Performance problem

[Wolf Rider]

Read the description for the setting in the Control Panel and understand that the current DCS is software which developed quite a while ago.

 

On Auto, the setting still tries to "sort it out"

[AtaliaA1]

With regard to the 14.41 AMD driver, I installed it yesterday (previous driver: 14.9) and I didn't see a noticeable difference, maybe 1-2 frames more. I read specifically your post Mustang, thanks for the tip, unfortunately for me it doesn't work. Also, the dll "injection" method didn't work for me; as soon as I copied that dll into the bin folder, my DCS game hanged; even though that was not a 100% hang, my game couldn't properly start and I think it rendered 1 frame/minute, something like this. In the end I had to restart the Windows.

 

As for the downclock of my R9 card, I don't know, I don't want to mess with it; it is stock and I want it to remain like this. Even though it may had worked for some, I find it hard to believe that downclocking a card may help some games (as it being a stock OC, not custom made). As I said, everything else runs flawlessly. Anyway AtaliaA1, I will check it out, thanks.

 

 

Have tech. guys increase the fan speed or down clock the GPU. DX9 thing. It will not be a problem in EDGE (I hope). As it runs in a different environment from the DX9 Windows Interface.

[silviuf]

I did more tests and it is crystal clear: the reason for my horrible frame rate was the mirrors option which was toggled on. So, to all who have performance issues, TURN OFF the mirrors.

 

Now the game is running normal in KA-50 with all settings on high except for Water, which I put on medium, AA 8x + TSAA, 200 clutter 9000 trees distance and 150000 preload radius. This is a little intriguing for me, as I thought that water would be GPU-bound, hence more relaxed, and, instead, I thought that the real issue would the the View distance, which is not.

 

I get 45-55 fps on average, 65-40 fps on total range. I am kind of forced to use V-sync on, which further decreases the minimun fps by 3-4 at times (so 36), as I have some ugly screen tearing inside the cockpit; but in the end I think I would give up on using Vsync, regardless of the tearing, for this game is already to complex for our current hardware. Also, either this game is not influenced too much by AA + TSAA (although I see the effect) or my 64 ROPs really do their job, for I tested with Vsync off and AA 16x+TSAA, and the minimum frame rate barely decreased at 35-36 (ok, it might be even less in other scenarios). But I still get screen tearing. As for fps, I have: SU-25T runs best, A10-C also is super smooth, KA-50 follows, SU-27 FC3 is ok (less than KA-50, I don't know why, given that it is a medium-fidelity simulation, compared to high-fidelity for KA-50).

 

As an aftermath, given the fact that I was so happy that I solved this annoying issue and given the guilt that I had by buying my previous DLCs at Steam sales :-), I purchased also UH-1H Huey. Well, here I got into real issues. The graphics here seem to be really flawed, for example, on the last training mission, I start the game in the Huey: in the cockpit, if I look on the left, I get 50-55 fps, if I look forward and on the right, I get 26-28 fps. I pass over a so-called town (you couldn't name it as such, the textures are so low that it resembles a landfill), I get 26-28 when I look and pass over it, I move further and I increase to 55, I come back and pass over it, I go forward with just barren land near and in front of me and I still get 24-28 fps. This is a real issue; I tried lowering down, one by one, the settings (scene, visual range, water, shadows), but to no avail. One time I though that by removing the CPU-bound shadows I would attain stability, I got the feeling it was a little better but in the end I had the same issues. Also, for all the other Huey missions, it seems that I have some performance issues in my cockpit, because in each mission I find myself having low fps, but only when I look in certain directions. What is wrong with this Huey module?

 

Also, I will try the water and sky mod from Mustang, maybe I can increase a little bit my average fps.

Edited November 21, 2014 by silviuf

[Tornado]

To all of you who responded to the poor behaivour of my new computer. As a little reminder my pc specs

 

4770k CPU

H60 hydro liquid cooling

Asus z87 motherboard

Nvidia GTX 780

16 gb ddr ram

Ssd 1 250 gb

Ssd 2 500 gb

Creative x-fi pcie

Blu Ray combo drive

Dell u2412m

Logitech Mx 800

Windows 7 home.

 

On the second Ssd (500 GB) drive I have installed DCS world with the modules FC3, A10C, Mig 21bis, F-86 as well as MS FSX was installed on that D drive

 

I went to the builder of the pc and he swaped the GTX 780 for AN ATI R9 290X. So I was able to test DCS world righty away in the shop. Well gentlemen the performance was not bad but EXTREME bad. In the F15 the fps did not come above the 30 fps ande Mig 21 the fps dropped to 12-15 fps. No FPS fluctuations but just VERY poor rates. Whatever setting of the R9 290X we choose nothing worked.

 

So something else must have interrupted the performance and that must have been software I installed after a day or three. The first three days at home I did not have a bad preformance. I installed my own prefered software like: Google Chrome browser, winrar, Vlc player, update the creative drivers, software to burn cd and dvd, Wifi adaptor software. In my opinion no harmfull software.

 

What did not work is playing a Blu Ray's via windows media player or Vlc player. So I started to dig on the internet for free software to get the Blu Ray's running. I tried several freeware software, but nothing worked. What did not work I uninstalled right away. Then I came accross DVD/Blu Ray Fab passkey. Blu Ray's Can be player via VLC player. That worked. First run the fab keypass a then the Blu Ray via VLC.

 

Fortunately we made Windowsbackup image on the 7th of November when bought the pc. We used the Windows image back-up and installed everything back as it was when left the shop. Then I installed DCS world 1.12.11 again. It was running prefect without any fps drops. Installed the modules back and all worked well. So far no strange behavior of dropping fps or very poor rates. PREFECT working machine

 

I can only conclude that software I installed caused the problem. Which software I really do not know. Under suspicious is that Fab passkey software. But it is just guessing. Can also be the driver update I did for creative. But again I actually have no idea.

Some of the software must have interrupted or setback the Graphics preformance or maybe the CPU. Also that is the big question.

 

Maybe you guys know what went wrong. It is not only for myself but also very important to know for other DCS simmers. I will consult Eagle dynamics. Maybe then know which software could harm the GPU or CPU preformance.

 

I hope we can benefit all from this issue. Thanks for all attention, post, remarks and help. I am happy that I can fly again....with top fps.

 

Tornado

[silviuf]

I can only conclude that software I installed caused the problem. Which software I really do not know. Tornado

My personal opinion is that these performance issues are not related to other third party software. I have never heard of graphical corruption or in-game performance loss which come from movie players, browsers, so on so forth. First issue would be the video driver, then audio driver: beware that Creative makes the worst drivers out there; I had a Creative X-Fi which was working perfectly fine but I had to ditch it in favour of an Asus Xonar DG precisely for its bad drivers; now my Xonar audio card + drivers are working like a charm. And last but not least a fresh game reinstall might solve an issue, but not necessarily. If indeed DCS was affected by these reinstall or third party interference issues, then this means their game would be really broken. To delete my game and to reinstall it again just to solve an issue is plain stupid. But you're making me wonder whether I should try this myself (reinstall) just to check if my performance issue in DCS Huey is related to a game file corruption.

 

EDIT: And as a question related to EDGE: will this new engine be implemented in all the previous DCS versions which we currently have now? Like SU-25T, A10-C, KA-50?? Or will it be an engine used only for the next DCS modules?

Edited November 21, 2014 by silviuf

[Tornado]

beware that Creative makes the worst drivers out there;

 

Thanks Silviuf. It is a big guess what interrupted DCS world. It is only a big guess sofar. But maybe you are right. In the first place I also hardly could imagine that the software influenced the game. Still thinking that same way. However after updating drivers and installing (which is my opnion) harmless software I got the preformance problem.

 

Like you wrote: I don't trust the Creative software as well. I did it with the auto update and I got a list of all kind of creative programms. I only choose the driver update and what came along with it. Which was about 80 Mb. It took very long to install all new drivers etc. That I can recall. So maybe you are right about Creative.

 

The Video driver from NVidia I did not touch (in the first place). When I became desparate I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers and installed the new ones. That was 3 days ago just the day before I took it back to the builder. So the problems started with previous Nvidia drivers. The new driver did not help anyway. The problem still insisted.

 

It did many DCS world fresh installs, but nothing worked. Setting back the PC (let me say) in the buying status (so completely fresh as I took it home on the 7th) the problem was over.

 

So software wise it must affected the whole preformance of the PC by the way. When I now start up DCS it runs within less then 5 seconds. In the bad situation it took also longer. Sometimes up to more then 1 minute and in game the Mig 21 took sometimes more then 4 minutes. I know that the loading time for the Mig 21 takes longer (also in the forum to be read) That was also strange.

 

But maybe indeed we must focus on the Creative drivers.

[silviuf]

UPDATE to the Huey low-fps performance issue: it seems that the engine for this module has a flaw somewhere internally, as this behavior is consistent every time I open up the last training mission for Huey. I experience very low fps from the very beginning of the mission (28 and lower) and especially when I am in the vicinity of that small "town" from the beginning of the mission. Well, the only playable state (34 fps+) which I found is by setting all settings to high (including AA, mine is 8x), TSAA on, but Water, Visual Range and Trees distance on low (trees slider on minimum). I have come to the conclusion that this game was not meant to be good-looking, only to be a simulation in a true sense and that's it (like playing Falcon 4.0 nowadays). It's such a pity.

[Wolf Rider]

AntiAliasing and Anisotropic, both, need to be set Application Controlled in the vga control panel

[Godzila]

UPDATE to the Huey low-fps performance issue: it seems that the engine for this module has a flaw somewhere internally, as this behavior is consistent every time I open up the last training mission for Huey. I experience very low fps from the very beginning of the mission (28 and lower) and especially when I am in the vicinity of that small "town" from the beginning of the mission. Well, the only playable state (34 fps+) which I found is by setting all settings to high (including AA, mine is 8x), TSAA on, but Water, Visual Range and Trees distance on low (trees slider on minimum). I have come to the conclusion that this game was not meant to be good-looking, only to be a simulation in a true sense and that's it (like playing Falcon 4.0 nowadays). It's such a pity.

 

Regarding fps an Huey

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=127139

[roko71]

Hey Tornado, I'm glad it worked out for you.

 

About Blue ray playback, passkey is a decryptor, that means that driver tries to "disable"(can't find the right english word:smartass:) the copy protection.

 

This can have negative effects on the original vga drivers. For Blue ray to work every single component has to work together including the monitor.

 

As for your playback issues, there is/was a bug in the Nvidia drivers but i can't find the relevent thread on the Nvidia forums anymore https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/33/geforce-drivers/

it is in there somewhere.

 

I do not know if this is relevent to your system.

[AtaliaA1]

AntiAliasing and Anisotropic, both, need to be set Application Controlled in the vga control panel

 

What would that need to be done for? I have Anisotropic set to 8x and Antialiasing set at 4x. It is working fine for me.

 

Is this a card specific thing?

[Tornado]

Hey Tornado, I'm glad it worked out for you.

 

About Blue ray playback, passkey is a decryptor, that means that driver tries to "disable"(can't find the right english word:smartass:) the copy protection.

 

This can have negative effects on the original vga drivers. For Blue ray to work every single component has to work together including the monitor.

 

As for your playback issues, there is/was a bug in the Nvidia drivers but i can't find the relevent thread on the Nvidia forums anymore https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/33/geforce-drivers/

it is in there somewhere.

 

I do not know if this is relevent to your system.

 

Thanks roko71. All works fine so far. Good frames rates what might be expected from that system. But what I did yesterday is consulting Eagle Dynamics to see if they are aware of any problems with software, graphics drivers or sound card drivers. This morning I got an answer back from a ED IT guy Andrey Filin. He wrote that he also thinks that the Creative Drivers are causing the problem. As I updated the Creative Drivers three days after I bought the PC. It is hard to say when I exactly noticed to problem. But for sure around the time I updated them. Andrey Filin admitted that the Creative drivers are the worst drivers. Like Silviuf also stated in this part of the thread. So be aware of the Creative Drivers. Maybe the sound files are not working that well in DCS which is disturbing the whole game. Also the loading process is slow. Now within second DCS starts and within 15 seconds I have the F-15 running. So I noticed that issue too. It surely will depend on the individual PC, but a warning is on its place I think. To be continued... For now I keep everything is it is.

[Wolf Rider]

What would that need to be done for? I have Anisotropic set to 8x and Antialiasing set at 4x. It is working fine for me.

 

Is this a card specific thing?

 

 

Nvidia card and been that way for ages... stops the choppy a slightly higher FrameRate

 

 

 

..............`

 

 

Have you tried disabling the Creative Audio temporarily from within the Device Manager?

[AtaliaA1]

Nvidia card and been that way for ages... stops the choppy a slightly higher FrameRate

 

 

 

..............`

 

 

Have you tried disabling the Creative Audio temporarily from within the Device Manager?

 

 

I Don't think this applies any longer. I haven't had issue with stuttering or higher frame rates as u say. And all settings are on max. Trees, Water, Bushes, Civ. Traffic all maxed out. with the settings u mentioned also almost at their max.

[Wolf Rider]

okay... I'll revisit it and check it out :)

[silviuf]

Regarding fps an Huey

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=127139

I checked this thread and I found nothing which can help me. I've already dealt with the mirrors as I turned them off (biggest fps drain); shadows don't seem to influence too much, as I had them turned off completely and I didn't see a noticeable difference. As I previously said, what I saw that helps are Visual Range and Scenes, which I put on low. At least to be able to play it.

[HellSpawn000]

Greetings.

 

I downloaded DCS World, as I bought some DCS titles at Steam sale (Mi-8, MiG-21, A-10c).

 

I have very low FPS (~20+), at med-low settings, 1680x1050, even lower at sunsets, dawns, and I have 1 when the illumination bomb (?) is used.

 

I have the following specs:

Asus M5A97 Evo r2.0

FX 8350

Sapphire HD7970 Vapor X 3GB (installed 14.12 Omega driver yesterday)

16GB Ram

 

Win7 64

 

I have read a couple of threads about Ati cards suffer at DCS, but could not make an assumption about the best solution (not mentioning to wait for DCS EDGE and hope for the best)

 

So I am asking you fellow simmers what would be the best solution to gain some more FPS?

[HellSpawn000]

Greetings.

 

I downloaded DCS World, as I bought some DCS titles at Steam sale (Mi-8, MiG-21, A-10c).

 

I have very low FPS (~20+), at med-low settings, 1680x1050, even lower at sunsets, dawns, and I have 1 when the illumination bomb (?) is used.

 

I have the following specs:

Asus M5A97 Evo r2.0

FX 8350

Sapphire HD7970 Vapor X 3GB (installed 14.12 Omega driver yesterday)

16GB Ram

 

Win7 64

 

I have read a couple of threads about Ati cards suffer at DCS, but could not make an assumption about the best solution (not mentioning to wait for DCS EDGE and hope for the best)

 

So I am asking you fellow simmers what would be the best solution to gain some more FPS?

 

A little update, maybe it helps others:

 

I have installed DCS Standalone (I had the steam version) on my SSD, and I have significantly have more FPS.

[OnlyforDCS]

A little update, maybe it helps others:

 

I have installed DCS Standalone (I had the steam version) on my SSD, and I have significantly have more FPS.

 

Hellspawn your CPU is to blame for most of the slowdown. DCS World is very CPU intensive and since it does not take advantage of multiple threads or parallelism it wont seen a benefit from an 8 core processor. Aditionally, AMD's processors are very hopelessly outmatched in single threaded performance by Intel CPU's (i5 and higher) when compared on a clock by clock basis and DCS World seems to be better optimised for Intel CPUs anyway. Things might improve with 2.0 and Edge when the GPU will take some of the workload off the CPU (that remains to be seen though) but at the moment your biggest bottleneck is your CPU.

[kazereal]

Hellspawn your CPU is to blame for most of the slowdown. DCS World is very CPU intensive and since it does not take advantage of multiple threads or parallelism it wont seen a benefit from an 8 core processor. Aditionally, AMD's processors are very hopelessly outmatched in single threaded performance by Intel CPU's (i5 and higher) when compared on a clock by clock basis and DCS World seems to be better optimised for Intel CPUs anyway. Things might improve with 2.0 and Edge when the GPU will take some of the workload off the CPU (that remains to be seen though) but at the moment your biggest bottleneck is your CPU.

 

Still that should get better FPS than it currently has..

 

Here's some tips:

* verify you have newest AMD drivers for GPU, currently 14.12 and has plenty of improvements

* check both DCS options and driver options that you have anti-aliasing disabled

* check DCS options TSSAA is disabled (may remember that one wrong)

* check DCS options for ground clutter/bushes is at minimum, also civilian traffic at minimum

* check DCS options that tree shadows are not selected

 

Anti-aliasing can be very large resource hog on AMD GPUs and DCS TSSAA is also very demanding currently.

This might be helpful also if that does not help yet: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107551

Edited January 6, 2015 by kazereal

[HellSpawn000]

Hellspawn your CPU is to blame for most of the slowdown. DCS World is very CPU intensive and since it does not take advantage of multiple threads or parallelism it wont seen a benefit from an 8 core processor. Aditionally, AMD's processors are very hopelessly outmatched in single threaded performance by Intel CPU's (i5 and higher) when compared on a clock by clock basis and DCS World seems to be better optimised for Intel CPUs anyway. Things might improve with 2.0 and Edge when the GPU will take some of the workload off the CPU (that remains to be seen though) but at the moment your biggest bottleneck is your CPU.

 

You only registered to guide me (because of your 1st post)? Aww how sweet :)

 

Yes, there is nothing to add to your comment, this is absolutley right. However when purchased FX 8350 seemed to have a very good performance/value ratio, with _most_ of the games.

 

On the other hand, I am also riding through the forest of hard d*cks with my 7970 Vapor X GHz, not that ATi cards have a worse support (I think there is topic about this if it is ATI's fault or DCSW's) but 7900 series are seem to be specially unsupported (if there is such a word, I beg your pardon with my clumsy english). For example, my mates GTX 650Tis (with i7 2600k) having double the FPS that I have.

 

Kazereal, thank you for your comment too, already reduced settings where I could, upgraded to 14.12...Guess the only solution is to change to Nvidia or wait for EDGE 2.0, I think I ll pick the 2nd option regarding my 7970's great valueloss across the years.

[Mustang]

To anyone using a dual GPU card such as AMD 7970 or 290X - make the card run in single GPU mode with DCS, i'm sure that i've read on here that doing so boosts FPS (been searching for the post but no luck yet)

[AtaliaA1]

To anyone using a dual GPU card such as AMD 7970 or 290X - make the card run in single GPU mode with DCS, i'm sure that i've read on here that doing so boosts FPS (been searching for the post but no luck yet)

 

 

yes that is true. along with reducing the factory overclock on those cards especially the 290X it wouldn't even load the sim in some cases, until the overclock was turned down.

[ChrisIhao]

The difference between running DCS in fullscreen and windowed mode with my GTX 770's in SLi mode is extreme. When running in windowed fullscreen the performance drops to a fourth of what I get in fullscreen, where the SLi is extremely well implemented, and I play at 2560x1440 on full settings w/ 4x fsaa (can use 8x), with the exception of the cockpit displays that run at 512. I basically get 60 fps (vertical sync) at all times once I have taken off, while getting approximately 42 fps on the ground on the most populated airstrips. Oh, and I have also turned down the tree distance to around 6000 meters as the image quality still is great on these settings and it takes unproportional more gpu cycles to render these at large distances. Running a single card gives about half of the performance of my SLi which is pretty logical. Still heck of a lot better than the windowed SLi mode. These observations btw proves that the cpu has nothing to do with the performance in my case (Intel 4790K @ 4.5 ghz). 16 gigs of ram.

 

I have tried all kinds of SLi flags through Nvidia Inspector, the Rise of Flight one and the temporary Black Shark profile introduced in the official drivers and some others, but all of them have large downsides and basically no e of them runs nesrly as good as the default one in fullscreen. A shame really, as I cant justify using Touchcontrol and DCS icontrol on my Ipad (the last one WOULD work excellent if windowed mode worked, and I also paid a noticable sum for this one) or Helios for that sake. Hence I dont use the MDF grabs, but I think it still is great to have all the buttons and knobs available. I also modded a Touchcontrol profile initiated by Ed here And continued by jib, compressing the layouts for easy access, and I will post this here as soon as I feel finished with adding stuff to it. I also fixed quite a few errors in these profiles (probably due to DCS updates).

 

I'm crossing my fingers for DCS 2.0 now, although I can live without the MFD's if neccessary. I actually feel that having too many panels in my eyesight can be a bit distracting, as I really love the "in the cockpit" feeling of the helis and planes in DCS with TrackIR. PS: Love these sims!

Edited January 14, 2015 by ChrisIhao

[AtaliaA1]

I've seen another user post that they are getting better FPs in the sim with SLi. We may have to revisit the theory that the software gets no boost form having two GPUs.

 

Along with if it is true, then why is it now a factor when it was not before.