good performance in 2.5 despite old rig

[Hog_No32]

Hi all,

 

since DCS 2.5 was made available as OB was reading a lot in the forum about the performance issues and what kind of hardware might be required to run it smoothly. I became quite concerned since my rig is really old with only a few upgrades done over the past 10 years, namely a new video card in 2012(!) and an SSD drive in 2016 (see spoiler for complete spec).

So I stayed with 1.5.8 for a while and decided to read further about people‘s experiences. I then figured out a pretty cheap upgrade option for me would be to double my RAM from 8 to 16 GB (about 60$). So I did that and thought I‘d give the 2.5 release version a try.

 

I have to say I was quite surprised how well 2.5 did on my nowadays really low-end system. I flew a few times now with the Viggen in the new Caucasus map, using one of my selfmade SP missions (quite a big one with more than 60 aircraft, some big SAM sites and quite some ground units, many of them moving).

Of course, I didn‘t go with all graphic settings maxed out. However, visibility and textures are set to High, Deferred Shading On (to fully enjoy the new speedtrees during low level flight), resolution 1920x1080, MSAA 2x. Preload Radius is at Max and tree visibility at 70%.

 

My FPS are astonishing and even steady at 40-45 which is more than fine for me. So this message is to encourage users which have similar old rigs like me that 2.5 is nicely running even on a low-end system like mine! Well done, ED!

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

Intel Core i7 870, 2.93 GHz, LGA1156, 4C/8T, 16 GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333, Mobo P7H55-M/USB3, Intel H55 Express Chipset, 512 GB SSD Samsung Evo 850, 1 TB Samsung HD103SJ, F3, 7200rpm, Gainward GTX-680 Phantom 2GB DDR5

 

 

Edited April 26, 2018 by Hog_No32

[Svsmokey]

I agree ! I was very worried about being able to run DCS after reading posts from guys with mega-systems . But my modest 'puter runs Open Beta at a solid 60fps in 1080p , with both video and TrackIR as smooth as butter with few eye candy compromises . Looking good , ED !

[Rudel_chw]

It seems that the people with performance issues are those that use VR or 4K monitors ... those of us that are still on Full HD can get by with older rigs :)

[Hog_No32]

It seems that the people with performance issues are those that use VR or 4K monitors ... those of us that are still on Full HD can get by with older rigs :)

 

Yeah, seems like. I never tried out VR gear anywhere but since my pockets aren‘t deep enough to purchase an adequate rig for VR, I won‘t even try. Probably just a too painful experience to see how much more immersive VR would be at a time when I couldn‘t afford it:smilewink:. I became a father few months ago so you can imagine where the money goes :lol: But in a few years time, maybe.

[Aluminum Donkey]

Hi all,

 

**

 

My FPS are astonishing and even steady at 40-45 which is more than fine for me. So this message is to encourage users which have similar old rigs like me that 2.5 is nicely running even on a low-end system like mine! Well done, ED!

 

Cheers!

 

 

Don't kid yourself, your system isn't really half bad for something so old. I've had DCS running on machines that, by today's standards, were little more than shoeboxes full of rocks :)

 

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[Santus]

I also have a rather old PC and confirm that DCS 2.5 runs better on it than DCS 1.5.8 ever did with the same video settings. And it looks better too.

So...:thumbup:

[wizav]

I have average PC (without expensive parts) and I can run game on HIGH (Shadows and MSAA OFF) 60 fps all zones @ 1080p even those large combat zones with 20 aircraft and 50 ground units etc..

[Shadow KT]

lol has an 1060, "average"...

 

To be honest, average now-a-days is hardware which is at least a generation older than the current one.

 

It has improved so much that you don't really need a new graphics card (not even talkin about CPUs, you can work everything with 4-5 generations older intels (2,3,4th series "i" series)

 

Everything after the 5 series nVidia, is substantially better and has a smaller gap.

 

Sadly I am still with a 560Ti, which just seems to be lacking the memory for DCS.

[sc_neo]

@Hog_No32 Could you post your excat ingame graphics settings? I have a 2gb gpu as well and nttr runs fine enough, but caucasus sind 2.5 is on the unplayable side. I'd just like to check which combination of settings might look good enough and perform in Caucasus well enough, too.

[Tomsk]

Yeah to be clear the problems (for me) only come with big missions (hundreds of units) in VR (which needs good framerates). For other cases the performance is really good.

[rick66]

I`m loving the new 2.5.1 update as well, My old rig is purring like a cat.. great fps, smooth experience, looks fantastic.. Thxs ED

[Hog_No32]

@Hog_No32 Could you post your excat ingame graphics settings? I have a 2gb gpu as well and nttr runs fine enough, but caucasus sind 2.5 is on the unplayable side. I'd just like to check which combination of settings might look good enough and perform in Caucasus well enough, too.

 

Sure, I‘ll do as soon as I have time to start up the sim. Might be a few days though.

[msalama]

great fps, smooth experience, looks fantastic...

 

Yup, the performance is simply phenomenal, and I'm not exaggerating. The whole v2.5x branch has run pretty well for me right from the beginning, but I still got stutters when, say, flying the Hip and looking out the side window at a large forest. Well not anymore. I'm seeing constant and stutter-free 60FPS regardless of where I fly now. WOW!!!

 

And even the dreaded DS seems to behave itself. Some of the colors look a bit burned out in bright sunlight still, but as stated the performance is great even with 2xMSAA & NVI enchancements on. What a great patch indeed!

[Idle_Wild]

Ok so SP works, good luck trying MP. I have a better spec than you and it chugs and splutters after loading, you can barely interact with the role selection roster, you select a slot and click Briefing and the game crashes 9 times out of 10 due to being out of memory.

 

The game is broken and has been so for 2-3 months now.

[msalama]

The game is broken and has been so for 2-3 months now.

 

Not so much if you host even largish missions for a maximum of 4 pilots I've found. Could be different with high-volume servers, true that, but I personally haven't seen the sim crash once due to running out of memory. And I'm running an oldish machine with 16GB of RAM here.

 

However, I've seen the sim crash on exit occasionally and lots of transport.dll (i.e. AI pathfinding) related crashes. But the v2.5.1 changelog says the latter has been fixed, and the new memory manager hopefully takes care of the rest. So here's hoping ;)

[Shadow KT]

Ok so SP works, good luck trying MP. I have a better spec than you and it chugs and splutters after loading, you can barely interact with the role selection roster, you select a slot and click Briefing and the game crashes 9 times out of 10 due to being out of memory.

 

The game is broken and has been so for 2-3 months now.

 

or you don't know how to set-up your game and can't wait for it to load ?

Edited April 28, 2018 by Shadow KT

[truebrit]

Mine doesn't run so well, it runs, with decent FPS but lag spikes a lot, and from the specs here the main difference I can see is SSD and RAM, which makes sense. I'm still on HDD and 8GB.

[wizav]

Mine doesn't run so well, it runs, with decent FPS but lag spikes a lot, and from the specs here the main difference I can see is SSD and RAM, which makes sense. I'm still on HDD and 8GB.

 

With SSD and extra 8 GB... you would be surprised with difference :)

[Eviscerador]

So it looks like the main bottlenecks for the game are the HDD and the RAM.

 

Good to know. I have a rig similar to yours but without SSD and only 8 Gb of RAM. I just can't run 2.5. Loading times are on the tens of minutes per game, and then another minute or so until I can move around without frame drops.

 

I will give it a try again with the 2.5.1 version to see if I can run that. Fingers crossed.

[Bogey Jammer]

Hello all,

It's tempting, but how better does the 2.5.1 version run now ?

[Marcq]

It runs like when I'm logged in but fairly smooth when I'm not

 

Marc..

Edited May 10, 2018 by BIGNEWY
1.1

[SonicDust187]

I have found that the more vram that you have, the less ram the game will use.

[Aluminum Donkey]

I have found that the more vram that you have, the less ram the game will use.

 

That seems to make sense, since most of DCS World *is* graphics textures, after all :)

 

I find it only uses about half of my 8GB VRAM most of the time, usually it'll use 6GB or a little more over Normandy, and about half of my 16GB system RAM. On the other hand, it still has a taste for huge pagefiles and crashes without them, I guess there's still a bit o' tweaking left for ED to do :)

 

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[Cpt Cuckoo]

I get pretty crappy performance out of this laptop with settings on low.

 

 

 

HP Envy Windows 8.1 64-bit

 

 

 

Intel® Core i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.40GHz

16GB memory

NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M

1920 x 1080

 

 

I'm lucky to get much over 20 FPS

[BIGNEWY]

I get pretty crappy performance out of this laptop with settings on low.

 

 

 

HP Envy Windows 8.1 64-bit

 

 

 

Intel® Core i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.40GHz

16GB memory

NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M

1920 x 1080

 

 

I'm lucky to get much over 20 FPS

 

try turning all shadows off and reducing or turning off MSAA