Low FPS looking at towns

[Jacks]

I have recently upgraded to a GTX 980 from a 770 and I haven't noticed any performance increase. I find that on a bare map with not units, looking at a town drops my FPS to 40-50 and I getting perceivable micro stutter and tracker becomes jerky. I have checked my system using afterburner and during the periods of low FPS, the GPU is running at around 50% and the CPU is running at 50-60%. I have attached my settings.

 

I have also noticed that I only get this issue when flying very say 500ft and when fly over the same point at 600ft+ I get a solid 60FPS.

 

I don' have this issue in DCS 2.0. I also don't use tree shadows using mustang's mod.

 

I am using full screen (alt+enter) and I have tried both live and OB with fresh installs and I get the same problem.

 

I have also tried with no mods and I get the same issue.

 

What could be causing this as neither my GPU nor CPU are maxed out?!

 

Please help.........

 

UPDATE: After more testing I think shadows are the issue. If I turn shadows off I get a solid 60 everywhere but if I have any form of shadow (low, medium, high or ultra) I get the same FPS drop and the magnitude of this drop seems to be the same regardless of whether I am using low shadows or ultra shadows. Is this normal?!

 

I am not willing to fly without cockpit shadows as it would spoil the experience for me and I can't remember experiencing these issues with my 770 2GB.

 

Jacks

Edited July 1, 2016 by Jacks

[SkateZilla]

Try Decreasing Visible Range.

[Jacks]

From high to medium? Surely my system should be capable of running high??

[NeilWillis]

The key is that it is a system. Just putting a high end component in doesn't suddenly make it high end.

 

It is always a case of tuning DCS World to give a balance between performance and high quality graphics.

 

I'd suggest your CPU is the weak link.

[Art-J]

Your settings on the left column are a bit conservative, even I run them a higher on my i5 @ 4.2 plus single GTX780 and usually maintain solid 60 fps with occasional drops. I did however reduce the ones on the right - preload radius and trees visibility murder performance (notice that even default "high" preset doesn't have them cranked to max), plus, I also turn flat shadows on, as the drop in visual quality is small, while every little performance gain is welcomed.

[Jacks]

But the CPU is no where near maxed out when I get the low FPS. Plus the CPU is running stable at 4.5GHz and so it is not slow. Also if the CPU was bottlenecking how come DCS 2.0 runs perfectly?

[cichlidfan]

But the CPU is no where near maxed out when I get the low FPS. Plus the CPU is running stable at 4.5GHz and so it is not slow. Also if the CPU was bottlenecking how come DCS 2.0 runs perfectly?

 

When you say maxed out, you are looking at total usage. Check core by core, since DCS is only using one, plus a little bit of a second, it will never max out a 4, or more, core CPU.

 

Also, you can't compare 2.0 with 1.5 because you don't have the same terrain/models among other things.

[Jacks]

I am talking core by core. One core hits 60% and the rest are 30-40%.

[Art-J]

For some reason, 2.0 and 1.5 have been reported to utilize CPUs and GPUs in different manner, so I wouldn't compare them much anyway.

[=DECOY=]

I thought preload radius was ram usage., I may be wrong

 

but my advice would be reduce trees by a third and run the no tree shadows mod that's hanging around this will help with fps generally

[Jacks]

I am already running the no tree shadow mod! I thought a 980 would be capable of running ful tree draw given I am using med shadows and medium water.

[Enduro14]

Jacks, my setup is a 980 also but I do 4K and currently don't do sli until it's officially fixed. The trees are a cpu hog then the shadows a gpu.

 

You stated exactly what it is no shadows no fps problems shadows then problems. Optimization needs to be done on shadows, also the whole one core thing and a baggilian objects tanks the fps at times to.

 

Best you can do is drop view distance I just run it at high with starways dlc textures in 1.5 and have solid 60 until the cpu and objects stuff kick in and drop the fps.

[Jacks]

Do any of the AA option in game or nvidia control panel affect shadows?

 

I am reluctant to reduce the visibility distance as I don't want the game to look any worse than it does now.

 

Plus I keep seeing people with setups nearly identical to mine reporting 60FPS with all settings maxed out!

 

I am also perplexed as to why they the FPS drop from shadows is the same for low shadows as it is ultra shadows......

[Jacks]

I tried reducing visibility range to medium and no change, I still have the same drop in FPS.

[Jacks]

Can anyone with a 980 achieve a solid 69 FPS with full tree draw?

[hughlb]

If it's any consolation, I have the same issue with a 970 and 4790k. I was going to post about it, but the OP described exactly my experience. I dropped visible range to medium and that kept it above 60fps. The draw distances seem different to Nevada anyway - ie. medium in 1.5 looks like high in 2.0.. can anyone clarify if that's true?

 

However, presently, all things considered, 2.0 runs faster than 1.5 with the same settings.

 

I'm not going to stress about it too much, as the whole Caucasus map is being 'levelled up' to T4. So I'd hold off worrying about it until after the 2.5 merge, if you can.

[AtaliaA1]

Can anyone with a 980 achieve a solid 69 FPS with full tree draw?

 

 

 

How much Ram is on that 980 you have?

[Bluelight]

I figured I would weigh in on this as I posted a similar situation with VR. I discovered the same problem as Jack.. I ran MSI afterburner and can see that my CPU (none of the cores) are running at 95-99% and my GPU is running at around 40-50%, yet I am getting low fps in VR in certain areas.

 

Particularly, the harbor tour with the Huey, I can look to the right where there isn't much going on and have 90fps in VR, forward I get 45 which is still fine.. but the moment I turn my head to the left and look back towards the town I end up with 18 fps in VR. When doing this, the CPU cores and GPU is not maxed out at all.

 

I expect to see my GPU at atleast 90% in games if the CPU is not bottlenecking but it seems like there is a major problem with the way this is running.

 

It is not only on 1.5.3 but also in 2.0 for me. I just bought NTTR this weekend and when I try to do a Vegas tour I am at 30fps just sitting at the airport in the Huey again in VR.

 

These problems don't hurt the 2D version as much but are devastating in VR and make it unusable.

 

BTW, my settings are pretty low as well. Low terrain, flat shadows on terrain and cockpit, 4x msaa, etc. But the thing is no matter how low I set the settings, it still is not giving a usable framerate in VR in these areas. I also have my draw distance set to low.

 

How do you turn off tree shadows as some have mentioned I would like to try that.

[Fri13]

Hsve you disabled Windows disk swapping? Search from web for your windows a guide how to disable page file. That helped on me to bring fps to constant 60+ with all max on 4K. The windows 10 boot times started as well to improve from 3-4 minutes to 30-60 seconds.

[Bluelight]

Hsve you disabled Windows disk swapping? Search from web for your windows a guide how to disable page file. That helped on me to bring fps to constant 60+ with all max on 4K. The windows 10 boot times started as well to improve from 3-4 minutes to 30-60 seconds.

 

I haven't tried this but when reading about it, most people say its bad to disable it. My windows 10 boots up within 30-40secs already but its a pretty new install and I use the fast boot option. I will try it though just to see. I assume you mean disabling the page file.

[Bluelight]

I don't want to hijack this thread even though I have the same problem I think as Jacks, so I will be posting a new one with videos demonstrating the problem and showing MSI afterburner numbers.

[Fri13]

I haven't tried this but when reading about it, most people say its bad to disable it. My windows 10 boots up within 30-40secs already but its a pretty new install and I use the fast boot option. I will try it though just to see. I assume you mean disabling the page file.

Yes it typically is, but Windows doesnt just swap memory to virtual memory, it as well compress the memory when in use and then swap it. (Swapping means it is moved from RAM to disk).

 

And that compression causes a situation where DCS process can just drop from a 30-40% of CPU consumption to 10-20% without any logic by first sight. As you look the DCS process and it isn't eating CPU or GPU so you think that everything is OK and there is a problem with settings.

While you can't even easily see the NT operating system own resource consumptions, why any of third party process managers can't show it either easily as NT hides it from them.

 

So the problem is that DCS starts caching lots of RAM for textures and models from towns etc. But it doesn't efficiently use RAM as NT starts compressing DCS process memory even when you have like 16GiB free from 32GiB. And then it doesn't always swap it, just compress it. And that eats I/O and processing as DCS is still just designed for a single core. So DCS process CPU process can stay low and it looks like CPU is idling for no reason, while NT is seriously slowing caching and that causes serious framedrops or even jittery and pauses as the process just is waiting data that NT is processing and denying DCS to have as single core design can't expect to be waiting that RAM.

 

I had a lot of problems even when system resources are way over needed recommendations. And simple way (of not only one) disable RAM compression is to disable paging file. I believe that it can be disabled per process(/executable) but i don't care as 32GiB is enough for everything and this doesn't affect for sleep function.

 

If i disable all extra "useless" startup process etc (reset/reinstall windows), i get boot time now to 7-10 second. Same but without disabling paging file i can't get it under one minute by any means.

This NT memory compression is just a problem and DCS isn't only one that gets affected from it.

[Bluelight]

Yes it typically is, but Windows doesnt just swap memory to virtual memory, it as well compress the memory when in use and then swap it. (Swapping means it is moved from RAM to disk).

 

And that compression causes a situation where DCS process can just drop from a 30-40% of CPU consumption to 10-20% without any logic by first sight. As you look the DCS process and it isn't eating CPU or GPU so you think that everything is OK and there is a problem with settings.

While you can't even easily see the NT operating system own resource consumptions, why any of third party process managers can't show it either easily as NT hides it from them.

 

So the problem is that DCS starts caching lots of RAM for textures and models from towns etc. But it doesn't efficiently use RAM as NT starts compressing DCS process memory even when you have like 16GiB free from 32GiB. And then it doesn't always swap it, just compress it. And that eats I/O and processing as DCS is still just designed for a single core. So DCS process CPU process can stay low and it looks like CPU is idling for no reason, while NT is seriously slowing caching and that causes serious framedrops or even jittery and pauses as the process just is waiting data that NT is processing and denying DCS to have as single core design can't expect to be waiting that RAM.

 

I had a lot of problems even when system resources are way over needed recommendations. And simple way (of not only one) disable RAM compression is to disable paging file. I believe that it can be disabled per process(/executable) but i don't care as 32GiB is enough for everything and this doesn't affect for sleep function.

 

If i disable all extra "useless" startup process etc (reset/reinstall windows), i get boot time now to 7-10 second. Same but without disabling paging file i can't get it under one minute by any means.

This NT memory compression is just a problem and DCS isn't only one that gets affected from it.

 

Wow thats great info and makes a lot of sense. Its these behind the scenes things that seem be pulling tricks on us. I will put this on my list to do first thing tomorrow when I continue testing. I'll let you know if anything happens. I do notice that DCS is only using about 4-5gb of my 24gb of RAM so this could help a lot. Thanks so much :D :pilotfly:

[Fri13]

Wow thats great info and makes a lot of sense. Its these behind the scenes things that seem be pulling tricks on us. I will put this on my list to do first thing tomorrow when I continue testing. I'll let you know if anything happens. I do notice that DCS is only using about 4-5gb of my 24gb of RAM so this could help a lot. Thanks so much :D :pilotfly:

It is easy thing to test by googling your windows method to untic the paging from all drives. Then just reboot to get it on effect. If you don't have a benefit from it after testing good time, just tic them back and reboot.

Easy to test.

[BiBa]

...And that eats I/O and processing as DCS is still just designed for a single core...

Even the old FSX dinosaur has Addons like FSPS - Xtreme FSX PC, which can read the Hardware and can activate all processor cores!

 

If the DCS programmers are too lazy / or not been payed well enough to fulfill this task, why don't DCS open the doors to theird party specialists like FSPS and beams uns eventually into the 21st ?!