Long freezes and micro freezes

[voidwr]

Hello fellow flight simmers! Now that the 24hour wait is over I need to ask, so here we go. I recently bought my first module(s) on DCS after postponing it for a long time because I was scared of learning, but I always wanted to try it. Now, I jump in my shiny new F-18 and everything is fine (aside the long loading times ) and when I'm in the air be it from the carrier or from shore, everything starts freezing every other frame especially in the Syria map, yet I want to believe that it is not a problem with my rig. I get slightly better fps and micro freezes when I'm trying the 1v1 dogfight missions but still something makes the game unplayable but it becomes worse when I go close to the ground. I tried both with full low settings and the settings I'm posting now, nothing changed. I noticed sometimes on task manager that my disk was 100%, everything else was fine though.

CPU: i5-11600K @ 3.9Ghz

RAM: Gskill 16gb Trident Z 32000 Mhz

GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER 11GB

MOBO: MSI MPG Z490

Anyone wondering because I was reading around the forums the past 24 hours, I have a water cooled cpu so it's not a temp problem. I also use OpenTrack with the DelanClip and a PS3 Eye camera!

This is from the 1v1 Dogfight Mission in Caucasus map:

And the carrier takeoff in Syria Map that is the most taxiing in my opinion still from the Waltz mission:

Please ignore the way I play, I know I'm still a noob . Sorry for the long post, any help is appreciated!

Edited September 16, 2023 by voidwr

[rob10]

With 16 GB of RAM you're going to need to turn settings down a fair bit and it's never going to be ideal.  At a minimum you need 32 GB, and really 64 GB RAM is better.  Make sure you have at least 64 GB between physical RAM and pagefile will help, but if you can at all bump up your physical RAM levels.

Syria is also one of the highest demand maps currently, so not surprising that's where you'll see issues.  On the carrier itself is also demanding.

Your graphics card is also getting pretty marginal too.

Edited September 16, 2023 by rob10

[Archer.xd]

Hey, first of all welcome onboard

- Using MSAA and SSAA at same time is not a good idea. If you are playing the multi-threaded client, SSAA does not have any effect, but in any case, it should be disabled because its very inefficient and outdated.
- Tune down your preload radius to max. ~30k
- Set at least 32gb pagefile on a SSD. Your problem is likely either disk or ram, or both. Make sure DCS is installed on a SATA or M.2 SSD drive. HDD will give you overall horrible experience compared to SSD. Since you have 16gb ram, I would go for more pagefile. But if you want a smooth experience long-term especially for multiplayer, you should upgrade RAM to 32gb.

Also, if you send a log file it would help us go deeper just in case. 

How to send log : Go to C:\Users\Username\Saved Games\DCS\logs, then grab the latest text file, named either just "dcs" or "dcs.log"
How to set pageilfe : 

 

[Czar66]

29 minutes ago, voidwr said:

... 

I noticed sometimes on task manager that my disk was 100%, everything else was fine though.

...

Looks like storage hardware bottleneck.

As above comment suggested, set pagefile above 30gb on a SSD (if it is a NVME is better). While playing, even on heavy missions, your disk usage should be very low.

Furthermore you'll need to install DCS on a SSD and it will be fine if its not a NVME. If you're already have DCS on a SSD, it is a page file size issue.

16gb system Ram is enough, but you need that page file above 30gb on a fast storage. HDD won't be enough.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Czar66
wording. More details.

[voidwr]

5 minutes ago, rob10 said:

With 16 GB of RAM you're going to need to turn settings down a fair bit and it's never going to be ideal.  At a minimum you need 32 GB, and really 64 GB RAM is better.  Make sure you have at least 64 GB between physical RAM and pagefile will help, but if you can at all bump up your physical RAM levels.

Syria is also one of the highest demand maps currently, so not surprising that's where you'll see issues.  On the carrier itself is also demanding.

Your graphics card is also getting pretty marginal too.

 

Well, I'll try to go for 32. 64gb is a little demanding at the moment. Thank you though!

6 minutes ago, Archer.xd said:

Hey, first of all welcome onboard

- Using MSAA and SSAA at same time is not a good idea. If you are playing the multi-threaded client, SSAA does not have any effect, but in any case, it should be disabled because its very inefficient and outdated.
- Tune down your preload radius to max. ~30k
- Set at least 32gb pagefile on a SSD. Your problem is likely either disk or ram, or both. Make sure DCS is installed on a SATA or M.2 SSD drive. HDD will give you overall horrible experience compared to SSD. Since you have 16gb ram, I would go for more pagefile. But if you want a smooth experience long-term especially for multiplayer, you should upgrade RAM to 32gb.

Also, if you send a log file it would help us go deeper just in case. 

How to send log : Go to C:\Users\Username\Saved Games\DCS\logs, then grab the latest text file, named either just "dcs" or "dcs.log"
How to set pageilfe : 

 

I don't know how to check my client (I mean if it's multi-threaded or not) I'm playing on DCS Open Beta, I'm having and HDD for the game, I get I should go for an SSD but are the normal ssd's sufficient? I mean do I need to get exclusively an M.2? Because my MOBO can only support 1. Unfortunately tomorrow is Sunday here and the shops are closed to consider doing an upgrade, so I won't be able to post if the problem was fixed until the day after tomorrow. Also my only M2 has the windows OS running at the moment, with 16GB left from 222gb. From my understanding pagefile is making your drive behave as ram, binding some of your gb, Won't I have a problem if I continue chocking up my M2?

[Archer.xd]

SATA should be fine. I played ~1 year on a SATA SSD and was just fine. Surely M.2 would be better but anything is better than HDD
You are likely playing single threaded client. If you downloaded DCS from website (called standalone), go into install folder/bin-mt and start DCS from that executable. This way you'll play multi-threaded client.

And yes you'll have problems if you choke your SSD. You actually should have some more empty space on that, about 25gb min. should be empty. And also yes pagefile is using drives as aid for RAM in a nutshell. But unfortunately you cannot set pagefile on your case because you dont have the space for it. You should look for either a new mobo or a new-bigger capacity M.2. 

Honestly I'd upgrade mobo, then would get another M.2 drive. Hopefully that suits you at least in near future

[voidwr]

Alright I'll try to upgrade my RAM and get an SSD for the game thank you all. Unfortunately I cannot get a new MOBO because this one is fairly new, not even a month. I will post again here if it fixed the problem. Thank you again

[Warsaw]

Take it from a fellow flyer with 3.6/4.2ghz/ i7-9700k/ RTX 2070 super with windows on a ssd and dcs on a separate ssd, but with 32gb. Even with 32gb ram, since the last 2.8 update flying the F-18 has been $hit (both stable and open beta) in nevada, carrier and caucus. For my system, F-18 radar is the issue. Turn your radar off and I’ll bet you will eliminate your issues with the game settings you have, but with a low terrain texture setting and a low visib range setting. (I have resorted to fly the F-18 with radar off… kinda like flying a really fast A-10.) I fly the A-10CII also and have seen no issues. You might consider buying another a/c (like the A-10CIi) just to compare performance, since your wallet is now in the drain cycle. Keep us posted.

[Loukuins]

16 hours ago, voidwr said:

Hello fellow flight simmers! Now that the 24hour wait is over I need to ask, so here we go. I recently bought my first module(s) on DCS after postponing it for a long time because I was scared of learning, but I always wanted to try it. Now, I jump in my shiny new F-18 and everything is fine (aside the long loading times ) and when I'm in the air be it from the carrier or from shore, everything starts freezing every other frame especially in the Syria map, yet I want to believe that it is not a problem with my rig. I get slightly better fps and micro freezes when I'm trying the 1v1 dogfight missions but still something makes the game unplayable but it becomes worse when I go close to the ground. I tried both with full low settings and the settings I'm posting now, nothing changed. I noticed sometimes on task manager that my disk was 100%, everything else was fine though.

CPU: i5-11600K @ 3.9Ghz

RAM: Gskill 16gb Trident Z 32000 Mhz

GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER 11GB

MOBO: MSI MPG Z490

Anyone wondering because I was reading around the forums the past 24 hours, I have a water cooled cpu so it's not a temp problem. I also use OpenTrack with the DelanClip and a PS3 Eye camera!

This is from the 1v1 Dogfight Mission in Caucasus map:

And the carrier takeoff in Syria Map that is the most taxiing in my opinion still from the Waltz mission:

Please ignore the way I play, I know I'm still a noob . Sorry for the long post, any help is appreciated!

 

Visibility Range is very high too, also terrain objects shadows uses a lot of VRAM and you might be getting some VRAM issues aswell

[The_Nephilim]

@voidwr, if your disk is at 100% I would have a look into that it could be the main issue.. 

[voidwr]

Okay, so it's been a day and I have to update, I got a dedicated SSD for DCS and 2 sticks of 16gb of ram total of 32gb and I have to say, nothing happens anymore, aside from a couple of frame drops that last not even a second on the Waltz mission (from carrier) everything else feels smooth-ish but not going to complain since it's fixed, I have to check the performance on servers now though ! I would like to know also, can I use the SSD that I bought for DCS to have it as more pagefile? Again thank you all! And to answer some of the newer comments:

On 9/17/2023 at 4:11 PM, Warsaw said:

Take it from a fellow flyer with 3.6/4.2ghz/ i7-9700k/ RTX 2070 super with windows on a ssd and dcs on a separate ssd, but with 32gb. Even with 32gb ram, since the last 2.8 update flying the F-18 has been $hit (both stable and open beta) in nevada, carrier and caucus. For my system, F-18 radar is the issue. Turn your radar off and I’ll bet you will eliminate your issues with the game settings you have, but with a low terrain texture setting and a low visib range setting. (I have resorted to fly the F-18 with radar off… kinda like flying a really fast A-10.) I fly the A-10CII also and have seen no issues. You might consider buying another a/c (like the A-10CIi) just to compare performance, since your wallet is now in the drain cycle. Keep us posted.

Yes I would like sometime to buy more modules but I saw your comment a day late so I have to wait a little bit, when I turn the radar off I do see a difference but it's minimal to have an impact!

On 9/17/2023 at 5:10 PM, Loukuins said:

Visibility Range is very high too, also terrain objects shadows uses a lot of VRAM and you might be getting some VRAM issues aswell

I will lower it since I don't see anyways the ground a lot, thank you!

22 hours ago, The_Nephilim said:

@voidwr, if your disk is at 100% I would have a look into that it could be the main issue.. 

Yes I was afraid so...

Edited September 18, 2023 by voidwr

[Warsaw]

@voidwr, since you also have a 2070 super, and our systems are very similar, would you mind sharing a screen shot of your nvidia settings?

[voidwr]

@Warsaw sure I don't know where they'll help since I don't fiddle around with them much, but here you go!

I literally copy/pasted the exact same Nvidia Panel settings as Spudknocker and that was that!

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by voidwr

[Warsaw]

@voidwrThanks for the screen shots. I had a few differences, but adjusted to what you are using for nvdia settings and still have stuttering going on in F-18 with radar on… pretty weird. Thanks for your response!

[Archer.xd]

On 9/18/2023 at 11:42 PM, voidwr said:

I would like to know also, can I use the SSD that I bought for DCS to have it as more pagefile?

Yeah Im doing it that way, never had any problem. I dont have the best tech knowledge and it may not be the optional setup, but I have it as like that and been running for a year without any problems so far.