Question before buying something new: Performance summary for 2.8.2?

[TOViper]

Guys, I am asking you for your experiences with the performance of latest OB 2.8.2.
Maybe you find some little words describing your own experiences, please keep it as short as possible.

I read that VR seems to be very performance hungry, and I also read that terrain shadows seem to cause bigger performance issues.
Is there something else you have experienced?

My experience - currently - is basically this:
Terrain shadows OFF and on a normal single computer screen I get very good performance.
Terrain shadows ON and flying in VR ... my computer really struggles.

I am asking because I consider upgrading my GTX 1080 TI OC WC to another card, maybe RTX 2080.
But before my final decision, I just want to clear things up a bit - at least for me, but maybe for others as well.

Thanks anyway and kind regards,
TOViper

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by TOViper

[speed-of-heat]

There is a known bug that is being, probably caused by the soft edges added to shadows.

[rob10]

In my inexpert opinion, the 1080 is underestimated in how good it is for what is now an older card.  IIRC what I read from back when it was more current, going to a 2080 might not gain you as much as you might think.  You might be better to wait until you can go to a 30xx card (which might mean other upgrades too).

[Flappie]

4 minutes ago, rob10 said:

In my inexpert opinion, the 1080 is underestimated in how good it is for what is now an older card.  IIRC what I read from back when it was more current, going to a 2080 might not gain you as much as you might think.  You might be better to wait until you can go to a 30xx card (which might mean other upgrades too).

I agree.

I very recently realized that DCS was CPU bound on my rig. It's made of a 1080Ti and a Ryzen 2700X. I would lower graphics settings and barely see a difference. Then I overclocked my CPU, and I saw a difference at last. I'm planning to switch to a 5800X3D and see how much I can get from my 1080 Ti in 2023.

@TOViper First determine if you're CPU or GPU bound.

[TOViper]

2 hours ago, Flappie said:

@TOViper First determine if you're CPU or GPU bound.

The GPU is usually the bottleneck, but of course this strongly depends on the settings I use.
I chose settings before each mission ... depending on night/day, sea/land, etc. .... *pffff*

Edited February 8, 2023 by TOViper

[QuiGon]

12 hours ago, TOViper said:

Guys, I am asking you for your experiences with the performance of latest OB 2.8.2.
Maybe you find some little words describing your own experiences, please keep it as short as possible.

I read that VR seems to be very performance hungry, and I also read that terrain shadows seem to cause bigger performance issues.
Is there something else you have experienced?

My experience - currently - is basically this:
Terrain shadows OFF and on a normal single computer screen I get very good performance.
Terrain shadows ON and flying in VR ... my computer really struggles.

I am aksing because I consider upgrading my GTX 1080 TI OC WC to another card, maybe RTX 2080.
But before my final decision, I just want to clear things up a bit - at least for me, but maybe for others as well.

Thanks anyway and kind regards,
TOViper

There's actually a thread on the German part of the forums about the VR performance in 2.8 that you might find interesting if you're German speaking which I believe you are :

 

[Kovacs]

1 hour ago, QuiGon said:

There's actually a thread on the German part of the forums about the VR performance in 2.8 that you might find interesting if you're German speaking which I believe you are :

 

I did 6 years of German at school, saved And indeed the thread is very interesting. I'm beginning to understand, DCS 2.8, it is as hopeless as Don Quixote's battle against the windmills.

[speed-of-heat]

there is absolutely nothing new in that thread...

[Kovacs]

26 minutes ago, speed-of-heat said:

there is absolutely nothing new in that thread...

This is nothing new under the sun, you might say. 

[Kovacs]

In VR, after disabling terrain object Shadows things seem to be going better !  I'm going to try a long mission to see if the performance still deteriorates over time.

attached you'll find my conf in DCS. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Kovacs

[TOViper]

1 minute ago, Kovacs said:

In VR, after disabling terrain object Shadows things seem to be going better !  I'm going to try a long mission to see if the performance still deteriorates over time.

attached you'll find my conf in DCS. null

Kovacs, a quick side note: You may find it useful to set "Textures" to Medium. In another thread (and this applies to my rig as well), the frame rate is better, having in mind the little less quality...

[Kovacs]

1 hour ago, TOViper said:

Kovacs, a quick side note: You may find it useful to set "Textures" to Medium. In another thread (and this applies to my rig as well), the frame rate is better, having in mind the little less quality...

Thanks TOViper. 

[TOViper]

20 hours ago, Flappie said:

I agree.

I very recently realized that DCS was CPU bound on my rig. It's made of a 1080Ti and a Ryzen 2700X. I would lower graphics settings and barely see a difference. Then I overclocked my CPU, and I saw a difference at last. I'm planning to switch to a 5800X3D and see how much I can get from my 1080 Ti in 2023.

@TOViper First determine if you're CPU or GPU bound.

Hi Flappie!

I need your professional opinion on this, just to confirm what I have recently talked about with Quigon.
I made a screenshot of the situation:
.) Pixel Density 2.0
.) Low details or even no details in the DCS settings
.) No shadows at all
.) Visibilty low
FPS in my reference mission is about 65 fps, for which the limit clearly is the GPU.

This is what the task manager says when I assign 3 cores to DCS.exe (upper row) and 3 cores to OVRServer_x64.exe (bottom row):

I think a faster GPU would increase the fps significantly, and when - hopefully - reaching 90 fps (which is the Oculus Rift CV1 max fps), I can then slowly add details like shadows, clouds, etc. again. Would you agree?

Edited February 8, 2023 by TOViper

[Flappie]

To start with, I'm hoping that my little story below will convince you that I'm far from being a professional when it comes to PC optimization! My real-life job is to test software with no 3D involved.

My PC is behaving like yours when playing DCS:

• GPU running @100%
• CPU staring at me like "give me more work, I'm bored".

This made me believe for a very long time that my PC was GPU-limited, since many gamers use to say that whatever reaches 100% first is bottlenecking your PC.

A few weeks ago, I did a lot of performance tests using different DCS settings. I was astonished to get such low FPS while using moderate graphics settings. Someone suggested that maybe my PC was simply CPU-limited, not GPU-limited. I first thought: "impossible, my GPU is always @100%", it can't do more. Then I did a little search on the Internet and found out that Nvidia drivers make the best of the GPU whatever happens, which means NVIDIA GPU @100% doesn't necessarily means the GPU is the limiting factor (explanations).

I had an idea: since MSAA is post-treatment and dealt with by the GPU, why not comparing FPS using no MSAA, MSAA x2 and MSAA x4? Surprise! This made little difference, and my GPU was still running @100%.

OK, time to test my CPU. I had been using a Ryzen 2700X for many years without overclocking it, and my RAM was supposed to run @3000 MHz. I realized my motherboard BIOS was very old and decided to update it to the latest version. Another suprise: my motherboard is compatible with the much celebrated Ryzen 5800X3D. This could come in handy if my tests were to show I'm CPU-limited...

1. After I updated the BIOS, I checked my FPS: no change (blue curve ).
2. Then I re-set my memory frequency using the new BIOS: I chose 3000 MHz (my RAM's "nominal" frequency). "No change", I thought...wait! (orange curve ).
3. Then I tried my motherboard "Gaming Boost" (automatic CPU overclocking mode) (yellow curve ).
4. Then I tried both "Gaming Boost" + "Precision Boost Overdrive" together (green curve , let's get back to 3).

 

I'm now convinced my PC is CPU-limited. As I said earlier, I plan to buy a Ryzen 5800X3D. I'll let you know the results.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Flappie

[TOViper]

Handing over a "super-thanks" to you. I am looking forward in reading about your new CPU!

[rob10]

I don't know much of the details of that stuff, but thanks for sharing Flappie.  Very interesting post.

[Tomcat388th]

On 2/7/2023 at 1:24 PM, TOViper said:

Guys, I am asking you for your experiences with the performance of latest OB 2.8.2.
Maybe you find some little words describing your own experiences, please keep it as short as possible.

I read that VR seems to be very performance hungry, and I also read that terrain shadows seem to cause bigger performance issues.
Is there something else you have experienced?

My experience - currently - is basically this:
Terrain shadows OFF and on a normal single computer screen I get very good performance.
Terrain shadows ON and flying in VR ... my computer really struggles.

I am asking because I consider upgrading my GTX 1080 TI OC WC to another card, maybe RTX 2080.
But before my final decision, I just want to clear things up a bit - at least for me, but maybe for others as well.

Thanks anyway and kind regards,
TOViper

 

 

I went from a stock 1080 to a 3060 with my older computer which was a dell workstation xeon3.2 gb and 32gb ram.  That rig got me in mid 30's-low 40's fps Single player and MP 30-40's . Med dcs settings. I just recently upgraded my motherboard cpu and ram. AMD 5800X3D,asus b550 prime plus MB, ddr4 3600ram. Now in SP I'm low 40-50's MP it hovers right around 40's. Plus I was ablet to bump up some of the dcs settings still experimenting with that to find the happy medium. This is with a reverb g2 ver1 and using openxr toolkit for tweaking

J

[TOViper]

@allguys:
Thanks for sharing your experiences so far.

I found what I was looking for, and I with knowing some more little details I finally decided to wait with buying something new.
Furthermore, I am really looking forward for the multi-core version of DCS, which I hope gives a little boost.
Also, I really hope ED manages to improve the "Terrain shadows" a bit. *fingerscrossed*
Its really disappointing to see such a wonderful DCS world without shadows ... never thought it would become so important...
Again, I just can tell you there is no flying DCS without VR; its still magic to me, even after years.