reece146

I would look at it from a holistic point of view. DCS beats the disk, Windows swap and OS beats the disk. Of those two swap would be the most intense, large bulk transfers (potentially GBs at a time when swapping RAM). I'd put Windows and the OS on one device, DCS on the other. Once booted the OS doesn't load much else in the grand scheme of things but swap is active. Relative difference between what to put where - probably more along the lines of "bench racing" metrics at that point. That said, if it were me I'd be inclined to put the OS and swap on the smaller, faster of the two drives. You'll need the space for DCS. $0.02

Now we need the T-33!

I would also suggest doing your troubleshooting before buying ram. Maybe do your testing on a less heavy map like the Caucasus map. When I first got into DCS I used to use the TF-51D free flight over Tbilisi as my "testing site" for experimenting. Flying low over the town was enough load without totally maxng out the RAM usage. Once you have an idea of what could be the issue there then see how it goes on Normandy. $0.02

Your basic spec looks decent. Your wife did a good job with the spec. If DCS was like a normal game you wouldn't be posting. What resolution are you trying to run? I'd expect @ 1080p your machine should give quite good results. Single player, mostly unpopulated, The Channel chews up ~22-24GB of RAM on my machine (4K). Normandy is quite hungry also but I don't remember what my monitoring told me. Wanna say 12-16GB. If you can, as a very basic look at what is happening, watch what the CPU and GPU are doing during your low FPS. Task manager has a view with both CPU and GPU and it will give a basic "CPU is at 100%" or "GPU is at 100%" when you get low FPS. Make sure CPU is showing all cores. It is by default configured to stay on top of the game while running. It's a blunt tool but generally tells the trend. MSI Afterburner can give more fine-grained info (free software). DCS is hard on CPU single core performance. Your slow downs could be due to that single core getting overwhelmed (environmental complexity) or it could be due to the GPU getting overwhelmed (graphics complexity) or it could be due to either getting starved getting the data off the SSD and into memory and into the CPU or GPU (slow bus speeds, RAM might help). Lots of places to look. HTH

Really enjoying these mods you post.

Given the machinations of this thread they probably don't dare say a word until it hits EA - possibly even forget this whole thing and just release something to EA quietly other than normal marketing comms. No way they can live up to all the multiple layers of bull sh!t in this thread no matter what they release.

Also, fly in twilight and stick your head out of the cockpit - you'll see the flames.

To be fair, I have almost a dozen of these ADATA/XPG 8200's in various sizes running in my lab. Also have several of the HP EX series units mentioned in the article. I've never had an issue with any of them over the last 3+ years. I have never lost data or had a "mechanical" failure with these units. They get beat on continually 24/7/365 as they hold the VMs that run my clusters. I'm as annoyed as anyone about the potential for bait and switch in this case. I'm glad this has been called out by Tom's. But let's not get hyperbolic and imply the device is unreliable for data integrity due to an attempted like-for-like change of the controller. Drives, even SSDs, are a wear item - expect them to die any time after the first partitioning of the media. If you aren't backing up your data you are courting disaster. Btw, RAID is not a backup.

Seems weird - at 1080p you should be getting more with those settings. What changed recently? DCS update? New module? New drivers? New software or Windows update? Messed with BIOS lately? Make sure you reset NVCP and then reboot immediately. Check to be certain vsync is off in NVCP. Windows game mode, HAG, etc... Check your proc list line by line to make sure nothing is running that you didn't expect. Experiment with turning down trees visibilty. Did you increase that lately?

Also try resetting your NV driver settings. Sometimes it gets "confused" and needs a reset. Then tune again.

I'm looking at it as "performance art".

HA! Awesome!

Are you using TrackIR or VR? With either of those you can see all the gauges if you move your head around correctly. If you are using view hot keys you will need to slew the view left/right/up/down to read the tank gauges. The weight balance due to fuel is modelled in DCS.

This is great. Would love to be able to drive my MX-5 on the mountain roads in the Caucasus!

I'd like to see all the aircraft on the list. AFAIK, Flying Iron has said nothing about bringing the P-38 to DCS. There's been mumbles about the 109G-6 but nothing definitive. Haven't seen anything about a flyable Zero either. I'm looking forward to the La-7 by OctopusG - if it comes to DCS. Others: would like to see flyable assets for a Flying Tigers scenario. P-40A/B, Japanese AC from that era (not A6M# ?). Obvs we need Wildcats and Hellcats and more Japanese assets for the Marianas. For a quick, "achievable" win, would like to see an air-to-air focused radial FW190 (F-8?).

If you can wait till the new year there will be a 3080Ti coming with 20 GB (rumours). It'll be a better value than the 3090 IMO. 6900XT (16GB) should be avail by then too IIRC. Both cards are rumoured to be around $1k USD.

Re: 5900X vs 5950X If the machine is a gaming rig and will be used for DCS mostly I would do 5900X between those two. Why? Let's look at single thread performance: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html All caveats about benchmarks apply! However, this gives a general trend and assuming at least a 5% error band on each entry gets us in the ballpark conversationally. The relative difference between these chips in single thread performance is not worth talking about. That said, some of the benchmarks kicking around seem to imply that the 59XX is generally faster than the 5800X in spite of the 5800X being on all one CCX on the die. Some people are implying this is due to AMD binning the 59XX CPUs to be better examples for that niche. Or, is it just those that are sharing results winning/losing the silicon lottery? Hard to tell since the sample set is so small. AMD will never tell. For a dedicated gaming rig I'd do the 5900X since you don't need the extra cores that the 5950X brings. The extra cash outlay for DCS is not worth it in my opinion. If the machine is being used for other things then the extra cores and potential performance may be worth it for you. I'm considering the 5950X for one of my core servers that runs lots of virtual machines via QEMU, kubernetes, docker, etc. There it makes sense - and won't be running DCS (well, will have a DCS server VM but that's different). Re: Intel vs AMD and process, power, etc. TDP can be a factor if the machine is always on. Idling at 25W vs 45 W is money (not real numbers). For a gaming rig it's not much of an issue if it's only running a few hours at a time 3-4-5 days a week. This is especially true if you don't pay much for electricity - relative to other parts of the world. 14nm vs 7 nm doesn't matter much other than the power draw implied by both process. Like was said above, when the rubber meets the pavement, lb-ft/N-m is lb-ft/N-m regardless of how it was generated. It will be interesting to see how Intel's future chips perform when they get to 7-5 nm and then apply all the special sauce they've been doing with 14 nm to stay relevant. 8-9GHz clocks is my prediction. :) 5600X vs 5800X I would do the 5800X just based on the single thread chart above but both spank Intel so can't go wrong with either if you are budget constrained. FWIW, my current DCS machine (2D @ 4K) is 10700K (no OC yet) with 64GB of fast RAM (3200CL14) and a 2070 Super. The CPU is "bored" at all times and my big bottle neck now is the GPU. My frames are typically in the 55-85 range - lower when really low but rarely below 40 even when doing "stupid stuff" over Dover and the castle. No matter what you buy it'll be good.

Would be interesting to see 3600CL16 tests - Infinity Fabric runs at 1800MHz and getting the RAM running in multiples of that speed increases performance - or so I've read. The 3600CL20 has latency of 11.1 ns; 3200CL16 is 10 ns (i.e. better). 3600CL16 would be roughly 8.89 ns - combine that with the IF uplift...

Yes, the Spit needs to be flown properly with trim and systems management. It is the least "video gamey" of the aircraft in DCS. If it's shaking you're are definitely man handling it too much.

I'm not following some of your complaints, the Spit out-turns all contemporaries currently in the sim - well maybe not the I-16 - not enough seat time in that beastie to say. Don't compare to AI - the AI is terribly implemented. If you don't like the Spit, that's fine. None of these planes as modeled in DCS stands up to their legends so... shrug. If anything it's pretty remarkable that such great results were obtained with such terrible aircraft. I agree the cockpit is a mess compared to the US and German aircraft and the joystick looks like some kind of a torture device out of a Monty Python movie - but that's the way they were. In some respects they were victims of good aero design [sic!] not being backed up by the rest of the ancillary systems being developed far enough along at that point in history. I mean, watching old Pathe videos the Merlin engine forge looked like some kind of weird Druid burning man festival compared to the German "modern" factories of the time. Just appreciate them for what they are - or not. Meh. None of it matters. It is what it is.

This thread is analogous to complaining that the 1936 Alfa Romeo 8C has a sh!tty head unit and the bluetooth integration doesn't work. Don't get me started on the skinny tires. Or that a Lancia Stratos oversteers too much. Embrace the modelling as an attempt at a point in time experience. Anything else is wishing your 1980s Casio calculator watch had GPS. IME, engine overheat in the DCS Spitfire is a non-issue. The DCS Mustang is terrible for over heating (although I haven't flown it in quite a while). The green glass to me is a non-issue - not even something I've bothered to "fix" with the user mods. Likewise the canopy perspex scratches everyone complains about. FWIW, would love to see a Nieuport or Yak-3 in DCS. Mildly excited about the La-7 that Octopus G is working on.

Z270 is an Intel board. If I was buying today: ( 5900X or 10850K ) + ( 6900XT or 3080Ti ) Depending on sales might flip me one way or the other on CPU. Some waiting for video cards obviously. Unfortunately Linux support on the 6000 AMD cards currently sucks so that might make me go RTX. $0.02

Cool! Can you sit in the back seat in MP?

Fantastic!