reported MT freezes even in main menu

[AdrianL]

See this post.  For me it was CPU 8 but see if you have a maxed out CPU. If so, try to remove affinity from that CPU

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by AdrianL

[Scotch75]

I'm running i5-6600K, so only 4 cores with no hyperthreading, how would I do this? Where are settings for cores? BIOS?

Cheers!


Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[Miro]

Also got stutters in main menu and mission editor.

[QuiGon]

@Danzig @Miro What CPU are you guys using?

[Danzig]

Just now, QuiGon said:

@Danzig @Miro What CPU are you guys using?

 i7-13700KF

[Kobymaru]

6 hours ago, Flappie said:

@YoYo I can't do much more than I already do, sorry. I cannot reproduce this issue (since I have a Ryzen CPU) and I keep bumping the internal report nonetheless.

As I said earlier, one fellow tester is affected, though.

How can ED be barely able to reproduce this when you have a whole thread full of people who can reproduce it on a daily basis? I can reproduce it right now if you want.

Is three anything we can do? Do you need more logs, do you need more system info, should we run some debug build? It's getting a bit silly, MT was super promising, now other features are depending on it, but game-breaking, perfectly reproducible stutters are ignored for months? What are these priorities?

[Ballinger French]

Has anyone affected by this issue tried updating their motherboard chipset drivers and/or verifying they have all the latest Windows updates?  Although I haven't installed 2.9 as of yet, I have been running the 2.8 MT version for about six months using a I7 12700K CPU (hyperthreading enabled) and Windows 11 Pro without issue. SSAA never worked with the 2.8 MT version, so I was never able to use it, FYI. 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Ballinger French

[QuiGon]

5 minutes ago, Ballinger French said:

Has anyone affected by this issue tried updating their motherboard chipset drivers and/or verifying they have all the latest Windows updates?  Although I haven't installed 2.9 as of yet, I have been running the 2.8 MT version for about six months using a I7 12700K CPU (hyperthreading enabled) and Windows 11 Pro without issue. SSAA never worked with the 2.8 MT version, so I was never able to use it, FYI.

I did. Didn't help...
I updated all my mainboard drivers (including chipset and BIOS) to see if it helps, but it didn't.

Edited October 20, 2023 by QuiGon

[AdrianL]

5 minutes ago, Ballinger French said:

updating their motherboard chipset drivers and/or verifying they have all the latest Windows updates

I am always up to date with windows, bios, drivers, etc.

I had no issue with v2.8 on Win 11, i9-13900 with HT on.

In v2.9 I now need to set CPU affinity to remove CPU8 (Might be different per system)

 

[QuiGon]

6 minutes ago, AdrianL said:

I had no issue with v2.8 on Win 11, i9-13900 with HT on.

Did you run v2.8 already with MT or did you still use ST for 2.8?

Edited October 20, 2023 by QuiGon

[AdrianL]

Just now, QuiGon said:

v2.8 with MT

Yes. Switched to MT when it came out and never had have any freezing / stuttering issues. I followed this thread with interest, wondering why I was not having this issue.

Running v2.9 it was a slide show while trying out all the new graphic options. Saw CPU8 maxed, removed affinity and everything was back to normal. 

I now start DCS from the cmd line with CPU 8 affinity off, using the cmd line method at the bottom of https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/ . 

Performance has been excellent since

[Ballinger French]

Weird.  In the past, running Prepar3D Flight Simulator, I had problems with certain add-on aircraft causing stuttering which I traced down to an overloaded CPU as others here are mentioning having issues with DCS 2.9  Using windows Task Manager, I masked half the cores on my CPU with Prepar3D still running, then immediately reactivated them again.  This had a net effect of 'rebalancing' all the threads running on different cores so that no single core was maxed.  In other words I didn't have to keep any core masked but instead I could essentially rebalance the distributed load as I described. 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Ballinger French
typo

[speed-of-heat]

Hi All, 

I have a 12700k and when DCS is being used i see a huge spike in activity on CPU's 16, 17, 18, 19, which are the eCores, I have checked with a friend and he is seeing the same thing? so Why would DCS choose to use the eCore rather than the pCores?

 

[QuiGon]

3 minutes ago, AdrianL said:

Yes. Switched to MT when it came out and never had have any freezing / stuttering issues. I followed this thread with interest, wondering why I was not having this issue.

Running v2.9 it was a slide show while trying out all the new graphic options. Saw CPU8 maxed, removed affinity and everything was back to normal.

Huh, interesting, thanks!

[YoYo]

19 minutes ago, AdrianL said:

Yes. Switched to MT when it came out and never had have any freezing / stuttering issues. I followed this thread with interest, wondering why I was not having this issue.

Running v2.9 it was a slide show while trying out all the new graphic options. Saw CPU8 maxed, removed affinity and everything was back to normal. 

I now start DCS from the cmd line with CPU 8 affinity off, using the cmd line method at the bottom of https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/ . 

Performance has been excellent since

Can you share your cmd file? However I not sure how it works if we have entry in the shortcut (for VR forceing). I open only DCS from this shortcut not from exe in the MT folder.

Edited October 20, 2023 by YoYo

[AKULA_OPTIMUS]

I can confirm stuttering go (mostly) away when using the ST version instead of MT.

I have an  i5-7600 CPU @ 3.50GHz, Its 4 cores, not 8, how to do the CPU affinity stuff with 4 cores? Thank you

[AdrianL]

17 minutes ago, YoYo said:

Can you share your cmd file?

I put this in the target box of the icon shortcut
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "" /AFFINITY 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFEFF "E:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\bin-mt\DCS.exe"

Change the path, obviously. You can add any DCS params at the end.

The affinity mask will be based on your actual CPU but for the i9-13900 it is the one listed above  (See https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/). Also, if you read thru this whole thread, for some it is CPU0, etc. Whatever CPU is maxed when you just start DCS. So the affinity mask needs to change accordingly.

If you look at the top of your DCS log you will see it switched off if done correctly,

This worked to fix the stuttering issues for me, at least

Edited October 20, 2023 by AdrianL

[Gh0st007]

I can confirm since the recent patch (2.9) it has made the stuttering worse. In some cases I can't even fly. Core 8 and core 10 is fully "pinged" aka full usage so to speak. I posted a month or so ago and it's getting worse. I have current bios version and drivers up to date, problem still happens.
You can see - CPU BOUND (Main Thread) in red when the stuttering happens.

CPU i7 13700KF

 

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Gh0st007

[Miro]

2 hours ago, QuiGon said:

@Danzig @Miro What CPU are you guys using?

13900KF, 64 DDR5, 4090

[QuiGon]

2 hours ago, AKULA_OPTIMUS said:

I can confirm stuttering go (mostly) away when using the ST version instead of MT.

I have an  i5-7600 CPU @ 3.50GHz, Its 4 cores, not 8, how to do the CPU affinity stuff with 4 cores? Thank you

You are probably not affected by the issue that this thread is about. Or do you have MAJOR freezes even in the main menu?

[AKULA_OPTIMUS]

10 minutes ago, QuiGon said:

You are probably not affected by the issue that this thread is about. Or do you have MAJOR freezes even in the main menu?

No, just in game. One of the cores was at 100%, I did the affinity thing, but no changes.

Issue still there and its definelty MT related, because in ST game runs better.

Thank you for answering

[KoleTang]

For those having the "Major Freezes" issue.  Which can seem like a stutter if the freezes are short.  If you get a long freeze try clicking your mouse anywhere.  My experience has been that this will immediately end the freeze.  From my professional experience, this would lead me to think that DCS is losing focus and the mouse click brings it back.  This could be perhaps from a hidden window.  What is particularly frustrating is that it seems to be totally random in occurrence.  You can fly the same mission again with no issue. Perhaps it is some debugging code showing up in production.  I would be interested in knowing if others can get the same effect from clicking the mouse.  To be clear this will only work on the long freezes, not the consistent stuttering.  I have been waiting to post this until 2.9 was released hoping it may be fixed.  Unfortunately not.  This needs to be elevated in priority as the single-thread bin updater now launches the multi-threaded preview.  At least that is what it says at the bottom of the main menu.

[Mr_Blastman]

Before the 2.9 update I could fly the Apache in the Instant Action Live Fire Range mission with butter smooth framerate.  Everything was perfect.  There were no stutters, there was no hitching.

 

After the 2.9 update...

 

Nighmares!  Hitching.  Stuttering.  Popping.  The moment I take off I begin seeing intermittent stutters and frame skips.  This is driving me nuts!  What is going on?

 

System:

Intel 7700k CPU

32 gigs RAM

NVIDIA 1080 GTX GPU

DCS loaded on SSD

Operating system on NVME .M2 SSD

Page file on a separate SSD

 

Nvidia driver version 536.67

 

Steps taken to try to resolve:

 

Deleted DCS shader caches

Deleted NVIDIA shader caches

Rebooted many times

 

Nothing fixes.

 

I had a similar issue almost a year ago, but that was eventually resolved.  Alas, here I am again, and I'm going insane.  I need butter smooth framerates to fly precisely.

As things are right now, DCS is a paperweight again.

 

Please help.  Thank you.

 

[QuiGon]

46 minutes ago, AKULA_OPTIMUS said:

No, just in game. One of the cores was at 100%, I did the affinity thing, but no changes.

Issue still there and its definelty MT related, because in ST game runs better.

Thank you for answering

Yeah, that's a different issue then. Honestly, it's probably not even a specific issue, but just simply bad performance as your CPU is pretty outdated by now.
 

33 minutes ago, KoleTang said:

For those having the "Major Freezes" issue.  Which can seem like a stutter if the freezes are short.  If you get a long freeze try clicking your mouse anywhere.  My experience has been that this will immediately end the freeze.  From my professional experience, this would lead me to think that DCS is losing focus and the mouse click brings it back.  This could be perhaps from a hidden window.  What is particularly frustrating is that it seems to be totally random in occurrence.  You can fly the same mission again with no issue. Perhaps it is some debugging code showing up in production.  I would be interested in knowing if others can get the same effect from clicking the mouse.  To be clear this will only work on the long freezes, not the consistent stuttering.  I have been waiting to post this until 2.9 was released hoping it may be fixed.  Unfortunately not.  This needs to be elevated in priority as the single-thread bin updater now launches the multi-threaded preview.  At least that is what it says at the bottom of the main menu.

I have a suspicion that it has to do with cores going into parking/standby mode when they should not.

Edited October 20, 2023 by QuiGon

[AKULA_OPTIMUS]

3 minutes ago, QuiGon said:

Yeah, that's a different issue then. Honestly, it's probably not even a specific issue, but just simply bad performance as your CPU is pretty outdated by now.
 

I have a suspicion that it has to do with cores going into parking/standby mode when they should not.

 

It worked perfectly in the previous version, and even with higher graphics options, so its not it