MASSIVE fps drop after update to 2.7

[BIGNEWY]

 

5 minutes ago, rayrayblues said:

I have spent hundreds of dollars on this sim and for most others it's been thousands.  Now all of a sudden 15% of us can't play. 15% is a lot of people and a lot of money.

I like many others have been spending more time making adjustments than actually playing. Nothing seems to work. Something has got to be wrong at your end.

Please, I beg you. Don't give up trying to help us. This is not a "Dead End." Telling us to just play 2.5.6 stable and miss out on all the good stuff coming is just wrong.

 

Thanks, Ray

Ray, 

 

I dont have a solution for you, I have no idea why some are seeing drops and others are seeing increases. All we can do is tweak and look for solutions and reasons for the issues. 

Everyone's machines are different, different hardware, different software, different configurations, its a labyrinth. The team are working on tweaks at the moment so give it some time, you may find the next patch helps out. 

 

thanks 

Bignewy.   

[rayrayblues]

@BIGNEWYThank you very much for your reply. I'm glad to hear that you and the team are still working on it.

Like I said, since many of the people reporting problems have much better machines than I do, I have kept out

of the conversation. Please let me know if someone comes up with a solution. I have given up on all of the other

games that I have played. DCS is all I do now. You have a wonderful product and I trust that the team will come up with something.

 

Ray 

[Arikaj]

Do not have the time for reading through all of it. Here is my take at helping you all. 

2.7 went smoothly for me at the start. Then I updated my GPU to the latest driver and after that my GPU utilization was only at 80 percent and had Syria at 33 FPS. Only rolling the update of the driver back did not help me at all. Had to do a complete removal of the driver and then only installing the last one which was working for me (again did not help). After that I had to repair and clean DCS (did not remove any excess files nor replaced them) and then only the GPU utilization was back at 100 percent and was back at 55-60FPS. 

Also it seems the last two version of Windows are very bad at gaming performance. It might be the cause too. Article: https://www.pcgamesn.com/windows-10-game-performance-hit?fbclid=IwAR1-ocd_LjjCtDsZwIeu33vuJxI7ILtrbptTxc7jKpVtGBhkqDcIKcWiBdE

EDIT for Flappie. You can count me into the statistic. 461.72 worked for me.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Arikaj

[Flappie]

@rayraybluesI should have been more specific. The KB uninstalling solution was a dead-end. I'm not leaving you guys. And ED is not leaving you either.

 

Heres a quick sum-up of this thread:

• 46 users came here to talk about important FPS drops they were having since 2.7.
• Among them, 16 users have fixed their issue.

Solutions that worked for some:

• Reverting NVIDIA driver to 461.72 (worked for several users)
• Reverting NVIDIA driver to 465.89 (this version was OK for Furiz)
• Reverting AMD driver to 21.4.1 (this worked for Cab)
• Starting with a fresh "Saved Games\DCS..." folder
• Full repair of DCS ("slow" repair option)
• Uninstalling/reinstalling DCS
• Disabling ingame V-Sync
• Alt+Enter once in game (Zanchs' solution, ingame V-Sync is also off)

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by Flappie

[rayrayblues]

7 minutes ago, Flappie said:

The KB uninstalling solution was a dead-end

Do you mean uninstalling the windows update?

[SCPanda]

On 4/20/2021 at 2:56 PM, SCPanda said:

Ok so I have tried reinstalling DCS, no improvement...

 

So far I have tried deleting the DCS folder in saved games, downgrading my Nvidia driver to 461.72, repairing DCS (I'm on Steam so verifying game files), and reinstalling...

 

Still getting the 30% fps loss compare to 2.5.6, especially flying low near crowded areas like cities and busy airport. Clouds are fine and do not seem to affect FPS. 

 

My Spec:

GTX 1080

i7 7700k

32 GB Ram

DCS on SSD

 

Graphic settings:

All effects high, MSAA 2x, SSAA, SSAO, SSLR all off, Clouds standard, Terrain shadow flat, Vsync off, Fullscreen at 1080p

 

  

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

 

Ray, 

 

I dont have a solution for you, I have no idea why some are seeing drops and others are seeing increases. All we can do is tweak and look for solutions and reasons for the issues. 

Everyone's machines are different, different hardware, different software, different configurations, its a labyrinth. The team are working on tweaks at the moment so give it some time, you may find the next patch helps out. 

 

thanks 

Bignewy.   

 

Just to elaborate on how clouds do not affect FPS:

 

I did a test yesterday with overcast 4 preset (the one with 3 layers, if I am remembering it right, I'm at work now so I cannot check), so the first layer of dense clouds is visible at low altitude. I was in an F-16 flying at 1000 feet over Beirut. Tried clouds standard and clouds ultra, FPS in both scenarios are pretty much the same, just 2-5 frames lower from ultra clouds. But the FPS drop drastically when I am over the city. Also same behavior in Persian Gulf and Caucasus. Nevada seems to have the best FPS when flying over Las Vegas. Average FPS flying at low altitude (0-10000 feet I guess) and over cities in 2.5.6 is much better compare to 2.7. And yes, around 30% FPS reduction in 2.7. 

 

So the problem is definitely with ground objects, not the new clouds. But as far as I understand, the only graphical changes in 2.7 are new clouds, and "Several changes in graphics effects", according to the patch note. So did ED change anything related to ground objects or maybe textures? "Several changes in graphics effects" is kind of a vague statement. I wish ED could explain what those changes are, would love to hear from them. Also, I hope my finding can provide ED a better understanding of the performance reduction issue in 2.7 and help them test what the REAL problem is. 

 

P.S. FPS loss also occurs when you turn your head and look at crowded areas like cities and busy airports, but as you climb to higher altitude, the loss gets better. Above 20000 feet, the FPS loss is negligible. 

 

@BIGNEWY

Edited April 21, 2021 by SCPanda

[SCPanda]

Also, high altitude FPS is pretty decent, a bit less (maybe around 10 FPS or even less) than 2.5.6, but with new clouds that's understandable. 

 

57 minutes ago, Arikaj said:

Do not have the time for reading through all of it. Here is my take at helping you all. 

2.7 went smoothly for me at the start. Then I updated my GPU to the latest driver and after that my GPU utilization was only at 80 percent and had Syria at 33 FPS. Only rolling the update of the driver back did not help me at all. Had to do a complete removal of the driver and then only installing the last one which was working for me (again did not help). After that I had to repair and clean DCS (did not remove any excess files nor replaced them) and then only the GPU utilization was back at 100 percent and was back at 55-60FPS. 

Also it seems the last two version of Windows are very bad at gaming performance. It might be the cause too. Article: https://www.pcgamesn.com/windows-10-game-performance-hit?fbclid=IwAR1-ocd_LjjCtDsZwIeu33vuJxI7ILtrbptTxc7jKpVtGBhkqDcIKcWiBdE

EDIT for Flappie. You can count me into the statistic. 461.72 worked for me.

 

Unfortunately I have tried repairing (on steam so I can only verify game files), no luck...

Edited April 21, 2021 by SCPanda

[Flappie]

41 minutes ago, rayrayblues said:

Do you mean uninstalling the windows update?

Yes. Several users tried uninstalling the Windows patch we've talked about earlier, but it didn't help DCS performance. Others like uboats have it installed and don't experience FPS drops at all with 2.7. That's why I called this solution a dead end.

[hooti]

20 minutes ago, SCPanda said:

 

 

P.S. FPS loss also occurs when you turn your head and look at crowded areas like cities and busy airports, but as you climb to higher altitude, the loss gets better. Above 20000 feet, the FPS loss is negligible. 

 

@BIGNEWY

 

 

I made the exact same observation. My performance issues are occurring above or in crowded areas. Everywhere else it's "ok". I've tried almost every workaround but still haven't found a solution. The different settings doesn't really have a positive (and negative) effect. At the moment my settings are below my settings before the update, but the fps are still worse. With 3090, 5900X, SSD, 64 GB this is really annoying

[rayrayblues]

22 minutes ago, hooti said:

With 3090, 5900X, SSD, 64 GB this is really annoying

 

If you're having issues with a top of the line 3090, what chance do I have with my lowly 1660Ti?   

Edited April 21, 2021 by rayrayblues

[rayrayblues]

I would kill for 60 to 90. That's what I had before the patch.

[SmirkingGerbil]

9 hours ago, SCPanda said:

I agree. I also don't believe there are so many people reporting performance gain... Maybe they don't have FPS counter on and they just felt the game became smoother? Cuz all my friends I fly with are having performance loss in 2.7, and we have different systems, like GTX 2080s, 2060m, 1080 etc. With ED saying that there are around 70% of players reporting performance gain from 2.5.6, I really feel like I live in a different universe....

 

Have an SP mission, starts off the coast of Syria, flies in, coordinates with JTAC, attacks Fan Song SA-2 (S-75) site. Built it when Syria first came out. When I adjust video settings, I save them to one of the 3 "save" video settings options. For any test I did under 2.5 and 2.7 I start this mission, follow the same path, turn on the same sensors, run the FPS counter and do the same actions, i.e. turn on MAV seeker, and TGP and slave them to target area. I fly over forests, towns, and will maneuver to look at them.

I record it, with NVIDA capture. I also run the NVIDA advanced FPS counter, that shows frame delay, and other metrics.

When I post something up here, it is exhaustively tested, under the same conditions, using one of 3 video presets in the settings panel of DCS.

I would say you are correct in some instances, but when I go to the trouble to post in these performance reporting sections, I put some work into it, and use the same conditions for each test.

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by SmirkingGerbil
double tap copied post fix.

[Kovacs]

On 4/19/2021 at 9:51 PM, BIGNEWY said:

this may help some

 

 

 

Thanks a lot for the link , Very useful and efficient for me (Oculus Quest 2 , I9 9900 k , RTX 2080, 32 Go) . And Good work DCS , i love your simu. 

 

Kr

[KoN]

From what I'm seeing You need at least 16GB too run in single player and 32GB for multiplayer . 

I rolled back drivers too 446.14 . I can play good in single player now but my 16GB isn't enough for Hoggit online . 

VR is still low @ 20fps . still testing and need to drop settings in DCS to hit my 30fps @ 30Hz OTT. 

"2.7 looks amazing and I'm sure fixes will come . 

I am now on the hunt for more memory . 

[Hiob]

I didn‘t read through all of it, so just in short my two cents:

- when people report huge performance drops, they often state that they tested it without clouds, but fail to mention the other new options. SSAO is quite taxing e.g.

- from my personal experience, the performance hits (or wins) are somewhat all over the place. It strongly depends on the altitude, line of sight, map and of course settings. My first impression was a a slight overall improvement (minus a few frames for ultra clouds) - by now after thoroughly messing with a ton of settings I have somewhat mixed feelings. In the air, especially over the clouds - all is good, about 80 to 100 fps with pretty high settings (ssao off though). On the ground it strongly depends on weather, plane and so on. Can drop to 50-60 fps.

 

Some things I noticed: Mirrors cost a lot of frames. Didn‘t notice this that much in 2.5. SSAO cost me up to 20 fps.

[M1Combat]

Have any of you with FPS issues post 2.7 just set ever setting as low as it goes and see where you're at???  Or are you all already there?

 

For the record...  I jumped in for a few minutes after updating in VR and it all seemed about right to me...  maybe a small performance drop but not a lot.

 

I feel for you folks with issues though...

[SmirkingGerbil]

10 hours ago, rayrayblues said:

 

If you're having issues with a top of the line 3090, what chance do I have with my lowly 1660Ti?   

 

Sir, I have a 1660 Asus TUF OC, and I have had good luck with 2.7

I would be happy to run through my specs in detail, how my RAM clocks are setup, drivers, configuration etc. if you think it would help.

[rayrayblues]

Cool Man, do it.

[SmirkingGerbil]

1 minute ago, rayrayblues said:

Cool Man, do it.

Aiigghtt! Give me a day, gonna have to take pics of the BIOS (reboot), the other stuff I can just paste and dump. Direct Message or just lay it out here for everyone to see?

[rayrayblues]

Normally I would say DM, however, there's a lot of people that I think could use the info.

[Kovacs]

Hi , 

 

I have a question regarding the performance of DCS 2.7, last night I played a mission on the Channel map, performance quite acceptable at first (in VR). I encountered a big problem with a drop in FPS (which I don't know the origin of) and then the performance never returned as it was at the start, even in places where everything was fine in terms of fps. As if the game was unable to return to normal.

 

Do you encounter this type of problem?

 

Thanks a lot

 

Kr

 

I9 9900k , 32 Go , Oculus quest 2 , 2080 RTX

[J20Stronk]

I have a similar problem.

 

Normally I get 60+fps in most areas, even if there is heavy combat taking place nearby. However if I fly the JF-17 and only the JF-17, my fps is reduced by about 30fps. It usually goes as low as 20fps and sometimes reaches 40fps, but it generally stay around 30 with a lot of stutters.

 

The crazy thing is, this only happens if I quit and run DCS a second time and afterwards after I boot up my computer and it only affects the JF-17; no other module has this issue, not even the F-14.

 

I did almost everything short of reinstalling Windows 10 in an attempt to fix this, including formatting my SSD, reinstalling Display drivers, uninstalling KB5001330 among other things, none of which fixed this issue. I took a look at the dcs.log file, there's nothing erroneous there compared to one from a, "first boot" wherein the issue is absent.

 

I also set every setting to the lowest and even then the JF experiences 20-40fps while others like the Tomcat get 90-100fps.

 

I already reported this to Deka, but they can't reproduce this on their end. I'm at my wit's end at this point.

[BMGZ06]

I was having major issues with 2.7 and then worse with the forced update to win 20H2. After removing (KB5001330 I am seeing more stable performance. Seems smoother. I am running a G2 at 100% SS and in game AF at 8x with no MSAA, shadows low textures high and cockpit 1024 no civ traffic, water medium. System is 9900ks at 5.1gigglehurtz and 2080ti FTW3 OC'd and Paging file at 32gb to 64gb with 32gb of RAM. It still not 100% smooth but a vast improvement from what it was. Heavy clouds still hammer FPS

Edited April 22, 2021 by BMGZ06

[Hedge]

I'd like to give a little experience report on my development since updating to 2.7. Hope, it's useful.

 

My configuration:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950x, ROG Crosshair X570 VIII Hero, AMD RX6800XT, 64GB DDR4-3600, Hotas TM Warthog, HP reverb G2, 1 Display 3440x1440

steamVR 120% (application setting) and 100% general setting. No motion vectoring. DCS PD 1.0 and textures to high, msaa 2x, ssaa 1,5x...

Before the update, I had fps of in average between 40 and 60 in VR and between 90 and 110 in 2D.

After the first update, I experienced a severe fps-drop both in VR and 2D, especially testing in the free-flight-scenario on the syria map. Landing on the first airport there let the fps in VR drop to average 15 in VR! It was almost a slideshow and I started to sequencially follow all the tips and tricks mentioned above:

 

- renamed the DCS openbeta folder in saved games

- reinstalled DCS completely

- repaired windows 10 installation completely but no uninstall of the KB500????

- Updated AMD Radeon software to 21.4.1

 

After these steps the situation became better again, almost where it was before, but I cannot say, which step really was the key.

 

But then I also followed Spudknockers advise to turn off most of the settings for the graphic card. Though he said this for an NVIDIA setting, I tried this for my RX6800XT and it had a really positive effect! I literally turned off everything or left it to the application, also the AMD FREE SYNC. No OC either! Just the basic driver, so to say...

And:

No micro stuttering anymore, stable fps of >40  to 60 fps in VR in every situation with really high settings! Also tested on some MP servers and it was really good!

 

So, I'm really happy now with the performance!

 

I have to mention, that in VR for me the new clouds don't look any different between low and ultra settings, so I kept it at low for now.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Hedge

[Predator-78]

This whole situation is really frustrating, people who have very high-end PC configurations, we are talking about 3090 video cards and have FPS problems! I am happy to know that the development team is working on this situation, we are the end users of this sim and we do not have to stress to find a solution, they have to do it who have the technical skills!
I've spent a lot of money on DCS and we all know how fundamental multiplayer is for this simulator. It is not acceptable to play multiplayer with FPS drops just because the sim is not optimized. With my PC setup, a measly Asus GTX 1080, I run games even heavier than DCS in multiplayer ... so how is this possible? Sure, every PC has a different configuration, but the rule applies to all games on the market, not just DCS.
We can only trust the development team and wait for them to solve the problem in a short time, we can provide them with support, but the team must also do its part.