Low FPS in 1.5.4 - Comparison with a friend

[cameleon33]

Hello all,

 

I saw a lot of post regarding performance issues in DCS 1.5.

I had no issues until the latests version 1.5.3 & 1.5.4.

 

Today I was flying the first campaign mission of the SA342 Gazelle (really good campaign by the way...).

 

Conditions: Start of the mission, on the FARP, engine off.

 

Comparison:

My config

- GTX 970

- i5 4690

- Running DCS on an SSD

 

Result: 13 to 18FPS depending where I look

 

My friend's config

- HD7870

- i5 4690

- Running DCS on an SSD

 

Result: 45 to 50FPS in the same conditions.

 

Settings are exactly the same for both of us. No specific settings in our graphic cards control panels.

 

Our settings:

 

So the big question now: Why is there such a difference?

I don't recon it's hardware related, with our settings, we should be able to run both at 50FPS easily.

 

Any ideas?

 

Cheers,

Cam'

[Floyd]

What version of Nvidia driver is installed?

Can you post screenshots from the nvidia control panel

for the global and DCS: Black Shark profile?

[BIGNEWY]

some questions I would consider

 

what process's did you both have running in the back ground?

 

which antivirus are you both using?

[cameleon33]

I'll ask him but for me:

 

The nvidia settings (general only, no specific settings for DCS). Sorry it's in french, but basically it's all default settings.

Installed driver is the latest one 368.81

 

 

Background processes:

- Track IR, Dropbox, Logitech gaming software, flux. They are the most notable ones.

- I'm just using the windows defender from W10.

 

Thanks for the help.

[Floyd]

There is a "Digital Combat Simulator: Black Shark" profile installed

with every driver, pointing to a "dcs.exe" file.

 

What is your in-game antialiasing setting?

 

Edit: just saw it's 16xQ. Don't do that, set it to 4x.

Modes explained:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/anti-aliasing-nvidia-geforce-amd-radeon,2868-4.html

Edited July 29, 2016 by Floyd

[SkateZilla]

Also, A Screenshot of the Setting only tells part of the story,

 

The LOW, MED, HIGH, Presets change settings that arent on the settings menu,

 

you can Click HIGH, and Drop everything to LOW and Still have low FPS,

 

And you can Click LOW and Boost Everything to HIGH and Still have High FPS but notice object pop in's shadow pop ins etc etc.

[f4l0]

The LOW, MED, HIGH, Presets change settings that arent on the settings menu,

 

Thats interesting! I think this should be mentioned on a very prominent place. Maybe in the settings menu?

[wolle]

Do you have mirrors on? (I know the Gazelle doesn't have mirrors, but do a search in the Gazelle bugs forum, you will see many people experience a gain of 10-20 fps when turning mirrors off).

[SkateZilla]

IIRC the presets change the objects amount and their render distances, etc etc.

 

i dont think there's a line for it in your options.lua anymore.

[Enduro14]

Shouldn't visibility be controlling that ? I also found lines for effects and lights on the lua which are not on the menu. Also clouds... trees shadows..

And if it's not in our settings file where is it ? Very strange... This stuff should be mentioned and fully controllable. Hope 2.5 will bring a new settings menu.

 

Bump can we get an answer to this as this is very interesting and important. THank you

 

to be more clear im trying to get the total object count down as in 3d it really hammers the fps now when around cities and such.

Edited July 29, 2016 by Enduro14

[BitMaster]

Very interesting !

 

Can we get full info of what is effected please ?

 

..puzzled...

 

 

*edit:

 

Had a recent mayor drop in fps and after a few days flying it got so annoying I went to find the culprit. It were many things, that once corrected it doubled my fps to where it was before. That much to how much can be mistuned. Mistuned by updates, upgrades and other unknown reasons.

 

My list of what to check now has the following:

 

- Check that I am on High Performance mode, so CPU doesnt throttle down to 1600, but stays at 3.4 as lowest.

- Check that Nvidia Panel settings are as I need them, in my case, MAX PERFORMANCE instead of OPTIMAL, and SINGLE DISPLAY over the preset Multi-Display mode.

- delete options.lua ( and redo settings in DCS, not a big thing to do )

- *DCS settings to HIGH..and then turn down SHADOW to MEDIUM, turn off HDR and those effects, turn off VR, set to FULL SCREEN and in my case disable VSYNC as

I use GSYNC ( preset in NV panel but better check if set correctly ), set gras to 250m, trees to 12500, preload mx, vis range extreme. DONE :)

 

Usually that fixes my drops in fps.

 

The NV panel is a beast. I have to check it every other occasion to see if the profiles are still as set, often I find them reset to presets which will throttle the GPU as I can see in MSI Afterburner and cause stutter at least in NTTR if not always full throttle. MultiDislplay activated instead of single happens often too.

 

Deleting options.lua lately fixed a mayor drop in fps by just doing that.

Edited July 29, 2016 by BitMaster

[Jacks]

BitMaster, what sort of fps are you getting? Is that with water set to high also?

[cameleon33]

Ok so this is weird... I applied the tips from Bitmaster:

- Deleted option.lua, set to High preset and changed shadows to medium, visibility to extreme and the sliders to the values he gave.

 

So these settings are higher than during my first test and I now have between 25 and 30 FPS at the start of the first gazelle mission. (in flight it goes up to 60FPS without any problem).

[Art-J]

Yep, I've started deleting options.lua and working up from default presets recently as well. Using more or less the same settings as BitMaster's (+reducing visibility distance to high). Gave me noticeable performance boost on my not-so-hot-anymore PC after latest 1.5.4 and 2.0.3 updates.

 

Don't have Gazelle, so cannot offer comparison data, though.