Very Long Loading Times

[Valium]

I have the same problem. What's more, huge fps loss after a few minutes often but not always. 

 

It's all after the latest update and I think here's a problem.

It's not mod problem or something just optimalisation. Before update but with MT it was working great. All graphic settings set almost to max and 120 fps.
Now no SSAA, MSAA on 2x and 103-105 fps and often after a few minutes 40-60.

 

i7-13700K

RTX3080

64GB RAM

SSD for DCS only

Edited March 30, 2023 by Valium

[Valium]

On 3/17/2023 at 4:41 PM, wurger13 said:

Possible workaround.

I have been seeing very long loading times in Multi Thread for missions and the mission editor when changing maps.  I have noticed the following when changing maps in the mission editor and loading a mission that is different from the previous map.

1. If I click on the mission to open it, I get the loading screen but the progress bar at the bottom never changes. I just sits there like nothing is happening. The loading screen stays in this state if I don't do anything. 
2. If I then just L click anywhere on the screen (after about 10 sec), my mouse pointer changes to the spinney blue circle... Then, If I click one more time I get the windows dialog "The program is not responding etc". The progress bar then begins to fill about 10%.  Then I click "wait for the program to respond" and the progress bar fills at the normal rate and the mission opens.

It is weird as hell... But is completely repeatable.

I should add, this is after a fresh repair and clean with no-mods installed apart from TacView.

 

That's the way I did, also with alt+ctrl+delete. It destroyed my DCS totally that I had to install everything once again.

[Nereid]

I think I found a solution for this. The workaround that works for me:

1. Start DCS 
2. Open the Task-Manager
3. Go to the details tab and find the process DCS.exe
4. Rightclick the process and select "Set Affinity"
5. Uncheck all cores that relates to E-cores for your CPU 

Point 5 is the tricky one. I'm using a 13700K with 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The E-Cores are the last 8 in the list (as far as I know). After unchecking the last 8 cores, the loading times are even faster or at the same level than non multithreaded.

 

 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Nereid

[evilnate]

5 hours ago, Nereid said:

I think I found a solution for this. The workaround that works for me:

1. Start DCS 
2. Open the Task-Manager
3. Go to the details tab and find the process DCS.exe
4. Rightclick the process and select "Set Affinity"
5. Uncheck all cores that relates to E-cores for your CPU 

Point 5 is the tricky one. I'm using a 13700K with 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The E-Cores are the last 8 in the list (as far as I know). After unchecking the last 8 cores, the loading times are even faster or at the same level than non multithreaded.

 

 

 

Interesting, will try when I get home. Does this change stick or is it necessary to do this each time DCSMT is launched?

[Nereid]

20 minutes ago, evilnate said:

Interesting, will try when I get home. Does this change stick or is it necessary to do this each time DCSMT is launched?

You will have to change this each time. But there is a program called "Process Lasso" that does this automatially. Unfortunatelly it doesn't work reliable for me and doesn't set the affinity in some cases. But it shows what cores are the E-cores at least.

I have tried this over 10 times so far and every time the loading times were quite normal with the workaround.

And without it the loading times are really a pain in the... 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Nereid

[Nereid]

I did some tests regarding performance:

NMT   = Non MT version of DCS
MT-8E = MT version of DCS without 8 E-cores
MT-4E = MT version of DCS without 4 E-cores
MT-2E = MT version of DCS without 2 E-cores
MT    = MT version of DCS with all E-cores (affinity unchanged)

 

AH-64D, Caucasus, Cold Start, external view only

NMT:   80 fps, 25 seconds to load
MT-2E: 80 fps, 41 seconds to load
MT-4E: 80 fps, 25 seconds to load
MT-8E: 80 fps, 25 seconds to loa
MT:    85 fps, up to 5 minutes to load

So no real performance gain or loss. And in one case I got 90 fps for MT-8E. 

 

F/A-18C, Syria, free flight, no flight input (just let the bird fly on its own, slowly descending for about 15 seconds down to the small town/buildings)

NMT:   80 fps down to 65 fps, about 30 seconds to load
MT-4E: 95 fps down to 80 fps, about 30 seconds to load
MT-8E: 95 fps down to 80 fps, about 30 seconds to load
MT:    95 to 100 fps down to 80 or 82 fps, about 3 minutes to load

Disabling the 8 E-cores seems to have a small negative impact on performance but it is still better than NMT. And the impact is hard to notice and maybe it was just some kind of confirmation bias or pure coincidence.

 

All Affinity changes were made by Process Lasso and no Alt-Tabbing was done.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Nereid

[evilnate]

On 4/10/2023 at 8:42 AM, Nereid said:

You will have to change this each time. But there is a program called "Process Lasso" that does this automatially. Unfortunatelly it doesn't work reliable for me and doesn't set the affinity in some cases. But it shows what cores are the E-cores at least.

I have tried this over 10 times so far and every time the loading times were quite normal with the workaround.

And without it the loading times are really a pain in the... 

 

Disabling many e cores fixed load times for me. Windows 10, i9 13900k.

[Nereid]

1 hour ago, evilnate said:

Disabling many e cores fixed load times for me. Windows 10, i9 13900k.

I have to add that even disabling P-cores seems to fix it. There is a rumor that disabling cores disable MT, but a closer look with the process manager and some performance checks do not confirm this. And if you have to "disable" a core then anybody would go for the E-cores.

[evilnate]

38 minutes ago, Nereid said:

I have to add that even disabling P-cores seems to fix it. There is a rumor that disabling cores disable MT, but a closer look with the process manager and some performance checks do not confirm this. And if you have to "disable" a core then anybody would go for the E-cores.

Now that you mention it, my game performance did seem to suffer other than loading mission faster.

[Valium]

On 4/10/2023 at 11:56 AM, Nereid said:

I think I found a solution for this. The workaround that works for me:

1. Start DCS 
2. Open the Task-Manager
3. Go to the details tab and find the process DCS.exe
4. Rightclick the process and select "Set Affinity"
5. Uncheck all cores that relates to E-cores for your CPU 

Point 5 is the tricky one. I'm using a 13700K with 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The E-Cores are the last 8 in the list (as far as I know). After unchecking the last 8 cores, the loading times are even faster or at the same level than non multithreaded.

 

 

 

Indeed, it works. I have to check it a few times.

[Nereid]

3 hours ago, evilnate said:

Now that you mention it, my game performance did seem to suffer other than loading mission faster.

For me it is stll better than non MT. But there seems to be a difference. In my tests with the AH-64D there is really no difference between non MT and a start with disabled cores. But even with all cores performance is not that much better. But the results are indeed strange. There is a difference for the F-18 though.

Problem is: Loading times of 3 to 5 minutes are more than just a nuisance. 

PS: Maybe they calculate the number of used threads on the number cores and with to many cores there is just one thread "too many" so that a deadlock or resource contention is caused? Debugging such bugs is often hard. But I haven't seen any differences in the threads used with the process manager.

2 hours ago, Valium said:

Indeed, it works. I have to check it a few times.

Check your fps after doing it please and make a comparison with the non MT version.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Nereid

[Valium]

1 hour ago, Nereid said:

For me it is stll better than non MT. But there seems to be a difference. In my tests with the AH-64D there is really no difference between non MT and a start with disabled cores. But even with all cores performances is not that much better. But the results are indeed strange. There is a difference for the F-18 though.

Problem is: Loading times of 3 to 5 minutes are more than just a nuisance. 

Check your fps after doing it please and make a comparison with the non MT version.

Without your solution: loading time from menu to mission editor - about 2 mins, fps 109-119 

With your solution: loading time from menu to mission editor - about 19 sec, fps 109-119 (maybe a 3 less) but it's honestly hard to tell because this amount is still changing between 109 and 119 in both cases and sometimes without your solution, mission got loaded with 92 fps with no cause.

[YoYo]

DCS Open Beta 2.8.4.38947.
I think now is a lot better, however I changed HT=on again (loading time is few seconds again only).

 

[Nereid]

14 hours ago, YoYo said:

DCS Open Beta 2.8.4.38947.
I think now is a lot better, however I changed HT=on again (loading time is few seconds again only).

Because of time constraints and real life I could only test this once. But it seems that it loads much quicker now even without fiddling with affinities. The progress bar behaves differently than in ST but it changes in the first few seconds (it never did before), then  it stops and after 10 seconds or so it suddenly moves to the end and the loading time was quite normal. But I didn't use a stopwatch to verify this and maybe I'm wrong.

I have never disabled HT on my machine.

[Valium]

Well, it seems problem was solved after update I think. 
It's loading fast without your solution but I'll be testing it.

I also had different problem before with fps loss after a few minutes but haven't done any longer flight.

Does somebody know if SSAA works now?

[Avenger31]

Still the same… long loading time

[RyboPops]

The latest updates seems to have fixed it for me and I don't have to do the click-to-load minigame anymore. Fingers crossed it stays that way...

[crazyave]

My loading times in MT got reasonable again.  I don't think it was the last update, but possibly.  I get better performance in ST though, I've given up on MT, it's no good on my system.

Edited April 21, 2023 by crazyave

[THATDUUDE_GAMES]

On 4/10/2023 at 5:56 AM, Nereid said:

I think I found a solution for this. The workaround that works for me:

1. Start DCS 
2. Open the Task-Manager
3. Go to the details tab and find the process DCS.exe
4. Rightclick the process and select "Set Affinity"
5. Uncheck all cores that relates to E-cores for your CPU 

Point 5 is the tricky one. I'm using a 13700K with 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The E-Cores are the last 8 in the list (as far as I know). After unchecking the last 8 cores, the loading times are even faster or at the same level than non multithreaded.

 

 

 

Maybe I'm mistaken (probably am) but, I'm not sure my Ryzen 5900x has e-cores. When I look it up, I only seem to see e-cores in reference to intel processors. 

[Valium]

After latest update, loading is really fast now. You can see a little stutters every a few seconds but changing fps amount to stable 60-70 solves a problem. 

 

[Nereid]

On 5/1/2023 at 4:32 AM, THATDUUDE_GAMES said:

Maybe I'm mistaken (probably am) but, I'm not sure my Ryzen 5900x has e-cores. When I look it up, I only seem to see e-cores in reference to intel processors. 

I was not talking about any Ryzen. But the long loading times are gone.

Edited July 13, 2023 by Nereid

[cesarferrolho]

On 4/10/2023 at 10:56 AM, Nereid said:

I think I found a solution for this. The workaround that works for me:

1. Start DCS 
2. Open the Task-Manager
3. Go to the details tab and find the process DCS.exe
4. Rightclick the process and select "Set Affinity"
5. Uncheck all cores that relates to E-cores for your CPU 

Point 5 is the tricky one. I'm using a 13700K with 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores. The E-Cores are the last 8 in the list (as far as I know). After unchecking the last 8 cores, the loading times are even faster or at the same level than non multithreaded.

Thanks !!! That did it for me !

I disabled the last 4 threads which likely correspond to the 4 E-Cores i have. Is there a way to have this action automated when i start the game?

(I'm already using DCS Open Beta 2.9, by the way) 

Regards

[speed-of-heat]

3 minutes ago, cesarferrolho said:

Thanks !!! That did it for me !

I disabled the last 4 threads which likely correspond to the 4 E-Cores i have. Is there a way to have this action automated when i start the game?

(I'm already using DCS Open Beta 2.9, by the way) 

Regards

Here is a batch file that wiill do it, you need to have nircmd (NirCmd - Windows command line tool (nirsoft.net)) installed on your pc;

 

:SetAffinity
    REM Define the process name
    set "process_name=DCS.exe"
    REM Initialize the PID variable
    set "pid="
    REM Use WMIC to get the PID and store it in the variable
    for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('wmic process where "name='%process_name%'" get ProcessId ^| findstr /r "[0-9]"') do (
        set "pid=%%a"setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
        goto :found_pid
    )
    REM If the process was not found, display a message
    if not defined pid (
        echo The process "%process_name%" was not found.
        goto END
    )

    REM Label to exit the loop
    :found_pid
    REM Display the PID
    echo The PID of "%process_name%" is %pid%, Setting the Affinity to not use CPU 16 17 18 19 (the eCores)
 
    nircmd setprocessaffinity /%pid% 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
    goto END
:END

 

[cesarferrolho]

6 hours ago, speed-of-heat said:

Here is a batch file that wiill do it, you need to have nircmd (NirCmd - Windows command line tool (nirsoft.net)) installed on your pc;

 

:SetAffinity
    REM Define the process name
    set "process_name=DCS.exe"
    REM Initialize the PID variable
    set "pid="
    REM Use WMIC to get the PID and store it in the variable
    for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('wmic process where "name='%process_name%'" get ProcessId ^| findstr /r "[0-9]"') do (
        set "pid=%%a"setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
        goto :found_pid
    )
    REM If the process was not found, display a message
    if not defined pid (
        echo The process "%process_name%" was not found.
        goto END
    )

    REM Label to exit the loop
    :found_pid
    REM Display the PID
    echo The PID of "%process_name%" is %pid%, Setting the Affinity to not use CPU 16 17 18 19 (the eCores)
 
    nircmd setprocessaffinity /%pid% 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
    goto END
:END

 

Thank you very much!!! It seems to work well

[speed-of-heat]

14 minutes ago, cesarferrolho said:

Thank you very much!!! It seems to work well

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