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GPU usage only at 40%, GTX-980


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When flying the other night, I hit Win + G to do a quick screen record during my flight and noticed my GPU usage was only at 40-45%. So I checked in HW Monitor and saw the same. CPU usage was around 70% on the highest core, GPU was at 40%, RAM usage at 75%, and VRAM at 100%. Frame rate is typically 30-50 in SP, 20-30's in MP.

My system specs are:

MSI 990-FXA Gaming MOBO

AMD FX-8120

32 GB RAM DDR3

MSI GTX-980 4G, nVidia driver 471.11

SSD's for both windows and DCS

Single 27" 1080p monitor

I'm not in a position for new system or upgraded components right now, so I need to work with what I have. What can I do to better optimize my setup, or better question, have my GPU do more? While I wouldn't mind better framerates, better/smoother rendering would be nice.

Below are screenshots of my settings and HW Monitor readings.

 

Screen_220314_092919.png

nvidia settings.png

CPU.png

MOBO.png

CPU.png


Edited by Diesel_Thunder

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DCS is heavily CPU bound, and is thread limited currently.

You want more frames? Time for a CPU upgrade. Your AMD FX-8120 is pretty old after all, being from 2013. It's very long in the tooth.
I sacked my FX-8150 off 3-ish years ago for a Ryzen 2700x, and that's was eclipsed rapidly as AMD made approx a 33% increase in single thread performance on the following generation of chips.

Even the budget end of the current AMD processors are much faster:

Eg, a basic 6 core Ryzen 5 5600x is literally more than twice as fast as your 8120.
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-5600X-vs-AMD-FX-8120/4084vsm173

I know you said you're not in a position to upgrade currently, but them's the breaks unfortunately.


Edited by Buzzles
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4 hours ago, Buzzles said:

DCS is heavily CPU bound, and is thread limited currently.

You want more frames? Time for a CPU upgrade. Your AMD FX-8120 is pretty old after all, being from 2013. It's very long in the tooth.
I sacked my FX-8150 off 3-ish years ago for a Ryzen 2700x, and that's was eclipsed rapidly as AMD made approx a 33% increase in single thread performance on the following generation of chips.

Even the budget end of the current AMD processors are much faster:

Eg, a basic 6 core Ryzen 5 5600x is literally more than twice as fast as your 8120.
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-5600X-vs-AMD-FX-8120/4084vsm173

I know you said you're not in a position to upgrade currently, but them's the breaks unfortunately.

 

While I would love to get new hardware, it ain't in the cards right now. And if it were, I'd be building a new system instead of upgrading this one.

I know I don't have the greatest hardware, but I am trying to make the best of what I have. Which at the moment, isn't even running at full capacity with 70% CPU usage and 40% GPU usage while flying DCS.

I want to have my hardware running running more towards it's capabilities, especially the GPU. Which is why I asked what I could do better with my settings with what I have.

PC: MSI X670E, Ryzen 9 7900X, 64GB DDR5 RAM, RTX 3090 Ti, TM Warthog HOTAS, Saitek Pro Flight pedals, Opentrack

Link to my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/DieselThunderAviation

Commander, 62nd Virtual Fighter Squadron

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7 hours ago, Diesel_Thunder said:

While I would love to get new hardware, it ain't in the cards right now. And if it were, I'd be building a new system instead of upgrading this one.

I know I don't have the greatest hardware, but I am trying to make the best of what I have. Which at the moment, isn't even running at full capacity with 70% CPU usage and 40% GPU usage while flying DCS.

I want to have my hardware running running more towards it's capabilities, especially the GPU. Which is why I asked what I could do better with my settings with what I have.

If that's the case, do everything you can to limit CPU usage. Only run missions with very little AI automation / scripting. Preferably with no LUA scripts at all. Chances are it won't be enough even then - but it's the best you can do without upgrading sorry.

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I'd try losing "motion blur" and "heat blur" as well as changing "terrain object shadows" to "flat" . You should see a significant gain in fps with those changes .

Also , have you enabled "XMP" in the bios memory settings ?


Edited by Svsmokey
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Do yourself a favour and disable the civ traffic completely and as far as I know that chimney smoke should give you an extra headroom if you lower it to min.

You could try to raise your preload radius as you have 32 GB of RAM and this should help you a bit in flight as I guess that the permanent loading while in flight could be noticable on your rather slow CPU (sorry to say, but this thing is a slug).

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@Svsmokey @FR4GGL3 Thank you for the advice, I'll tweak those settings next time I fly. :drinks_cheers:

I also tried a couple other things last night. I updated the Nvidia driver to current (511.79), which had a negligible impact. The second thing I tried was setting vSync to fast in the Nvidia control panel. That had a big impact, for the better. Smoother rendering, my FPS went up some, but my GPU use is now 100%! Feels better flying around, and also feels good knowing my GPU is working to its capability, instead of not doing much at 40% load like before.

PC: MSI X670E, Ryzen 9 7900X, 64GB DDR5 RAM, RTX 3090 Ti, TM Warthog HOTAS, Saitek Pro Flight pedals, Opentrack

Link to my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/DieselThunderAviation

Commander, 62nd Virtual Fighter Squadron

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On 3/14/2022 at 11:56 PM, Svsmokey said:

Also , have you enabled "XMP" in the bios memory settings ?

I don’t have XMP enabled, but I do believe my RAM is capable of it. How much of a boost do you think that would give?

PC: MSI X670E, Ryzen 9 7900X, 64GB DDR5 RAM, RTX 3090 Ti, TM Warthog HOTAS, Saitek Pro Flight pedals, Opentrack

Link to my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/DieselThunderAviation

Commander, 62nd Virtual Fighter Squadron

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It depends... you could gain up to 50ish % bandwidth. It depends on your default clock and where to XMP will take you.

It's hard to measure in FPS, it likely runs smoother and may gain 2-5 fps.

 

Try it out 😉

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