7900 xtx low gpu utilzation

[bomkata]

So i just got a red devil 7900 xtx /oc edition and every other game i play has great frames and near if not 100% gpu utilization. When playing dcs mp services im getting between 40- 60% gpu utilization and around 40-60 frames which is super low considering my other card a 3080 lhr was getting better utilization and better frames anyone know if i am missing something here or is this some kinda driver issue to do with how dcs works?  

 

My cpu is  ryzen 9 5900x and i do have the smart access memory turned on as well as 32 gigs of ddr4 3200hz mem installed and on a m.2

Edited February 8, 2023 by bomkata

[Dragon1-1]

DCS uses an outdated rendering paradigm that does not utilize the GPU particularly efficiently (basically, it's a lot like what being single-threaded does to CPU use). Until Vulkan comes out and fixes that, we'll not be able to get the most out of even relatively old-ish GPUs. 

[SkateZilla]

This is normal until you get MT and Vulkan, due to the bottlenecks present in the ST Core and DX11.

[Mr_sukebe]

Sounds like your CPU clock speed is bottlenecking your system.

Do you have 64GB of RAM?  If so, for single player missions, you can offload some of the AI logic by running a dedicated server locally on the same PC, such that the dedicated server uses a different CPU core.  It needs well over 32GB of ram, and another 200GB of storage to host the dedicated server, but that would help.

Another thought is that if your GPU is taking it easy, ramp up the graphics a little to take up the slack and make DCS look better.  My opinion is that it’s good to NOT have the GPU at 100% in DCS as for me, that results in stutters.  I tend to shoot for around 70-80% usage

 

[LucShep]

4 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Another thought is that if your GPU is taking it easy, ramp up the graphics a little to take up the slack and make DCS look better.  My opinion is that it’s good to NOT have the GPU at 100% in DCS as for me, that results in stutters.  I tend to shoot for around 70-80% usage

Absolutely. 
Anything over 85% is pushing the GPU, thermally and performance wise (not to mention electricity cost as it ramps wattage up!).

Aim at 75% ~ 85%, and set your game settings for that GPU usage percentage.
That way, you also have margin for a framerate hit in certain unplanned situations (explosions, low altitude over forests and towns, etc).
 

Edited February 9, 2023 by LucShep

[fastfed]

Just wanted to say everyone is wrong, I just upgraded to a 7900 xtx from my 6900

 

Original poster and I have EXACT specs, even the same monitor.

 

I am seeing 96-100% usage and awesome frames. This is something else. Cache some how? although he did do a clean and deleted those folders in DCS and no change. something is wrong here

[derneuemann]

Am 12.2.2023 um 02:02 schrieb fastfed:

Just wanted to say everyone is wrong, I just upgraded to a 7900 xtx from my 6900

 

Original poster and I have EXACT specs, even the same monitor.

 

I am seeing 96-100% usage and awesome frames. This is something else. Cache some how? although he did do a clean and deleted those folders in DCS and no change. something is wrong here

Do you happen to play in VR too?
One reads again and again that AMD has problems here...

[SkateZilla]

On 2/11/2023 at 8:02 PM, fastfed said:

Just wanted to say everyone is wrong, I just upgraded to a 7900 xtx from my 6900

 

Original poster and I have EXACT specs, even the same monitor.

 

I am seeing 96-100% usage and awesome frames. This is something else. Cache some how? although he did do a clean and deleted those folders in DCS and no change. something is wrong here

The only time you'd ever see 85% utilization in DCS is if your in the sky with no terrain or objects nearby, in a cockpit with no MFDs or Mirrors to render multiple viewports.
Once you populate the environment, the object counts and DX11 CPU Overhead bring GPU Utilization down, for EVERY GPU, on EVERY CPU Platform, for EVERY User.

It's a DX11 Fact, Even More so in MP, and Even more so in VR or Multi-Screen systems.

High DCS Object/Unit Counts = DX11 CPU Overhead and Thread bottlenecking.
 

Edited February 14, 2023 by SkateZilla

[ReflexArc]

OP, did you ever figure this out? I'm running into the same issue. GPU utilization 60% and lower framerate than when I hade an RTX 3070 in the system.

 

 Edit: Did a little more googling, either iUFC or DCSDTC make an export.lua modification that limits FPS. Commenting out those lines fixed the issue. See this thread for more details:

 

Edited May 13, 2023 by ReflexArc

[Thinder]

On 2/8/2023 at 4:51 PM, bomkata said:

So i just got a red devil 7900 xtx /oc edition and every other game i play has great frames and near if not 100% gpu utilization. When playing dcs mp services im getting between 40- 60% gpu utilization and around 40-60 frames which is super low considering my other card a 3080 lhr was getting better utilization and better frames anyone know if i am missing something here or is this some kinda driver issue to do with how dcs works?  

 

My cpu is  ryzen 9 5900x and i do have the smart access memory turned on as well as 32 gigs of ddr4 3200hz mem installed and on a m.2

 

  One thing that limits AMD 7900XT/XTX performances is Windows updates: 

Microsoft updates are messing AMD native drivers a lot, some time ago, I received a message from AMD via the Adrenalin Software asking me to check on my drivers because Microsoft were replacing them with their own.

 

This plus: In those updates there are MPO (Multiplace Overlay) settings which prevents the card to boost and if you try to do it manually you end up with crashes and "Driver Time Out" message, to solve the issue I disabled MPO.

The card can now be Manually boosted without crashing and with careful settings and good case cooling it will do so at temperatures below 81°C.

Playing in VR/MT with high settings for tests, Afterburner and Screen recording running, GPU is at 99%, the highest my CPU would go is 70%.

Note that the GPU reaches a Frequency of 2823MHz vs a standard Boost Clock of "Up to" 2680 MHz, VRAM 2662 MHz, all CPU Cores running at 3600MHz, Voltage is 1150 mV.

 

Those GPU are thermally limited as well, they will throttle down if the Junction Temperature get too high, you need good case cooling to keep it within safe limits, in my case I have 5 X case 120mm fans and 1 X CPU fan.

Two of the case fans are under the GPU, one of which blows directly upward from the bottom of the case through an opening, the one in front of the GPU is an NF-A12x15, 15mm thin to fit with the GPU (no room with a standard 20mm), the one blowing upward is a high-airflow Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM 120mm 1850RPM Fan.

The other technical aspect that can limit your GPU performance is the RAM latency, Cl14 will get rid of the CPU-RAM bottleneck and keep your CPU controller from shutting down under load as it would be the case during this test, when it does, its GPU channel see its debit (bandwidth) limited.

I tested GSkill kits compared to the original Crucial Cl16 32GB kit, Cl14/3200, 3600, in 4 X 1 8GB and 4 X 16GB configuration, the 4 X 16GB kit is not only an overkill in terms of capacity it also introduce a CPU Controller limitation with the number of ranks, 4 being the maximum, and since only the 8GB stick are 1 X rank, CPU controller struggle to manage them.

The difference is up to 24% in scores with 3DMark Pro at 4K MSAA X2, in short, an optimized system for 7900XT would be running a Cl14 B.Die kit of 3200 or 3600MHz in a 4 X 1 stick configuration (Interleaving possible with 4 sticks).

Edited May 15, 2023 by Thinder