Poor performance on 1080p triples. RTX 3080 Ti

[SchumiF399]

Hi all, as the thread title states I am having really poor framerate on 1080p triple (5760x1080). I had originally started a thread over in the "Game Performance Bugs" (Roughly the same frame rate no matter the graphics setting - Game Performance Bugs - ED Forums (eagle.ru) section but was advised that I would probably get better help here. No matter the graphical setting low or max, my pc can't maintain 60fps or close to. What is odd is that the PC works awesome in 4k all settings on max. I am at a loss as to why this is. I am really bummed as this card is not cheap and my old 1080ti performed similarly on the triples. Every other game (sim racing titles) have had a substantial bump in performance after the GPU upgrade. The link posted above has better detail and my PC specs. Please help.  TIA

[xoxen]

I have a very similar experience in 3x 1440p coming from a 1080 Ti to a RX 6800 XT. It is interesting that you have a similar issues as my conclusion was that AMD card do not like the high resolutions I`m running (7560x1440), I have a thread for this, maybe there are some helpful advices for you.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/278553-pc-upgrade-on-triple-1440p-monitor-4790k-5800x-and-1080ti-rx-6800-xt-some-results/

 

For me the Shader Mod brough much benefit, even though this would have been able with the 1080 Ti as well.

 

[SchumiF399]

 

10 hours ago, xoxen said:

I have a very similar experience in 3x 1440p coming from a 1080 Ti to a RX 6800 XT. It is interesting that you have a similar issues as my conclusion was that AMD card do not like the high resolutions I`m running (7560x1440), I have a thread for this, maybe there are some helpful advices for you.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/278553-pc-upgrade-on-triple-1440p-monitor-4790k-5800x-and-1080ti-rx-6800-xt-some-results/

 

For me the Shader Mod brough much benefit, even though this would have been able with the 1080 Ti as well.

 

Hi Xoxen, thanks for sharing your experience. I fear that unfortunately DCS isn't very optimized for all this new tech. I considered maybe going for a 10900k but after reading what you got after your upgrades I think I will hold off. That shader mod isn't multiplayer compatible is it? I read on your thread that it didn't pass IC check. Sorry for the dumb question but IC stands for Integrity Check? In  the vast research I've done mentions that DCS is supposed to get Vulkan implemented and this will hopefully cure all our woes. I hope the devs can push it out to sooner rather than later as I am beginning to think that even the fastest of PCs will have trouble with DCS running on multi-monitors. Thanks again.

Edited August 20, 2021 by SchumiF399

[xoxen]

Hi Schumi,

The latest version of the mod works on MP servers and are passing the Integrity Check. Just last Wednesday I did a comparison with and without the mod and the difference was like 52 FPS without and 70 FPS with the mod installed without any noticeable reduction in quality. It was sitting in the cold and dark pit of the Hornet on a carrier.

Here is the link to the appropriate post in my thread where you can find the link to the mod.

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/278553-pc-upgrade-on-triple-1440p-monitor-4790k-5800x-and-1080ti-rx-6800-xt-some-results/?do=findComment&comment=4739682

 

Did you try MSI Afterburner to see how much your CPU and GPU are utilized? Sometimes people find old artefacts in their export.lua in the DCS Saved Games folder. You can try renaming it to see if it includes a show stopper for you. I had this in the past as well.

 

Deleting FXO and Metashader2 folder also sometimes makes a difference. It will be recreated after a new start of DCS so it is worth a try.

 

What are your actual specs? CPU/RAM speed and amount?

 

Xoxen

 

Edit: I´m also waiting for news about the Vulcan implementation as I have the same feeling that there is a limitation on multi monitor maschines. Maybe it is time to think about VR with this new card.

 

Edit 2: Just found your other thread, so you checked the advices I gave already. Also my question about your hardware is answered by this. I would delete the complete Save Game folder and copy things back step by step to exclude things from being the cause.

 

Edited August 21, 2021 by xoxen

[SchumiF399]

On 8/19/2021 at 10:39 PM, xoxen said:

Hi Schumi,

The latest version of the mod works on MP servers and are passing the Integrity Check. Just last Wednesday I did a comparison with and without the mod and the difference was like 52 FPS without and 70 FPS with the mod installed without any noticeable reduction in quality. It was sitting in the cold and dark pit of the Hornet on a carrier.

Here is the link to the appropriate post in my thread where you can find the link to the mod.

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/278553-pc-upgrade-on-triple-1440p-monitor-4790k-5800x-and-1080ti-rx-6800-xt-some-results/?do=findComment&comment=4739682

 

Did you try MSI Afterburner to see how much your CPU and GPU are utilized? Sometimes people find old artefacts in their export.lua in the DCS Saved Games folder. You can try renaming it to see if it includes a show stopper for you. I had this in the past as well.

 

Deleting FXO and Metashader2 folder also sometimes makes a difference. It will be recreated after a new start of DCS so it is worth a try.

 

What are your actual specs? CPU/RAM speed and amount?

 

Xoxen

 

Edit: I´m also waiting for news about the Vulcan implementation as I have the same feeling that there is a limitation on multi monitor maschines. Maybe it is time to think about VR with this new card.

 

Edit 2: Just found your other thread, so you checked the advices I gave already. Also my question about your hardware is answered by this. I would delete the complete Save Game folder and copy things back step by step to exclude things from being the cause.

 

On 8/19/2021 at 10:39 PM, xoxen said:

Just a quick question, are you using a second GPU to connect the displays? I did this years ago with the iGPU of my former Intel CPU. This reduced my FPS to 37 and capped it, independent of the settings. Disabling the iGPU did the trick. Same experience with a second Nvidia GPU. I'm exporting the MFCDs to 3 small displays and needed the extra connections. Using the 1080 Ti only I had at that times brought it to 52 FPS (I checked this with a mission of my choice to do the comparison). At least something to have a look at.

I haven't tried MSI afterburner  yet,  I will tonight. I took it a step further since I had already deleted the Saved Game folder and uninstalled DCS completely from my  system. I cleaned up all the registry keys it left behind and then I proceeded to downloading over 150GB of content. I did try the shaders mod but I manually installed it into the Bazar\Shaders folder as I could not figure out how to use OVGME. Unfortunately the shaders mod only got me about 5fps. I must say the whole experience does feel a tad bit smoother. As for a second GPU I don't think i have the integrated one turned on, the 3080ti is my only one that has any video cables plugged into it. My 1080ti is sitting waiting to be sold lol. To sum it all up, even after the complete uninstall I haven't hit a frame rate that doesn't feel slow.  In certain scenarios I still get down to the low 30s especially when flying low. The highest i go is in the 60s but at high altitude and the all time low is in the 20s indicated by the screenshots on my other thread that you found. That King of the Hill mission bogs my fps down and I am not sure why, I am just sitting inside the hangar. 4k though its smooth. I am stumped lol. 

[xoxen]

As I´m thinking about switching to a RTX 3080Ti as well (when the prices drop a little), I´m very much interested in your issue. If you are right with your suspicion that there is something wrong with DCS and triple displays I can save this attempt.

OK, first of all the usage of OVGME:

Once you open the program you need to create a new configuration. The name is free of choice. The configuration root folder is your main DCS folder. The configuration mods folder is a folder of your choice. You simple need to create it link it in OVGME. If you want a backup of the original data, you can hook it and name any location.

Then you need to copy the shader mod (complete folder incl. sub structure) into the mods folder. Then you can see it in OVGME.

Simply click on it and click on "Enable selected". When you see the green hook it is acticated. By clicking on "Disable selected" you deactivate the mod. I do this before an update. The same way it works for every mod.

What I can offer is a direct comparison. I set my DCS to 3x 1080p and I load the same mission you are using with the same settings and then we can directly compare the FPS. Mine should be worse because of the slower GPU. If I´m faster than you this could be an indication of a faulty GPU or anythng else what might limit your system.

Simply let me know if this sounds interesting for you, then we can give this a go.

Take care,

Xoxen

 

Edit: Recently I saw a post in a forum where someone switched to a RTX 3090 and reported a huge benefit for a triple displays setup.

Edited August 21, 2021 by xoxen

[SchumiF399]

1 hour ago, xoxen said:

As I´m thinking about switching to a RTX 3080Ti as well (when the prices drop a little), I´m very much interested in your issue. If you are right with your suspicion that there is something wrong with DCS and triple displays I can save this attempt.

OK, first of all the usage of OVGME:

Once you open the program you need to create a new configuration. The name is free of choice. The configuration root folder is your main DCS folder. The configuration mods folder is a folder of your choice. You simple need to create it link it in OVGME. If you want a backup of the original data, you can hook it and name any location.

Then you need to copy the shader mod (complete folder incl. sub structure) into the mods folder. Then you can see it in OVGME.

Simply click on it and click on "Enable selected". When you see the green hook it is acticated. By clicking on "Disable selected" you deactivate the mod. I do this before an update. The same way it works for every mod.

What I can offer is a direct comparison. I set my DCS to 3x 1080p and I load the same mission you are using with the same settings and then we can directly compare the FPS. Mine should be worse because of the slower GPU. If I´m faster than you this could be an indication of a faulty GPU or anythng else what might limit your system.

Simply let me know if this sounds interesting for you, then we can give this a go.

Take care,

Xoxen

 

Edit: Recently I saw a post in a forum where someone switched to a RTX 3090 and reported a huge benefit for a triple displays setup.

 

Can you please do the comparison? I think it will give me an idea to see if this is normal. Attached are my settings. They are nearly maxed out but as I mentioned before for some odd reason max or low doesn't net me a greater fps increase. I am also linking two 1 minute videos (potato quality) of the game running on my rig with MSI afterburner logging the fps. You'll find that the cpu frequency is set to factory values since I reset my bios and removed my overclock just to see what would happen. Oddly enough framerate sorta stayed the same too.  The highest frequency I seen on the 3080 ti is 1935Mhz. Highest temp 83c (i think). I don't think I got a dud since the racing games I play nearly doubled  and as previously noted DCS seems to run great at 4k on my rig.  The first video is of the mission (king of the hill) and you'll see as soon as the other jets in the hangar start their engines the framerate starts to plummet. The second video is of a quick taxi way take off on an online server with 40 people. What I have always found peculiar is that if I fly the plane perpendicular to the ground the frame rate seems to stabilize as seen on the second video. Thank you for your help.

 

video 1:

  

 

 

video 2:

 

 

Edited August 21, 2021 by SchumiF399

[xoxen]

I just had a quick look at the videos and settings. We have a major difference in how to work with 3 monitors. I'm running it with one camera and you are using 3. I have the fisheye effect at the sides, you have 3 cameras and this angled behavior of the outer cameras, which I personally do not like that much. The major reason not to use 3 cameras for me also was the much lower performance. Your system needs to calculate the picture for every screen. At mine the fisheye effect stretches the outside and does not need to calculate that much in direct comparison. But I can manage to copy your settings and run the same mission (is it a standard F-16 Mission?).

What I actually believe is that you are CPU bound. The usage of the GPU fluctuates and is never at 99-100%. The CPU is always at 20% or slightly higher. If you have 8 cores (4 real and 4 virtual) 20% could be one core fully utilized and another one partly. But also changing the settings and no change in FPS sounds like a CPU bottleneck.

My CPU is always fluctuating in frequency and the GPU is at 99% all over the time. So definitely a GPU bottleneck.

I will work on the comparison tomorrow as I'm in lack of time today. I guess my frames will be low because of your really high settings. They are demanding for every hardware.

Edited August 21, 2021 by xoxen

[SchumiF399]

Yes the settings are pretty cranked up. I use the 3 cameras because the fish eye effect makes it feel unnatural for me. I can definitely get better performance if I just went with one but isn't the whole point of this card to run up the settings? (By no means am I trying to sound defensive) I think you are right though about a possible cpu bottleneck, the 8700k is 6-core 12 thread. The mission is the first one from the missions menu on the f-16. I really do appreciate you taking the time to help me out and test things out on your rig. Maybe Alder Lake cpus will finally cure all my woes, but at this point I'm just throwing money at DCS  . I know I said this before about Vulkan but I really do hope its my saving grace that way I won't have to upgrade my hardware for the fourth time to try and run this game.  Thank you again.  

[xoxen]

Now I was able to test this. I choose to go with the first F-16 mission, like discribed by you. The settings are identical (see your post above) and the resolution as well (5760x1080). I simply made a step into the cockpit and did not move the head view. I do not see any difference in FPS once the other planes are spooling up. It does not fluctuate and shows 33-34 FPS.

Here is a picture of the MSI Afterburner readout:

The left one is the actual FPS, the right one is the average. In contrary to your system my GPU is at 99%. The CPU is again fluctuating in percentage and MHz, seems it is kind of bored (8 cores and 16 threads). I tested this without and with the mod activated and the FPS showed 35 if the mod is activated, so no big difference.

 

Then I switched the settings to my standard ones (for me the best mix out of performance and eye candy), but still with your resolution and 3 screens.

As you can see I was able to raise the FPS a lot and still my GPU is utilized by 99%.

 

Afterwards I went for 1 screen, YOUR resolution (5760x1080) and YOUR settings.

 

I did the same for 1 screen, YOUR resolution (5760x1080) and MY settings.

 

Finally I went for 1 screen, MY resolution (7680x1440) and MY settings.

With activated mod I´m getting 56 FPS.

 

I hope this gives you an idea of what my hardware is capable to achieve.

If you need some more information please let me know.

Xoxen

 

Edit: If you are really CPU bound, overclocking it should show a slight difference.

Edited August 22, 2021 by xoxen

[silverdevil]

21 hours ago, SchumiF399 said:

Can you please do the comparison? I think it will give me an idea to see if this is normal. Attached are my settings. They are nearly maxed out but as I mentioned before for some odd reason max or low doesn't net me a greater fps increase. I am also linking two 1 minute videos (potato quality) of the game running on my rig with MSI afterburner logging the fps. You'll find that the cpu frequency is set to factory values since I reset my bios and removed my overclock just to see what would happen. Oddly enough framerate sorta stayed the same too.  The highest frequency I seen on the 3080 ti is 1935Mhz. Highest temp 83c (i think). I don't think I got a dud since the racing games I play nearly doubled  and as previously noted DCS seems to run great at 4k on my rig.  The first video is of the mission (king of the hill) and you'll see as soon as the other jets in the hangar start their engines the framerate starts to plummet. The second video is of a quick taxi way take off on an online server with 40 people. What I have always found peculiar is that if I fly the plane perpendicular to the ground the frame rate seems to stabilize as seen on the second video. Thank you for your help.

 

video 1:

  

 

 

video 2:

 

 

 

 

if i may interject. in your settings screenshot you have both sslr and ssao set to ON and ssaa set to OFF. lots of topics on this one. sslr apparently hurts perfomance.

 

 

[SchumiF399]

7 hours ago, xoxen said:

Now I was able to test this. I choose to go with the first F-16 mission, like discribed by you. The settings are identical (see your post above) and the resolution as well (5760x1080). I simply made a step into the cockpit and did not move the head view. I do not see any difference in FPS once the other planes are spooling up. It does not fluctuate and shows 33-34 FPS.

Here is a picture of the MSI Afterburner readout:

 

The left one is the actual FPS, the right one is the average. In contrary to your system my GPU is at 99%. The CPU is again fluctuating in percentage and MHz, seems it is kind of bored (8 cores and 16 threads). I tested this without and with the mod activated and the FPS showed 35 if the mod is activated, so no big difference.

 

Then I switched the settings to my standard ones (for me the best mix out of performance and eye candy), but still with your resolution and 3 screens.

 

As you can see I was able to raise the FPS a lot and still my GPU is utilized by 99%.

 

Afterwards I went for 1 screen, YOUR resolution (5760x1080) and YOUR settings.

 

 

I did the same for 1 screen, YOUR resolution (5760x1080) and MY settings.

 

 

Finally I went for 1 screen, MY resolution (7680x1440) and MY settings.

 

With activated mod I´m getting 56 FPS.

 

I hope this gives you an idea of what my hardware is capable to achieve.

If you need some more information please let me know.

Xoxen

 

Edit: If you are really CPU bound, overclocking it should show a slight difference.

 

Xoxen thank you so much for testing all this you went the beyond my expectations and tried other scenarios. The data you provided has helped me conclude that I do have a cpu bottleneck and I am limiting my cards performance by some margin.  I tested the f-16 mission with your settings and I do see 60fps before the other jets start to spool up and the fps drop to what I already had before your settings  as seen in the first video below. The second test or second video is your settings but with a 5ghz overclock, I saw similar performance as my first test with your settings but in this instance the gpu was still being underused.  Lastly the 3rd test or 3rd video below is all maxed out again with my settings and a 5ghz overclock. I did not get the 60fps at start up like in your settings but the gpu usage was higher than in all the videos I have linked so far. Framerate was also higher than in any scenario I've tested so far and it did stabilize in the mid 40s. 

 

I will be getting any new cpu as soon as the new Intel alder lakes come out. 

 

Thank you again.

 

video 1

 

video 2

 

video 3

 

[SchumiF399]

3 hours ago, silverdevil said:

 

if i may interject. in your settings screenshot you have both sslr and ssao set to ON and ssaa set to OFF. lots of topics on this one. sslr apparently hurts perfomance.

 

 

I think I am cpu limited, changing the settings has little performance impact on my system. I have both settings turned off in the 1st video above where I am using Xoxen's settings.

[xoxen]

I'm glad that I was able to help you. I hope our conclusion was right, but I strongly believe so. I also learned something. But my hopes still are in Vulcan to gain even more speed.

Xoxen

[SchumiF399]

You and I both Xoxen. Vulcan FTW lol

[BMD]

On 8/21/2021 at 3:07 PM, SchumiF399 said:

 

I haven't tried MSI afterburner  yet,  I will tonight. I took it a step further since I had already deleted the Saved Game folder and uninstalled DCS completely from my  system. I cleaned up all the registry keys it left behind and then I proceeded to downloading over 150GB of content. I did try the shaders mod but I manually installed it into the Bazar\Shaders folder as I could not figure out how to use OVGME. Unfortunately the shaders mod only got me about 5fps. I must say the whole experience does feel a tad bit smoother. As for a second GPU I don't think i have the integrated one turned on, the 3080ti is my only one that has any video cables plugged into it. My 1080ti is sitting waiting to be sold lol. To sum it all up, even after the complete uninstall I haven't hit a frame rate that doesn't feel slow.  In certain scenarios I still get down to the low 30s especially when flying low. The highest i go is in the 60s but at high altitude and the all time low is in the 20s indicated by the screenshots on my other thread that you found. That King of the Hill mission bogs my fps down and I am not sure why, I am just sitting inside the hangar. 4k though its smooth. I am stumped lol. 

Have you checked that all monitors are set in geforce control panel to highest refresh rate? Silly but sometimes windows decides you should get less performance for no apparent reason and defaults one or all of your displays to base refresh rates. Also uncheck Vsync. I'm currently running 3080ti on 1 1440p monitor, with a couple of usb screens for mfds and the performance hit vs a single screen is massive, around 30% less fps, thinking of going for triples but all the forums relay very bad scaling in DCS.

[SchumiF399]

Hey BMD, yes all are set to max refresh rate. It appears I do have a bottleneck in my system as Xoxen helped me troubleshoot. The fps hit for triples is massive and it doesn't scale very well as you mentioned. I know at 4K the gpu is doing most of the heavy lifting and as you see in my post above it runs great at 4k, far better than the 1080p triples.  Maybe an ultrawide is better but I do like the spatial awareness the 3 screens provide both in my sim racing games and in DCS.  Maybe a new CPU will help me more and I am going to upgrade my 8700k with a 12900K (if that is what Intel will call it) as soon as it comes out.

  

On 9/20/2021 at 6:03 AM, BMD said:

Have you checked that all monitors are set in geforce control panel to highest refresh rate? Silly but sometimes windows decides you should get less performance for no apparent reason and defaults one or all of your displays to base refresh rates. Also uncheck Vsync. I'm currently running 3080ti on 1 1440p monitor, with a couple of usb screens for mfds and the performance hit vs a single screen is massive, around 30% less fps, thinking of going for triples but all the forums relay very bad scaling in DCS.

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by SchumiF399

[xoxen]

Today I received my new RTX 3080 as I was not satisfied with the performance of the RX 6800 XT at triples. What should I say, difference like night and day. When switching from my old GTX 1080 Ti to the RX 6800 XT I gathered around 10% more performance. With the RTX it is more than 50%. So triples with an RTX 3080 are definately performing well. On a busy Syria server I got always more than 50 FPS. If I find the time I will compare my benchmark I did earlier with the new card. Still the card is at 100% utilization and still the GPU is the bottleneck in my system. But this is complaining on a very high level.

Edited September 24, 2021 by xoxen

[SchumiF399]

On 9/24/2021 at 3:29 PM, xoxen said:

Today I received my new RTX 3080 as I was not satisfied with the performance of the RX 6800 XT at triples. What should I say, difference like night and day. When switching from my old GTX 1080 Ti to the RX 6800 XT I gathered around 10% more performance. With the RTX it is more than 50%. So triples with an RTX 3080 are definately performing well. On a busy Syria server I got always more than 50 FPS. If I find the time I will compare my benchmark I did earlier with the new card. Still the card is at 100% utilization and still the GPU is the bottleneck in my system. But this is complaining on a very high level.

 

Congrats on picking up a 3080 man. This gives me some hope that I can achieve a locked 60fps with a better processor. I would be interested in a new comparison if you have the time. Your last analysis was very thorough. Enjoy your new card. 

[xoxen]

Hi, thanks for the wishes. I´m really happy with this card. I just did a quick test to compare your settings with my hardware. I used your settings, 3 Screens, your resolution and got the following results:

 

I did the same again with my settings, 1 camera and my resolution:

 

As a result we have 34 vs. 40 FPS (+17%) and 47 vs. 68 FPS (+44%). Both without the usage of the Mod. With activated Mod I achieved 80 FPS instead of the 47 (+70%).

I did not find the time for further testing but I believe this already shows the extra power I achieved by switching to the 3080.

Xoxen

[SchumiF399]

4 hours ago, xoxen said:

Hi, thanks for the wishes. I´m really happy with this card. I just did a quick test to compare your settings with my hardware. I used your settings, 3 Screens, your resolution and got the following results:

 

I did the same again with my settings, 1 camera and my resolution:

 

As a result we have 34 vs. 40 FPS (+17%) and 47 vs. 68 FPS (+44%). Both without the usage of the Mod. With activated Mod I achieved 80 FPS instead of the 47 (+70%).

I did not find the time for further testing but I believe this already shows the extra power I achieved by switching to the 3080.

Xoxen

Thank you again Xoxen. 

[SchumiF399]

Quick update to this thread. I just ordered a 12900kf. We’ll see how much performance uplift (if any) this upgrade will produce. 

[xoxen]

I'm curious about the outcome.

[xoxen]

On 11/13/2021 at 3:52 AM, SchumiF399 said:

Quick update to this thread. I just ordered a 12900kf. We’ll see how much performance uplift (if any) this upgrade will produce. 

Any news about your new CPU?

[SchumiF399]

On 11/20/2021 at 2:38 AM, xoxen said:

Any news about your new CPU?

It was supposed to be here Saturday but UPS hasn’t delivered it. I just checked and it is in my city so it should be delivered today hopefully. If the tracking site does not show it “on truck for delivery” soon I’m gonna go pick it up in person cause I can’t wait anymore lol.