Unpredicatable Stuttering

[Avio]

Coming back to DCS after many months of absence ... and feeling good !

 

I know this topic of stuttering in DCS has been beaten up many times, but I am now experience rather unpredictable stuttering while flying missions in A-10C. Some missions would be smooth as butter even after hours of flying, while some started stuttering just after minutes of game-time (can be quite bad till not playable).

 

I just don't understand this irritating anomaly. Could it be that some unwanted processes started running in background?

 

Is there any program out there that can help STOP all unnecessary background processes from running while I am running a program such as the DCS?

 

Would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank You.

 

Avio

[Yurgon]

Some missions would be smooth as butter even after hours of flying, while some started stuttering just after minutes of game-time (can be quite bad till not playable).

 

It's quite possible that it depends on the mission. Some missions are relatively simple while others feature thousands of units, including late activations triggered at some stage during the mission. That might at least explain why you have a problem in some missions but none in others.

 

I just don't understand this irritating anomaly. Could it be that some unwanted processes started running in background?

 

Sounds possible, but despite everything that Windows and applications do without asking the user, I sort of doubt that your PC just decides to go running programs while you're flying DCS (though, TBH, I wouldn't be too surprised if this turned out to be the cause after all).

 

My experience is that I suffered from micro-stutters -- just a short stutter, less than a second, every now and then. These stopped when I got an SSD and installed both Windows and DCS on it. I don't think there's currently any better solution to get rid of these micro-stutters.

 

If, on the other hand, your framerate just drops to unplayable values, an SSD wouldn't help much. IMO the typical bottleneck with DCS is CPU first, graphics card second, HDD third, and if you have too little RAM it could drop into any of these places. ;)

 

But stutters, I think they're usually caused by objects being loaded from the harddisk, so my first instinct would be to get an SSD if you don't already have one and if it's financially within reach. Besides, boot times and working with Windows becomes soooo much smoother with an SSD, it's worth it with or without DCS. :thumbup:

 

But maybe someone else has a nice way to monitor background programs, it's always a good idea to check on these and get the system as clean as possible before firing up any game, so I hope others will come up with some good tips in this regard.

[Avio]

Thanks Yurgon. I just tried setting my Nvidia to Adaptive VSync (60 fps) and it seems to help.

 

Also, fps gets affected when TGP and Maverick displays are turned on, dropping to 40+ at times. W/O that two, fps mostly stays at 60.

 

But I only tested for like half hour. Not sure if it's going to hold up under longer play.

 

The mission where there were heavy stutters previously were just simple one with only a few trucks added for targeting practice. Nothing intensive.

 

BTW, I'm running on an ASUS ROG with 16 Gb ram and GTX680. Intel i7 O'clocked to 4.2 GHz. C-Drive is boot and runs on SSD. DCS on D-Drive, a HDD. Quite decent specs I would think. Had tried before installing DCS on C drive SSD but noticed no difference.

 

I'm okay with occasional weird micro stutters, but really pissed with heavy stutters that look like a slide-show, no exaggeration.

 

Read that turning off system Pagefile helps. Any opinion? Also, should I set affinity to turn off first Core (0 and 1) and just run from Cores 2, 3, 4? Also does setting A-10C MFCD displays to 512 instead of 1024 lose out much on eye candy or object definition?

 

Thanks.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Avio

[EntropySG]

When I go crazy on graphics settings, combined with heavy weather, my FPS sometimes drops down to 20, in worst case. Even then its quite playable and there is no stutter at all.

 

On the other hand I always had stutters (mainly when panning the view fast or rolling in for guns), even at 70 FPS before I reinstalled everything on a SSD. So that alone did the trick for me.

[alieneye]

try to update NVIDIA drivers, i got the same problem yesterday and it was fixed with latest drivers

[AtaliaA1]

There is a setting in the nVidea Control panel that allows the software to use dual screen or single screen optimization turn this to single screen. some have received good results from this.

[Yurgon]

Also, fps gets affected when TGP and Maverick displays are turned on, dropping to 40+ at times. W/O that two, fps mostly stays at 60.

 

That's normal. TGP, Maverick, Shkval (e.g. in Ka-50, Su-25) and the like require DCS to render an independent image, so it's not much of a surprise to see an FPS drop there.

 

The mission where there were heavy stutters previously were just simple one with only a few trucks added for targeting practice. Nothing intensive.

 

Huh, weird, there goes my theory about the mission making overly intensive use of RAM and CPU.

 

BTW, I'm running on an ASUS ROG with 16 Gb ram and GTX680. Intel i7 O'clocked to 4.2 GHz. C-Drive is boot and runs on SSD. DCS on D-Drive, a HDD. Quite decent specs I would think. Had tried before installing DCS on C drive SSD but noticed no difference.

 

Except for micro-stutters and mission loading times, I also didn't notice much difference between DCS on HDD and SSD.

 

(Of course, decreased loading times and getting rid of micro-stutters justify installing DCS on an SSD IMO ;), but it doesn't sound like it would help with your problem).

 

Your system sounds pretty good, and if it wasn't for the stuttering you describe, 40 to 60 FPS sounds very realistic, pretty much what I'd expect (some people report worse performance with much better specs).

 

I'm okay with occasional weird micro stutters, but really pissed with heavy stutters that look like a slide-show, no exaggeration.

 

Yeah, understandable.

 

In that case I think your original idea starts to sound more plausible, looking outside DCS for performance killers like Antivirus software, backup processes and the like.

 

Read that turning off system Pagefile helps. Any opinion?

 

Nope, don't really have an opinion. I haven't tried that and don't see why it would help, but it should be easy enough to test. With 16 GB RAM, there shouldn't be much paging anyway, and if there is, I'm almost certain DCS is not the cause (8 GB here and DCS runs fine). :)

 

Also, should I set affinity to turn off first Core (0 and 1) and just run from Cores 2, 3, 4? Also does setting A-10C MFCD displays to 512 instead of 1024 lose out much on eye candy or object definition?

 

I never fiddled with CPU affinity unless it was the only way to get a legacy program running and with the power and energy management of the i5 and i7 CPUs, I think they basically take care of it. But I'm no expert there, maybe someone has achieved good results and can chime in on the discussion. :)

 

IIRC reducing the MFCD resolution is usually recommended and there's no eye-candy you'd miss out on, so I'd definitely try that.

 

There is a setting in the nVidea Control panel that allows the software to use dual screen or single screen optimization turn this to single screen. some have received good results from this.

 

Good point, that sounds like something that can be checked easily as well.

[Avio]

Thank you very much everyone for your helpful inputs. Will try and fine-tune further for improvement.

[Wolf8312]

I was getting some micro stutters -if that’s the right expression- which shocked me considering my computer is way in advance of the recommended requirements (GTX 770 etc) for this rather old game.

 

I often see when watching videos on you tube that many other people suffer the same phenomenon a sporadic lag or something which is actually very irritating and immersion breaking.

 

The only thing that solved it for me was to switch DCS world to my solid state drive and run it from there. I am perplexed to think that were it not for the SSD this game would not be running right. It wasn’t even a problem that was solved by lowering graphics settings.

[AtaliaA1]

When U put a "Model T" engine on a Ferrari Drive train U my see anomalies. They are "Correctable" with a little tweaking.

[Avio]

Tried installing over on a SSD but observed absolutely no difference. Same old micro stutters still evident. And I have a ASUS 4.2 Ghz OC and GTX680.

[ZaltysZ]

Tried installing over on a SSD but observed absolutely no difference. Same old micro stutters still evident. And I have a ASUS 4.2 Ghz OC and GTX680.

 

What SSD do you have? There are some SSDs which cause stutter in DCS when OS is installed on them no matter where DCS is installed. I think the reason is temporary file location and too slow TRIM implementation on these SSDs. Try this for a test: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1951223&postcount=38