PC recommendations in the post MT DCS world

Mr_sukebe · March 12, 2023

Multi-threading has arrived, and for many of us, the benefits seem to have been pretty damn awesome.

For my own system (i5 9700, 64GB, 3080ti, SSD), I've seen such an improvement in VR that I've got increased frame rates and have ALSO been able to up some of the visual niceties.

My deepest thanks to the ED team for that.

Before going any further, clearly we still have a few persons with issues, which I do sympathise with, but please do NOT use this thread to simply re-state that you've had issues. There's a bug section for that.

Where I'm starting to think is what the implications are for new builds.

To date, Intel has almost always been top dog, as the performance of the single core running DCS has been paramount. With MT, chances are that it's not the same any more.

A few questions that I think would be good for the community to put there heads to understanding:

Has the improvement simply being down to spread out the workload across more cores, which for example, in my case has been very simple for MT to take advantage of the other 7 cores which really weren't trying very much previously
I was assuming (incorrectly) that we'd end up very GPU limited. When I was testing on Friday, my GPU usage was at 80% with MT and the new frame rate and config settings. So MT appears to have offloaded some of the workload from the GPU
The newer Intel CPUs have both P and E cores. The P being doing the "heavy lifting" the E for peripheral processing. In MT, is workload using the resources of both P and E, or just P?
If you have an older CPU like mine, which has 8 cores, but no hyperthreading, would a move to a CPU with hyperthreading help, or is the CPU already at it's limit?
Does this meaning that the big 16 core AMD units are now the "CPU of choice" for DCS?

I don't know the answers to any of the above, but I think that it would be great for us to understand.

It's also worth remembering that

This is MT v1. It's quite possible that there are further refinements and enhancements in the pipeline
We know that both Vulkan and DLSS are incoming
Some of the newer VR headsets are now supporting Eye-tracking for dynamic foveated rendering. Chances are that ED will add in whatever bit of code that's needed to enable it for DCS

Exciting times ahead.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Mr_sukebe

Fakum · March 19, 2023

I am doing new build research myself as my rig has not benefitted. I will be following this thread for advise as well. Thanks for the post.

SCHiZO · March 20, 2023

I have a Ryzen 5800X, X570S motherboard, 32GB of RAM and an RTX 3080. Before MT was introduced I was seeing 45-50 FPS on High settings, with View Distance on Extreme. Now I'm seeing 60+ FPS with almost everything maxed out. My monitor is 21:9, 1440p, 144Hz. While I only see around 60-70 FPS its a very nice boost in performance.

Edited March 20, 2023 by SCHiZO

Thinder · May 28, 2023

Mentioning FPS is not enough, what matters most is where you get your FPS, from mid to high altitude there isn't the same load on your PC due to a much lower level of redraw than at very low level in a valley surrounded by trees, which is where I do my flight testing...

My DCS settings are maxed out but even at lower FPS, the game plays smooth, GPU frequency have been lowered by 10% for the purpose of this test...

From id to high altitude you can nearly double your FPS, so there isn't much point testing over 500Ft, 100Ft and even lower is better for testing a rig.

>>>

Flight Test Saab J29 Tunnan.

Edited May 28, 2023 by Thinder

ElCuco68 · May 30, 2023

Quick question: I put this system together about 5 years ago, maybe 6 or 7, it's all a blur. I tried to future-proof it as much as possible, but I'm guessing it's a good time to gut it, replave the MB, GPU, and CPU at a minimum, and probably the RAM as well. I think the PSU (EVGA P2 1200) and case are probably reusable. I could use some guidance on what would be the best timing, and best use of money, to future-proof my next build. I'd like to keep it under $3-5k or less, and love EBay for getting deals, but don't want to spend lots of cash on stuff that doesn't return much.

Also, any recommendations for utilizing what I have over the next 6 months or so with VR and MT until I can replace everything, or if this would even be able to realize any improvement with MT?

Thanks!