Low FPS - but only when client of MP

[philstyle]

A squad mate of mine experiences very low FPS (10-15) but ONLY when he joins a server as a client.

 

 

When in single player, OR when hosting himself, his FPS is reasonable (40 or so I think). But when he joins a server as a client, it's a slideshow for him.

 

 

We've fiddled about with quite a few things but haven't been able to nail down the source of this.

 

 

Anyone seen this before?

[lemoen]

He has a slowish computer? MP is always quite a bit slower than SP. Turn down the CPU heavy stuff for MP.

[BIGNEWY]

would like to know his spec, my guess is it is low end, and joining a busy server will be tough on his rig.

[philstyle]

would like to know his spec, my guess is it is low end, and joining a busy server will be tough on his rig.

 

 

 

Will find out.

Incidentally, he had no problem until a recent reinstall (i.e. within the past week or so). There had been no issues with hardware/ setup causing low FPS prior to that point.

[philstyle]

OK, here the specs (finally) for my squad-mate's PC:

 

 

i5 2320, @3GHz

16GB RAM (dunno speed)

GTX 670 4GB

 

 

The CPU looks a bit limiting actually..

[BIGNEWY]

Yes the cpu is probably the bottleneck

 

get a screenshot of his settings page in DCS we might be able to suggest some tweaks

[philstyle]

Yes the cpu is probably the bottleneck

get a screenshot of his settings page in DCS we might be able to suggest some tweaks

 

 

Not quite a screenshot.. but a dodgy mobile-phone photo:

Everything is down low.. except:

 

 

1. Anisotropic filtering is at 16x... too much I think, and

2. Pre-load radius is set to ZERO on the slide, which could be the problem?

 

 

Aside from that nothing seems to be over-taxing. Other squad members think it was the most recent update that casued this. . .

 

 

[BIGNEWY]

Yeah take the Anisotropic filtering down to x2

 

also bare in mind depending on the mission some settings are forced by the server

 

the busier the server the harder it will be on his machine.

 

I would start using the medium preset and then tweak.

 

As for the latest patch, I personally didnt notice any drop.

 

might be worth trying a cleanup and repair in my signature

 

also what has he got going on in the background on his machine, maybe antivirus creating a problem, which can happen

[kdc]

Yes def take down AF to at least x4 and get rid of lense flare that will help

[Kayos]

I noticed a couple patches ago it got slower in multiplayer too.

I'll try a cleanup/repair.

[Knock-Knock]

When in single player, OR when hosting himself, his FPS is reasonable (40 or so I think). But when he joins a server as a client, it's a slideshow for him.

 

Is he hosting his own mission, something he saved himself?

Wouldnt surprise me if that was the case, cause I've noticed the same. If I host a mission, or SP something I have saved, with my settings, my performance is much better, than when joining a public MP server, or run a user created mission. It is as if some settings / visual settings are overwritten by the server/mission, and forced on you, no matter what your own settings might be.

 

Ive done some tests with that, saving missions when having high visual settings, and running the mission with low settings set. That performs worse, than if I save the mission with low settings and run it in low settings.

[SoW Reddog]

He's completely defragged his hard drives, removed the install entirely, reinstalled on a different drive etc. He had no problems say a month ago, except a spate of BSOD which seemed tied to an improperly seated gfx card which since reseating have disappeared. It seems that something has changed recently.

[philstyle]

update:

 

 

Had 50 FPS yesterday on one of the WW2 servers. Joined again in the evening and he was back to 4 FPS...

 

 

Perculiar and frustrating.

[BIGNEWY]

sounds like something else is going on, that is very odd behaviour

[BitMaster]

ARe you sure that no other process is active during those 4fps times ?

 

Windows has it's own life internally and it might well be that another program is doing "somethig" that hits DCS badly.

 

could be:

Backup

File Scanning AV

Indexing

Upload/Download to some cloud service

and more

[philstyle]

New update.

 

 

He was on last night. Had 40-50 FPS when the server was empty.

However, once the server fill edup (burning skies, 40 people or so online) his frame rate dropped down to about 4 frames per second.

 

 

This is consistent accross servers now. He can get good FPS when no-one else is in a server, but as soon as the servers get busy, his frame rate drops to unplayable levels.

 

 

We've now been through all the things one would expect;

Reinstalls (x2), including a full reinstall of windows

DCS Repairs

Changed all settings/ options

Cleaned out dust from PC case

Re-seated GPU and RAM

Confirmed all cores on CPU are sharing load

Checked connection latencies and router settings

Disabled all un-necessary windows processes

Re-intsalled peripherals (TiR, controllers etc..)

 

 

Kinda out of options....

[BIGNEWY]

Is his page file set to system managed (recommended), or manually, and does he have room left on his C drive for the page file?

[philstyle]

Is his page file set to system managed (recommended), or manually, and does he have room left on his C drive for the page file?

 

 

 

Am unsure.. how do we confirm this?

[BIGNEWY]

go to control panel > system > advanced system settings > performance > virtual memory

 

hit change, make sure your drive " usually your c drive " has system managed size ticked and you have plenty of space left on the disc.

 

Added a picture to help

 

note in my picture I use a different drive for my pagefile, it is a dedicated ssd drive so dont let that confuse you

Edited May 5, 2017 by BIGNEWY

[philstyle]

So I can finally report that we have resolved this issue.

 

 

The solution chosen was; A second instance of the OS was implemented, geared solely for DCS.

 

 

Seems to have worked... fingers crossed.