 3080 in dcs, and that is not intended as a negative to the nvidia. I got fantastic results out of that too and really can’t complain or say much bad about it. I hope this quick guide helps those who like me, perhaps have an amd 6900xt and got a bit frustrated. The good news is that it can and will perform really well, it’s just that the knowledge about how to get it working optimally is not really out there yet as the vast majority are still using nvidias. Good luck to all and please try some of the above and perhaps keep experimenting. I’m sure even more is possible.

I’m using a ryzen 7 3800xt oc to 4.3. It’s plenty. A 5800x would be more than enough. If u liquid cool u can go way further than me. As I mentioned earlier the most important thing seems to be optimizing the cpu core affinity. Easy to do. Just dedicated 2 cores solely to dcs and nothing else. it will be 4 numbers as even are physical cores and odd numbers virtual. On my 3800xt I have 8 cores, so I dedicated 13/14 and 15/16 to dcs. Those cores have no other process in them.

Yep.. As @edmusssaid I've been testing both and putting them through their paces with a g2. I'd initially believed the 3080 was better, but now I've learnt a little more, especially about tuning the 6900xt I'm getting absolutely fantastic results with it. I'm playing mp server with 100% resolution in Syria and its extremely smooth. So much so, I think I will probably sell the 3080 (which is also excellent btw). There is very little advice about tuning the 6900 for dcs online so it's a bit hard to work out. I've done quite a bit and now it makes sense. I am pretty sure I can still squeeze some more out of it too and the extra vram of the 6900 is definitely starting to show. After my latest rounds of testing I'm really impressed with the 6900. If u get one give me a shout and I can walk u though some settings. Its not complicated once u know where and 15 mins is all u will need.

Yes as well as all the other steps I described. Setting cpu affinity so only dcs is on 2 cores and nothing else. Basically tuning everything for 45fps then I don’t need mv or motion smoothing. Try the steps i detailed in the previous posts and see if it helps. Your 6800xt should work just as well. I just flew in a populated Syria mp server and it was fantastic. The best vr experience I think I’ve had on dcs. Very smooth, very clear. when I get some time I might write it all out in a guide format but it’s pretty straightforward. Tune the cpu, overclock as much as is safe. Tune the ram so I get max out of it. Cpu core affinity. All for same for both gpus. in amd everything off except anti-lag. Set max frame rate to 45. All rest default for now. in dcs turn down forest vis and detail, grass and clutter, rest all on high textures and vis. Msaa x4 , AF x 16. in svr with amd motion smoothing off wmr with amd mv off. Dx11 forced on. try all that and see how u get on.

What GPU are u using? I tried 60hz and it was too noticeable. I'll only use 90hz and make it work.

Well….I continued with the theme of matching FPS in nvcp and dcs and tested in mp.it was a significant improvement. Still some stutters but much less noticeable. The next thing I noticed is that the USB port for the g2 is causing spikes. I can’t believe it went this long before I noticed that. Maintaining the same idea i now tried again the 6900xt, which I had started to previously get a bit frustrated with. It’s higher ram and vram should allow more. So I did the exact same amd software. Everything off except limiting the FPS to 45. I added anti-lag. Initially results were so-so. I turned off mv and motion smoothing, set the amd preset tune to default…and bang…perfect. As good if not better than the 3080. So all this is leading me to believe there is a lot more to be done with tuning the system rather than dcs. Yes dcs will benefit from a better engine, but I have now just experienced really good stable 45 FPS and low frame times with 100% resolution in a g2 on both gpus. So anyone struggling with the stutters don’t give up. A few simple processes seem to be able to make a really big difference.

You are absolutely right. I’d gotten a bit confused about all the svr resolution stuff. I just set to 100% and with all the previous tuning I mentioned. I flew an sp mission in Syria in a10c all low level and not a single stutter (until I got shot down by an sam)! it seems as if syncing all the FPS settings ,might actually be a large part of this puzzle. I’ll try in mp servers and see if it shows potential.

Max frame rate to 45. background application max frame rate off. Although it might be worth trying.

The nvidia control panel setting.

Ive had a bit too much time on my hands recently and with two gpus to play with Ive become a bit like a dog with a bone on this subject. I am running through all sorts of settings and tuning to find out what is affecting vr performance and what is not and having some successes. Right now i am focusing on the 3080 with the g2. In general performance is excellent in SP but my goal is to get good stutter free performance in MP with motion vector on, motion smoothing, MSAA x 2 at least, AF x 16, native resolution in the G2 (2160 x 2160 per eye or slightly more in SVR) which is around 52%. With that said, i see a number of areas to focus on. Using FPSVR I could see that i am getting random and unpredictable spikes in the CPU which then causes frame times to increase. The first thing I did was to go in an adjust CPU affinity. I used Process Lasso for this, but it can be easily done through task manager as well. I have a Ryzen 7 3800xt, so 8 cores. I dedicated 12 to 15 purely for DCS.exe and 1 to 11 for everything else, with nothing except dcs on 12 to 15. Everything with WMR, Steam Vr and all other process on 1 to 11. This immediately seemed to stabilize things and massively reduced the stuttering for me. Next up I made sure my CPU was over locked to 4300mhz and checked the RAM (32gb ddr4 3600mhz cl14) was also on XMP profile to 3600mhz. The final stage was in Nvidia control panel. As I am running motion vector, my VR FPS will be limited anyway to 45fps, so I set the frame rate limit in NVCP to 45, so the system doesn’t try to generate more. At the same time I allow triple buffering and pre/rendered frames to 4. So far with these settings on my first tests in MP Syria server I was able to hugely increase the stability, even increasing MSAA to x4 and upping SteamVR resolution per eye. I am going to continue to test and tweak, but i am starting to believe a lot can be done with some simple tweaking without needing mods and shaders. I’d be interested to know anyone’s thoughts on this My next test will be to see if i can get some similar results with the 6900XT installed. I’m having a constant back and forth between 3080 and 6900xt and i am pretty sure I have not worked out yet how to get the most out of the 6900. It’s higher VRAM should give me more leeway but i dont think previously i had worked out how to effectively utilize this. My feeling is that if tuned correctly it should in theory be able to out perform the 3080, although until now my experience has been the opposite with the 3080 being the better vr performer. I suspect this is my own settings and will continue to test this.

@DeltaMikeabsolutely agree. It's always a compromise and tuning and tweaking is necessary no matter what the chosen hardware is. I should also have mentioned, the test I described was definitely not the only one I did, it was only the final one I did based on my requirements. I actually did also test as u described with msaa off and dialling back many bother settings then comparing. Way too many configurations to describe. Throughout, however was the common theme, for the same given settings in vr with the g2 i was producing lower frame times on cpu always with 3080 and GPU times were similar until I started populating the map or using mp server. At which point the 3080 pulled away. Something is going on in the interactions between my GPU and cpu when using 6900 that is not happening when using the 3080.

I should just add that I have not yet replaced my power cable for the g2, but I do wonder if this was causing some of the more negative things for the 6900xt. I notice that it is very sensitive to exactly which USB port it uses and when the stuttering happens there are large spikes in both cpu and gpu. This could indicate a power supply issue to the headset. At some point I will work out how to get the newer cable and try again. My results are purely my own experience with all the variables I have, so it is entirely possible there are other external factors at play. I was only using the usb c port for example on the 6900xt for the g2 power. This might be worth investigating.

As some may have read in my previous posts, I ended up in the lucky problem of having both a amd. 6900xt which I ordered a while back, having previously ordered a rtx 3080 which had a years waiting time! Now I have had both for the last few months and run them through their paces on dcs. Both are great gpus but one is better for my use. They seem to behave very differently and have their own strengths and weaknesses. How they render, image quality and interaction with the software and hardware. im using a reverb g2 headset, 32gb cl14 3600mhz ram and an AMD 3800xt cpu. I spent the first few months solely with the 6900xt and it worked very well although needed quite a bit of tweaking. It runs cooler than the 3080 and in sp I can run pretty much max settings. The amd software is nice and pretty easy to configure although many of the settings are not working with dcs. In general in sp I had no problems maintaining 80fps (without mv) in a harrier even at low level on Syria map. I have the steam resolution set to as close to g2 resolution as I could which works out around 52% for me then set the per app setting to 100% to keep it simple. Motion smoothing on. Wmr motion vector enabled. The issues I started to have however seems to be once the map gets more populated and frame times would ramp up quickly to orange levels 17ms plus. Interestingly it was cpu frame times that seems to suffer the most but gpu spikes and frames were also suffering. I started to suspect my cpu was bottlenecking or throttling down and ran a number of checks. Once into MP servers frame times really struggled and I was getting numerous spikes with the settings described above. I turned shadows off, clutter and grass right down, trees down and forest visibility down. Nothing really helped and my cpu and gpu frame times were regularly spiking leading to a very jittery experience. back and forwards many times between the 6900xt and the 3080 flying the exact same missions and profiles proved to me that the 3080 for some reason works better in vr with the g2. With the exact same settings and mission as I tested on the 6900xt , Syria from Ramat low level to the north, engage some sa8 sites then a troop of btr80. Both frame times for cpu and gpu were significantly lower and almost always in green levels and under 12. In fact the cpu was hardly ever out of the green. This really confuses me as all I did was switch the gpu, however with the 6900xt installed the cpu is also working considerably harder. I have absolutely no explanation for this. I did have some issues with dcs crashing with the 3080. It would start with the audio stopping completely, followed by a big gpu spike then sometimes ctd, sometimes continuing with no audio. After several days of frustration thinking my cpu was screwed I noticed by resetting the audio device in dcs options it would work again, although often only to fail later. The culprit ended up most likely being the usb cable from the g2 or the USB port on the motherboard. Either way switching out to another Ss usb solved this. I never experienced this with the 6900xt, but there I was able to use the usb c directly into the gpu without using an adapter. The 3080 has no usb c port. I switched over to MP with the 3080 and again the same results with a a very stable 45fps with mv enabled and nice low frame times (10 - 15ms mostly) and a noticeably smoother experience. In fact going straight from one gpu to the next the difference was very obvious in the lack of any jitters on the 3080. Nvidia cp settings I had used were almost everything off with the exceptions of negative LOD BIAS clamped, triple buffering enabled, vr pre rendered frames set to 4. in AMD software I tried all sorts of combinations from rage mode to undervolting but could not get the frametimes down to the same levels as the 3080. For the most part I had used @BIGNEWYguide for vr settings as a start point and it’s pretty much bang on. I can certainly increase these settings quite a ways for sp but I am most interested in mp, so his settings work very nicely. I am not using any shader mods. I tried Fholger fsr for a while with both and it works nicely but I didn’t like the image so much so ditched it. I am fairly sure with a bit more technical knowledge the 6900xt can be tweaked to improve the results but I didn’t want to get into too much messing about with system settings. What I really dont understand is why both the gpu and cpu were working so much harder and both producing upwards of 40% higher frametimes on the exact same mission setup. One possibility is that my 6900xt was pushing out more than the cpu could keep up with and an overload of some sort is occurring. Possibly over clocking my cpu more or upgrading the cpu may have helped. Anyway i may continue testing but for now it looks 3080 suits me better. There are so many variables it’s very likely others will have completely opposite experience and results to mine but hope this helps anyone looking at gpu setups.

Thanks @BIGNEWY. I sent the log now via support and we are going through some diagnosis. It seems related to the gpu (6900xt) for some reason. Hopefully something simple, and I have now removed any mods and dialed back the gpu setting with a slight under voltage so will try to test a bit more today. Possibly the rage mode on the amd software was asking a bit too much.

In the last couple of days I started to experience some random crashes of dcs. Typically it has been in a10c2, night and nvg Syria map on MP server. All is running absolutely fine and been flying for perhaps 30 mins then with no warning it crashes completely. I have tried to work out from the crash log but it may as well be chinese to me. Perhaps someone can help interpret this .dcs.20211218-185422.crash

There is no way your performance should be that bad. I’m running lower cpu and gpu, 3800xt and 6900xt, and have no problem in mp. Makes me wonder if something in your windows settings or even bios settings is slowing the system down. Did you check all the process priority settings in task manager? Perhaps something or several things there are running in high priority and drawing power. Make sure dcs and vr are set on highest priority and everything else within reason low or disabled. I assume you have a decent psu and your system is not powering down due to power supply. The last thing I’d check is your internet connection. Run a speed test and if u r using WiFi try using a wired connection instead. I was having these issues a while ago and it was all down to my internet. I was in a 2.5 ghz connection. Switched to 5ghz and problem solved.

I should mention I’m also using an AMD cpu. A ryzen 7 3800xt. I’m not sure if it makes any difference but I’ve heard some say it helps. Additionally it allows me to use AMD SAM (smart access memory). My cpu is not anything spectacular but it’s very rarely being pushed hard in dcs and more than copes. I definitely just find the amd adrenaline software waaaay more user friendly and intuitive than nvidia control panel. I just did another quick run in a10c in mp marianas server all low level guns and rocket runs graphics in max and not a stutter. Even looking out the side at low level is smooth. As I said before there are pros and cons with each and at the end of the day it’s down to your own priorities but for me the whole package with amd is just better IMO , but there are many variables in setups and others may have different experience.

My decision is now made. I will be keeping the 6900xt and selling the 3080. Ive had a good test of them both. I ran the 6900 for a few months, switched to the 3080 for 4 weeks and now have the 6900 back in. It seems after the last driver update from AMD I am now able to run 4x msaa on dcs with all settings high or max at native resolution. This clinches it now as the 6900 runs cooler, quieter and is more stable. Last night I was on an MP server with 10 other players in Syria and absolutely no issues. This is with motion vector on, motion smoothing enabled, 4x msaa, adrenaline preset on rage, amd anti lag and boost settings on. Lots of air and ground units populating the server. For me it doesn’t get much better and that is well exceeding what i could do on the 3080. With all this set my 6900 was running solid fixed 45fps even at very low level over treetops.

I feel if I had some clear indication Vulcan api was coming anytime soon I might be swayed in keeping the 6900xt straight away, but it’s all very quiet there. We do know for sure ED is doing a lot of work in the background on vr so again I do think we will see incremental improvements in the coming months/year but it’s only my speculation.

It’s a tough one. The 6900xt is definitely more stable. I get better FPS and frame times with it but cannot use msaa. The 3080 I can use msaa but it struggles in my sometimes. My testing continues! Either one works very well but as always there are compromises to be had. Right now I’d say the 3080 creeps ahead on image quality , but the 6900xt on outright performance and stability as well as the software. You can’t go wrong with either to be honest.