CPU frame time still bottle necks my high end PC - any processor recommendations?

[darkman222]

Hi. I have a CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6x 3.80GHz PC with a 2080ti. I use a Pimax and an old oculus rift. I play everything on low settings. But no matter how low i set the resolution or even if I use the less hardeware hungry Rift my Processor seems to be too slow for complex scenarios. My test scenario is the "instant action" 8v8 mission for the F18. As long as the enemy Migs dont show up as labels my framerate is fine. When the Migs show up it gets worse, when they fire missiles it gets unplayable. Like 30 frames per second. Then I switched to the Rift. Same result. I am sure it is the processor which is the bottle neck. But this processor is a very new one and is one of the highest ranked single core speed processors at the moment. Does anyone have the same experience and an idea on how to improve performance? What are your vR frame rates in the F18 8v8 mission? I will turn that PC into a 3D animation PC at work and will purchase a new gaming PC for DCS. So I might be purchasing a different processor for that PC. Any experiences or recommendations on that?

[toutenglisse]

Hi, I've just tried the 8v8 mission and no issue on my side wift rift CV1 (45fps + ASW constant) except 4 or 5 very short stutters that I give credit to the high static clouds coverage.

 

With my DCS settings and looking at msi afterburner after the mission I never hit 100% on GPU or any CPU core (but it's with a low monitoring frequency - data recording every 2 seconds...). For info I use my i7 without hyperthreading (with 4.8Ghz oc), and regarding CPU loads I can see on this mission that the 3 first cores are used by 35-40% average and 4th core by 70% average.

 

Maybe try with hyperthreading (SMT) off to see if it makes a difference ?

 

Also maybe try monitoring your flight to be sure that your CPU is bottlenecking ?

[Bob_Bushman]

Windows will cycle a threads load across cores to manage load, temp, and power consumption etc hyperthreading or not.

So no single core will stay under full load for enough time to show up on the graph.

 

 

This simply makes utilisation a next to worthless metric to look at.

It's simply how the game is made, it needs fire changes of the game engine to allow higher fps to handle VR natively.

 

With that hardware you can probably dial the GPU based settings up a fair bit, things like smoke and shadows can be left on lower setting to ease the cpu.

 

There really isn't anyway o buy yourself out of this, only solution is that ED will have to sort their code out if it's even possible to begin with.

[Strikeeagle345]

you need to increase the core clock. Overclocking will allowed your CPU to decrease the frame times and feed your GPU quicker.

[darkman222]

Thanks for all the answers so far and pointing me to the issues to look at.

 

Yes I feel monitoring with fpsVR is good for framerate but not for CPU time. I know about the issues DCS code has. But at the moment we have to deal with what we have.

 

@toutenglisse did you fly the mission for at least 3-5 minutes until you see all the enemy fighters firing missiles around you? And you didnt experience a drastically dropping frame rate as I do? I know my Ryzen can turbo up to 4.4 GHz and your Intel can go up to 4.5 GHz which is not much of a difference. But your Intel's base clock speed is higher than my Ryzen's.

 

If you look your CPU up and mine, my CPU is listed higher in that comparison for what reason ever: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html .

 

Do you know if turbo is always applied as long as the game needs it? Or will it go back to normal clock speed even though a high clock speed still is necessary to keep the CPU time up.

 

Then my Ryzen would go back to 3.8 while your Intel still would be going 4.2 GHz. That could be a possible explanation for me.

 

Like I said, I am about to make the Ryzen PC my work PC and purchase a new gaming PC. Buying a new CPU is a possible solution for me, as long as I know which one to buy.

Edited October 23, 2019 by darkman222

[toutenglisse]

I did accomplish this mission - no fps issue.

 

My cpu is at 4.8Ghz on all 4 cores.

 

As I said try monitoring your cpu while flying this mission (all cores), because your cpu is supposed to be a good one, maybe the problem is elsewhere ?

 

You can try to disable hyperthreading (SMT) because it's better for CPU performances with DCS, to see if it makes a difference.

Concerning OC'ing your CPU I can't tell what is possible.

 

If I had to buy a CPU today for DCS/gaming, I think I would buy a 9700K or 9900K (or what intel is making newer).

[SVgamer72]

Have you run any benchmarks to see if your system is running right? That seems unnaturally slow for a Ryzen 5 at @3.8 on a 20180ti.

 

 

Are you running the latest BIOS for your MB, and the latest AMD chipset drivers for the AM4 platform?

 

What is your RAM speed? Ryzen runs best 3000-3200Mhz

 

What are you using for cooling? Have you monitored temps to make sure your CPU isn't throttling due to high temps?

[darkman222]

I did everything suggested. Bios update, AMD chipset drivers installed, SMT disabled. Also overclocked the CPU now to 4300 GHz constant speed. Temperature stayed low at 65 degrees all the time. I have a "be silent" triple fan cooler. And RAM speed is 3200 Mhz.

 

 

The FPS stay solid at 45 now with the Rift CV1.

 

That goal is achieved. Thanks so far guys.

 

But the main goal is to make it run on the Pimax in complex missions too. It runs well when I fly alone. Dont forget , I just have high cockpit textures and low shadow textures. The rest is what the "low" preset gives. So everything is at the possibly lowest setting.

 

But here is where it gets interesting.

 

What I did now is to make sure it runs the native pimax resolution which is 2560x"some weird value" depending on the field of view. Still the same. When the enemy fighters show up and fire missiles the stutter begins to make it unplayable. My CPU time starts at 16 ms and goes up to 24 ms in fpsVR which produce frame rates around 32-39 fps. Making the pimax motion smoothing to deactivate.

 

But when I set steam SS to 20% which is a resolution like 1100 pixels the CPU time stays the same and going up to 24ms. But the GPU time stays below 9ms and for that reason the 45 fps are kept up. But the difference now is only the resolution , the CPU time stayed identical. So its not the scenery or the clouds which produce that result its the enemy fighters and their missile shots which produce different results with different resolutions.

 

@ toutenglisse can you do me just one more favor and try to run http://http.maxon.net/pub/cinebench/CinebenchR20.zip on your PC. It is a tool for benchmarking CPUs. First you have to make it run on only one Core. So go to file->preferences->render threads and check it, so you have it run on just one core. I know it will take some time.. Could you please give me your score? With all that suggested modification done my score is 494 points on a single core

 

.

Edited October 24, 2019 by darkman222

[toutenglisse]

Sure - I got 501 points

[Mr_sukebe]

As you’ve noticed, your cpu core (ie the 1 running the primary DCS process) is saturated.

Changing the cpu will help, but not massively

 

An easier solution is to run the mission using the DCS server, then login to your server.

As such, you’ll still be running to game on one of your cpu cores, and the server on a different cpu core. Made a huge difference for me and costs nothing.

[darkman222]

@toutenglisse: Thanks for being so helpful and trying the benchmark for me. I am sure now, that there is not much more I could do processor wise.

 

 

 

@Mr_sukebe Thanks for that hint. I just have another PC on which I run the mission on as a server. I tested the 8v8 mission with that configuration and it seems to help. At least the framerate drops a lot later than it used to , when I was playing as single player on. Having the server running on the machine I play on helps too, but having it separated on another machine even helps more.

[Strong05]

AMD's are trickier to overclock then intel's. You also need to overclock the infinity fabric to take full advantage of your cpu. There are lot's of video's on you tube as to the best way to achieve this.

[Waxer]

Hi. I have a CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6x 3.80GHz PC with a 2080ti. I use a Pimax and an old oculus rift. I play everything on low settings. But no matter how low i set the resolution or even if I use the less hardeware hungry Rift my Processor seems to be too slow for complex scenarios. My test scenario is the "instant action" 8v8 mission for the F18. As long as the enemy Migs dont show up as labels my framerate is fine. When the Migs show up it gets worse, when they fire missiles it gets unplayable. Like 30 frames per second. Then I switched to the Rift. Same result. I am sure it is the processor which is the bottle neck. But this processor is a very new one and is one of the highest ranked single core speed processors at the moment. Does anyone have the same experience and an idea on how to improve performance? What are your vR frame rates in the F18 8v8 mission? I will turn that PC into a 3D animation PC at work and will purchase a new gaming PC for DCS. So I might be purchasing a different processor for that PC. Any experiences or recommendations on that?

 

I've not read the whole thread, but I have a suggestion that could help: check memory usage. CPU bottleneck could be because it is data limited. If you are at only 16GB, is the CPU waiting on the memory controller to shuffle information in and out of virtual memory? Moving to 32GB in such a scenario would give you a HUGE performance boost.

[darkman222]

Hey Milou. I was checking memory usage during that mission. It stayed at 10.9 GB all the time. So no virtual memory shuffling should be going on, right?

 

And Strong05, thanks for the hint. I will have a look at overclocking the infinity fabric too.

 

At the moment I am pretty satisfied with my stable 4.3 GHz. But of course I have to aim higher as the Ryzen should be capable of 4.5 GHz.

[Waxer]

Hey Milou. I was checking memory usage during that mission. It stayed at 10.9 GB all the time. So no virtual memory shuffling should be going on, right?

 

And Strong05, thanks for the hint. I will have a look at overclocking the infinity fabric too.

 

At the moment I am pretty satisfied with my stable 4.3 GHz. But of course I have to aim higher as the Ryzen should be capable of 4.5 GHz.

Yeah, okay then. Not memory. But worth checking.

[SVgamer72]

What is your memory running at?

 

By default it will be 2133 unless you set it higher manually or turn on an XMP profile in BIOS.