AMD 7950X3D for DCS and performance issues

[markturner1960]

I have a buddy who just upgraded and he is getting, Quote: "

It will be a blast in 2D, VR sucks  at the moment. Changed WMR setting from 150% to 100% which gave me an additional FPS up to 60 FPS and smooth gameplay, but only with DLSS + DLAA (5.2 sharpening). Cockpit is blurry and outside views mwah. With WMR set to 70% and MSAA 2x more or less the same result slightly better cockpit, not great outside views. It seems that DCS doesn’t use the right (3D) cores. Up to so far no solution found. Sorry not the best message and I’m pretty disappointed so far."

Is there anything he should know regarding getting the best from this CPU for DCS and any other tips? He is running a G2 and as I said to him: 

" I simply cannot understand whats going on here. I used to  run in VR with my G2 perfectly acceptably at around 60 FPS with great clarity, using 150% on my 5900/3090/64gb machine. I changed to using a Quest pro on same machine and it runs great, I use the G2 on my older PC, 9900/2080ti/32gb and it will manage a good 40 ish fps generally and still looks clear and OK. I know this is not much help, but I dont think the machine specs are the issue, something is not right somewhere......"

Any help appreciated

[SharpeXB]

Resolution, antialiasing and such has nothing to do with the CPU. That’s all on the GPU. Trying to compare the sharpness you’ll see on a monitor to VR is a lost cause, anyone doing that is going to be disappointed. VR certainly has other appealing aspects but sharpness and image quality isn’t one of them. 

[LucShep]

DCS is DX11 and, AFAIK, the DX11 drawcalls are made on the CPU.
It also uses Defered Rendering mode which is less optimized (and not Forward Rendering, which would be ideal, especially for VR).
So, yeah, CPU is still kind of a big deal.

@markturner1960 His performance problem may have to do with the fact that the AMD 7950X3D has 16 cores, but only 8 of them actually make use of the 3D V-Cache.
IIRC, CCD 1 is the CCD with the 3D V-Cache, so make sure that the game is only worked on (CPU affinity) by those 8 cores with 3D V-cache, and not use the CCD 2.
I presume that would be logical core 0-15 with the 3D V-Cache (and 16-31 without).

Lastly, the blurriness.
Make sure to use MSAA x2 (or x4, if performance is really good) instead of DLSS/DLAA or TAA - this is awful in VR, even with added sharpness, cockpits get very blurry.
And get back to 150% HMD resolution once the performance allows it (never less than 100%, even in worst scenario, IMO). 

Bit of a side note but, for me, DCS 2.9 image quality suffered a bit in VR, compared to previous versions (very foggy, lots of haze) with a Reverb G1. But it's fine in 2D monitor.
I know it's a bit controversial in a community where the latest is always "the best evaah" but, for me, it is like so no matter what I mess within the settings (so, again, returned to good old DCS 2.5.6, for VR - it's all perfect there).

Edited November 14, 2023 by LucShep
...spelling(?)

[SharpeXB]

26 minutes ago, LucShep said:

DCS is DX11 and, AFAIK, the DX11 drawcalls are made on the CPU.

As I understand it drawcalls = objects. Ie large cities, view distances, lots of vehicles etc which DCS of course has a lot of. And of course VR needs to draw this all twice. 
Raw pixels as in resolution like running supersampling or pixel density is all done by the graphics card. So the account above about things looking blurry doesn’t have so much to do with the CPU. Antialiasing is also done by the GPU. 

Edited November 14, 2023 by SharpeXB

[CptBligh]

7950X3D is 8x3d/16c/32t but as Sharpe said the actual image quality should have very little to do with the CPU.  I would turn all of the DLSS/DLAA stuff off first and go from there.