Special Options - Radar Background Thread

[Ian Boys UK]

I see that in the special menu we can changed the number of threads used for the radar. Default is 4. Will higher or low help stuttering/FPS please?

[av8orDave]

I'm wondering as well. Anyone know what this does or what the impact of changing it is?

[bones1014]

I was getting massive stutter at 4 and turning it down didn't help. I need to try going higher.

[Rainmaker]

Lower. Lower is lower thread usage. Maps will take longer but less demand. 

[bones1014]

I turned my Threads up to 8 and there's no stutter in instant action. I haven't tried multiplayer yet. I'm on a processor with only 12 threads.

[AndyJWest]

If it does what it says it does, the number of CPU cores you have will influence the optimum setting. More cores, more threads...

[HalasKor]

I am using an old laptop with a 1070 and a i7-7700HQ. For me, three threads seems to be my sweet spot. One thread is very bad eight threads are also bad. I am having poor performance when mapping large cities. 

[Ebphoto]

I was getting small micro stutters with the default setting & this is from a very powerful of running the latest Intel chip and a RTX4090. They weren’t a big deal but it was noticeable. I changed the setting to 8 and they are no longer there or at least I’m not noticing them now.

[shagrat]

Can a dev from @Razbam tell us what the setting does?

What are suggestions on typical CPUs?

At least some pointers to number of available cores matching, or exceeding set threads... Or should we expect results balancing available cores with set threads 50/50?

[Q3ark]

31 minutes ago, shagrat said:

Can a dev from @Razbam tell us what the setting does?

What are suggestions on typical CPUs?

At least some pointers to number of available cores matching, or exceeding set threads... Or should we expect results balancing available cores with set threads 50/50?

Just experiment until you find a setting that works for you, I doubt that the devs have the resources to test this on all the different processors that people are using out there, they probably can’t answer your question. 

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

2 minutes ago, Q3ark said:

they probably can’t answer your question

Huh? They are the ones who made that option available in the first place, so if they don't know how to best set it up, who will?

[Bazz_Mulder]

I've noticed that this option is more important when taking ground scans with HRM than on normal A-A/A-G scans.

On my 5800x3d (8c/16th), 4k, high textures and extreme distance, with option set to 12thread I noticed "medium" stutters when doing HRM snaps.

RivaTuner overlay was clearly showing some spikes, I changed value to 8 threads and there was slight spike in timeframe but no stuttering anymore. This is only when HRM renders snap of piece map. 

With TGP "on", cpu usage is even more. I went down to default value of 4 and all is working fine, I don't have any spikes on frametimes so my conclusion is to leave it at default 4, I saw zero profit in game comfort for changing it higher.

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Bazz_Mulder

[bfr]

On 6/24/2023 at 6:05 PM, HalasKor said:

I am using an old laptop with a 1070 and a i7-7700HQ. For me, three threads seems to be my sweet spot. One thread is very bad eight threads are also bad. I am having poor performance when mapping large cities. 

It would hardly be a surprise that giving over 8 threads to the radar would be bad considering your CPU only has 8 (4 cores + HT).

[shagrat]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb Raven (Elysian Angel):

Huh? They are the ones who made that option available in the first place, so if they don't know how to best set it up, who will?

Exactly my point. I did not ask for them to test anything or provide a long list of settings for specific CPUs.

A simple "dial it up/down if you have more cores." or "you should try matching your available cores." etc. would be a great help, because it takes considerable time to really test, if you just randomly try dialing in settings... especially if the results only show under specific conditions and we even have no idea if the "issues" are related to this setting.

[Kayos]

I set mine to 8 and haven't had any issues.  Would be nice to know exactly what it does or how it should be set though.

[diditopgun]

I agree with you, devs should be more specific on that setting.

[bfr]

13 hours ago, shagrat said:

Exactly my point. I did not ask for them to test anything or provide a long list of settings for specific CPUs.

A simple "dial it up/down if you have more cores." or "you should try matching your available cores." etc. would be a great help, because it takes considerable time to really test, if you just randomly try dialing in settings... especially if the results only show under specific conditions and we even have no idea if the "issues" are related to this setting.

Yeah i'd agree that it'd help if they gave some ballpark 'if you have this many available then we suggest you set it to this' guidance. Ideally some kind of benchmarking capability.  I think I bumped the setting up 1 from the default for now and it seems OK  (i7-12700K, so 8P+4E cores and 20 threads available) performance-wise but i'm still very much trying to figure out how to use the AG radar.

[dorianR666]

this is what HRM looks like on AMD 1600X sometimes

had to kill the game from task manager because the fps was so low (>minute per frame)

Edited June 30, 2023 by dorianR666

[Timghetta]

It's simple.

The Special Option is what it says, it allows you to decide how many max background threads to use.
Its defaulted it to 4 threads.

Depending on your processor is going to determine what works best, only you can address this by finding the sweet spot.

There is 2 threads to every core your processor has.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Timghetta

[Tophatter14]

2 hours ago, Timghetta said:

It's simple.

The Special Option is what it says, it allows you to decide how many max background threads to use.
Its defaulted it to 4 threads.

Depending on your processor is going to determine what works best, only you can address this by finding the sweet spot.

There is 2 threads to every core your processor has.

 

I’ve tried every number from min to max.    Fps drops to 6-7 and remains unplayable.  I noticed in task manager that my 32gb of ram is pushed to 98% usage while my all my other aircraft are around 70% ram with consistent 45 fps (as locked in on purpose)   

Could it be a potential memory leak issue?

[Ramsay]

For me (9900K 8 core/16 thread) -

Initially (my first 3 or 4 flights) the default 4 threads seemed ok - workflow: HRM at 30-10 NM --> freeze map/designate TGT --> run in, use TPOD to ID/sweeten target and drop LGB

However I quickly found in both cold starts and air spawns

4 Threads = CTD, once I started using the HOTAS to take various sizes of HRM patch maps on the LMPD while also having the TPOD on the RMPD.

6 Threads - seemed to "fix" the CTD's

... but I've settled on 8 Threads on the basis it "might" give a little more headroom and it's 50% of my CPU's available threads.

FPS is mostly unaffected (drops 1 fps) but a simple DCS Multi-thread training mission usually runs at +100FPS and I have Vsync set at 60 FPS.

YMMV and I'm still testing.

[dorianR666]

7 hours ago, Timghetta said:

There is 2 threads to every core your processor has.

if my game sometimes waits tens of seconds to process one frame, then even if i had 100 cores or threads it would still be a slideshow.

the problem is something else.

 

  

25 minutes ago, Ramsay said:

4 Threads = CTD, once I started using the HOTAS to take various sizes of HRM patch maps on the LMPD while also having the TPOD on the RMPD.

6 Threads - seemed to "fix" the CTD's

i have seen this too, in the same situation.

i will try your fix, thanks

Edited July 1, 2023 by dorianR666

[Timghetta]

8 hours ago, Tophatter14 said:

I’ve tried every number from min to max.    Fps drops to 6-7 and remains unplayable.  I noticed in task manager that my 32gb of ram is pushed to 98% usage while my all my other aircraft are around 70% ram with consistent 45 fps (as locked in on purpose)   

Could it be a potential memory leak issue?

What is your video card? How much VRAM, it could be a VRAM saturation that is the cause the lower FPS. 

[Tophatter14]

6 hours ago, Timghetta said:

What is your video card? How much VRAM, it could be a VRAM saturation that is the cause the lower FPS. 

3080ti.  But to be honest, I am experiencing issues with other modules now. Perhaps it’s just the latest open beta.   I don’t know.  

[Rainmaker]

1 hour ago, Tophatter14 said:

3080ti.  But to be honest, I am experiencing issues with other modules now. Perhaps it’s just the latest open beta.   I don’t know.  

Load times have gotten stupid slow for some on the latest patch. Myself included. I havent noticed performance issues, but that’s not to say its not causing higher usage/problems.  Hopefully whatever it is with the load times gets addressed, and it possibly helps those issues (if there are some) as well.