What is happening to my PC?

In the last few days i am having strange issues with my Pc performances with DCS. This happens both in 2d and VR.

2D: usually with my monitor (3440x1440) i got awesome performances also in heavy missions. When using fa-18c caucasus instant action i had easily 120fps, now i am capped at 64 fps (also in the main menu) and i have no vsync on both in DCS and both in the nvidia panel. I also don’t have the option to limit fps in the dcs config.lua.

Also in more heavy missions i can feel some stuttering and lower fps then usual, with my CPU cores utilizationvery low (i have the msi afterburner overlay and I don’t see any core surpassing 60%) and also my GPU in never fully utilized.

VR: i tried with the reverb set in 60hz mode (i was never able to find a setting that made me do 45fps in every situation) and usually in the same mission (caucas f18 instant action) i was at 60fps with really good frametimes (gpu under 14ms cpu around 11/14ms).

Now i have very strange CPU timings well above 25ms and almost 30ms (i will upload a screenshot later) without absolutely nothing happening in the mission...of course with heavier mission fps goes to single digits, while just some days ago in any mission i never went below 30fps.

I tried both release and open beta versions.

I tried the usual stuff:

- deleting metashaders and fxo folders

- uninstalling and reinstalling nvidia drivers

- resetting all to default Including nvidia settings

The only thing that is changed in my pc in the last few days (since i am experiencing these issues) is that i am using winwing throttle instead of the warthog one, but i tried also without it (and its software) but the old performances don’t come back.

I think that it is not DCS the problem but in my pc...maybe some windows update or some driver, or some software stealing cpu cycles from DCS...

But cannot find anything.

I use process lasso (dcs is in performance mode, only on physical cores, and excluded from constraints), the razer software to close all unused processes when gaming and all the known optimizations (game dvr disabled, no Windows game mode).

So what i ask is if something experienced something similar and found what could be hammering the CPU or something to try to solve the issue.

Thanks

EDIT: screenshot added

What is happening to my PC?

So I think i found the issue...

It was indeed winwing throttle the cause (remember from the above post that it was the only thing that changed since i had this issue)...well not the throttle itself but the export scripts that his software create automatically in order to sync lighting between throttle and the Sim.

Here is a screenshot with the same mission as above and with winwing export disabled

These are the two lines to disable should someone find himself in the same situation

So in the end..i am thinking of how many people blames ED while their performance problems depends from someone/something else.

Yeah, good that you figure that one out fast, I just don't get it why would the utilization be low in DCS, it would stay the same while the Sim Shaker would fight with it for CPU Time I assume, you might have spliced together the screenshots out of sync perhaps?

So are you sure that's actually how it looks like in practice when the DCS FPS is low, that DCS is at 7% and ... ah you have a 8-core-16-thread, ... and Sim Shaker at that "low".

Well errr, those 7% or any % don't really compare to my Quad Core with HT disabled so it's a bit of a numbers game to get the equivalent out, I'm used to those 1 core = 25% numbers so I gotta calc this out.

This threding stuff is one big pain in the butt to clearly present when one wants to quickly understand a report, I'm thinking of making custom utilities for performance diagnosis to help normalize this out ... but parsing the most hardcore perf data on windows (the switch times, events in WPR/WPA) is the hardest thing ever.

I wrote my own performance viewer way back once just for fun based on the NET. Resource Monitors and nothing fancy ... perhaps I could retrofit it, but the last time I checked it didn't compile :lol: (I'm just about to update to VS 2020 today and maybe I find the time/motivation for something)

What is happening to my PC?

Yeah, good that you figure that one out fast, I just don't get it why would the utilization be low in DCS, it would stay the same while the Sim Shaker would fight with it for CPU Time I assume, you might have spliced together the screenshots out of sync perhaps?

 

So are you sure that's actually how it looks like in practice when the DCS FPS is low, that DCS is at 7% and ... ah you have a 8-core-16-thread, ... and Sim Shaker at that "low".

 

Well errr, those 7% or any % don't really compare to my Quad Core with HT disabled so it's a bit of a numbers game to get the equivalent out, I'm used to those 1 core = 25% numbers so I gotta calc this out.

 

This threding stuff is one big pain in the butt to clearly present when one wants to quickly understand a report, I'm thinking of making custom utilities for performance diagnosis to help normalize this out ... but parsing the most hardcore perf data on windows (the switch times, events in WPR/WPA) is the hardest thing ever.

 

I wrote my own performance viewer way back once just for fun based on the NET. Resource Monitors and nothing fancy ... perhaps I could retrofit it, but the last time I checked it didn't compile :lol: (I'm just about to update to VS 2020 today and maybe I find the time/motivation for something)

Simshaker is ok...

Is the winwing script the culprit...

Probably its polling time is too fast...or maybe some lua functions it uses just “locks” main dcs thread out of cpu cycles..

Also to me at first it was strange that cpu utilization is so low...but it is what happens when windows is not giving a particular process complete access to that resource...because there are other processes asking the same....

This process in my case was probably the dcs lua interpreter due to some issue in the winwing throttle export script ...

So in the end, low cpu utilization and low fps means just that your OS cannot give enough cpu cycles to that process (dcs main thread in our case).

About percentage you should not use it for judging Dcs cpu usage...

If you see my first 2 screenshots you can see the detail for every core...

Also you should note that this particular mission is an empty one, so in normal conditions the GPU will be almost maxed out (unless capped in someway) and the CPU will be at half its usage...in CPU intensive missions (lot of scripting and AI) you can easily see the opposite (1 CPU core maxed out and GPU utilized at 40/60%)

Then also you are probably right...it is just a picture that was happening in that particular moment...percentages changes every millisecond

Exact same issue here. Thank you for the solution, VirusAM. :)

Oh guys, you are genious!!! I was stuck at 22 FPS (!) and close to end my flying career. It was the Winwing software (for the combat ready and the takeoff panel), that added these lines into my Export.lua

Now I´m back with good FPS.

Thank you so much and best wishes!!!