Is increasing RAM from 32GB to 64GB a smart idea?

[Ahdidaas]

I'm now getting frustrated in VR.  What was once a smooth and happy experience is one that includes frequent micro-stuttering, and less frequent frame rate drops of 60-70% for a second or two.   I've been trying to figure out what's changed in the last few months.  I even reset my pc and reloaded just DCS to make sure I didn't have something malicious or other using my precious resources.   Now, I'm thinking that its because my 32GB of RAM is maxing out?  

What  y'all think?  Has anyone gone from 32-64GB and been super pleased with the results (enough to justify the $200 to get it?).

Ty!

[The_Nephilim]

Have you checked your RAM during DCS Gameplay to see how much is being used. 

[speed-of-heat]

Yes

But what are the rest of your specs

 

[Ahdidaas]

Yes, my RAM was maxing out.

my specs:

i9 - 14 core

32GB DDR5

3080Ti

Quest Pro

[Phantom711]

64GB RAM is certainly better for DCS but it is no guarantee to solve your issues with frequent stutters. There can be various reasons for those.

I have a 13th gen i7 and for a while I had some serious issues with the game freezing for several seconds. What solved that for me was to disable the 8th core for DCS. As far as I know, 14th gen sometimes has imilar problems. Or maybe you have some conflicting settings somwhere between NVidia, OXR, DCS, Oculus.... Turbo Mode comes to my mind....

 

Edited July 8, 2024 by Phantom711

[Ahdidaas]

Ty, I'll do some discovery.

4 hours ago, Phantom711 said:

64GB RAM is certainly better for DCS but it is no guarantee to solve your issues with frequent stutters. There can be various reasons for those.

I have a 13th gen i7 and for a while I had some serious issues with the game freezing for several seconds. What solved that for me was to disable the 8th core for DCS. As far as I know, 14th gen sometimes has imilar problems. Or maybe you have some conflicting settings somwhere between NVidia, OXR, DCS, Oculus.... Turbo Mode comes to my mind....

 

 

Curious -- how did you figure out it was your 8th core?  (how many cores do you have 16?  with 8 perf and 8 efficient?)

[Oceandar]

Check your antivirus if you have any. It could be the culprit. Exclude DCS folder in your AV real time scanner.
Also check the mods if you have any installed. It could be one of those.

Good luck

[diego999]

While certainly the upgrade to 64GB will help, most likely it isn't the cause of your issues. VR performance has degraded for most of us in the last months.

I went from 32 to 64, and it did make things a little better, but nothing groundbreaking.

I play SP only, so if you play MP with heavy scenarios, the upgrade might make a bigger difference.

[Phantom711]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb Ahdidaas:

Ty, I'll do some discovery.

Curious -- how did you figure out it was your 8th core?  (how many cores do you have 16?  with 8 perf and 8 efficient?)

You are correct about the number of cores. I read somewhere, that disabling the 8th core helps. But it could also be, that it doesn´t matter which of the P-Cores to disable. In any case, it worked for me. What I can not recommend is to disable all E-cores as some videos on YT suggest. Severely decreased performance for me.

You can do all that with just the Windows Task Manager, but then you have to do it every single time you start DCS. I use Process Lasso, so it is automated.

[WipeUout]

RAM increased form 32 to 64 provided a more constant experience, not better performance but less micro-stutters.

As far as eliminating stutters, using "process lasso" made a significant difference for me, and it is free BTW (https://bitsum.com/).  Having the ability to "reserve" performance cores for DCS is great help.  Also, having the ability to set priority level for all running programs while using DCS helps to eliminate other sources of stutters.

With process lasso, I feel more like I am moving in a world as the video stream is so smooth.

 

[Ahdidaas]

I've done the pagefile increase.  Using process lasso would be something new I will try. 

 

I also pulled the trigger on the extra ram, cause, why not?

[Ahdidaas]

Initial reaction to the ram increase is a very strong thumbs up.  I'm getting 35+ fps on Contention, some stuttering when there was a lot going on, I'm very pleased.  

[Irisz]

If you have 64GB or more ram, you can turn off the page file! I can assure you that you won't have any problems because I've been using my computer this way since 2018.

This is only an advantage, for example the SSD does not slow down the memory, once the data is in the memory it will work at the same speed, instead of the SSD drive being tortured to write all the time. The most important thing is that it frees the SSD from a lot of writing.

Texture preset Medium, Terrain preset Low and thus the total committed memory usage is 28000 MB. If I set all textures to High, it never reaches 40GB, and this is understandable in multiplayer because DCS World uses memory even less in single player.

So your computer will speed up if you do this!

[Ahdidaas]

Hi Irisz,

Confirming -- you're suggesting I reduce my 80GB pagefile back down to default? (3gb or something like that)?  

[LucShep]

58 minutes ago, Ahdidaas said:

Hi Irisz,

Confirming -- you're suggesting I reduce my 80GB pagefile back down to default? (3gb or something like that)?  

I wouldn't recommend turning off the pagefile, because some programs may look for it and problems arise if there's none (IIRC some older ones require virtual memory to start).
 
If you have 64GB or more of RAM , then what you can do is to reduce the pagefile to a very small ammount, say, 1024 min (1GB) and 2048 max (2GB), but not less than that.
That way, the pagefile is reduced to a minimum without creating issues, while making good use of the now much larger RAM capacity.

Edited July 10, 2024 by LucShep

[Irisz]

14 hours ago, Ahdidaas said:

Hi Irisz,

Confirming -- you're suggesting I reduce my 80GB pagefile back down to default? (3gb or something like that)?  

Only do it if you have 64GB of RAM! As a first step, do what you said and you will see that your computer will not crash! Then turn off the page file and you will see that your computer will not crash!

It recommends 9 GB for the paging file and I have 0!

Here is the DCS world without the paging file where I play in multiplayer where DCS World uses much more memory!

The page file was invented a long time ago because there was not enough physical memory. I'm sorry you don't try it. Nowadays, you can put as much physical memory in your computer as in a server! There is no difference, except that it does not stress the SSD. Simply, if there is no paging file, only the physical memory is used, the speed of which is dramatically faster compared to the SSD.

I have 64 GB of RAM with 4 GB of VRAM and everything on High preset has never crashed since DCS World 2018. It can only crash if it runs out of memory!

As long as you only fantasize about your computer crashing and don't try it, you won't experience it.

Only DCS World approaches 32GB of memory usage without a paging file, nothing else!

Edited July 11, 2024 by Irisz

[YoYo]

On 7/8/2024 at 8:23 PM, Ahdidaas said:

I'm now getting frustrated in VR.  What was once a smooth and happy experience is one that includes frequent micro-stuttering, and less frequent frame rate drops of 60-70% for a second or two.   I've been trying to figure out what's changed in the last few months.  I even reset my pc and reloaded just DCS to make sure I didn't have something malicious or other using my precious resources.   Now, I'm thinking that its because my 32GB of RAM is maxing out?  

What  y'all think?  Has anyone gone from 32-64GB and been super pleased with the results (enough to justify the $200 to get it?).

Ty!

It will give nothing for you and DCS. Better change a GPU and more VRAM. I changed 32 to 64 (with better speed as well) few months ago, was the same, howevere I noticed better effects in the other software like Photo Shop ect. For micro stutter try unpark all your cores (different topic in MT bug section, this solved all my stutters).

Edited July 11, 2024 by YoYo

[Irisz]

12 minutes ago, YoYo said:

It will give nothing for you and DCS. Better change a GPU and more VRAM. I changed 32 to 64 (with better speed as well) few months ago, was the same, howevere I noticed better effects in the other software like Photo Shop ect. For micro stutter try unpark all your cores (different topic in MT bug section, this solved all my stutters).

 

The memory is low, as it approaches the maximum usage and starts to run out, your computer cannot use more, so it stutters or lags!

[YoYo]

56 minutes ago, Irisz said:

The memory is low, as it approaches the maximum usage and starts to run out, your computer cannot use more, so it stutters or lags!

DCS does not use 32 RAM. If it has 32 RAM, it will be enough for DCS. The bottleneck here is the 3080 and his VRAM and the operation of processors on the MT version, especially if he has a series of 11, 12, 13 or 14. Gen.

Edited July 11, 2024 by YoYo

[Irisz]

19 minutes ago, YoYo said:

DCS does not use 32 RAM. If it has 32 RAM, it will be enough for DCS. The bottleneck here is the 3080 and his VRAM and the operation of processors on the MT version, especially if he has a series of 11, 12, 13 or 14. Gen.

 

" I even reset my pc"

This problem is that you are using your computer on default settings. No CPU parking off, power management scheme set to maximum performance, NVIDIA settings optimized for performance rather than quality, and similar tweaks to increase performance.

[YoYo]

18 minutes ago, Irisz said:

"I even reset my pc"

This problem is that you are using your computer on default settings. No CPU parking off, power management scheme set to maximum performance, NVIDIA settings optimized for performance rather than quality, and similar tweaks to increase performance.

But what are you writing about it to me? 

[Irisz]

39 minutes ago, YoYo said:

But what are you writing about it to me? 

Because you are wrong about VRAM, if VRAM runs out, it uses physical memory. As long as there is no CPU limit and there is enough memory, the only settings that limit the computer are whether DCS World runs at maximum performance or energy saving or optimal Windows setting. If someone doesn't make the tweaks so that every component in the computer works performance centric, you can talk about whatever you want. If you've done all the tweaks and everything is performance centric and still lags or stutters, you're using graphics settings that are too high.

The problem is here: "I even reset my pc"

It doesn't even mention how you set up your VR.

It is difficult to solve the problem if there is hardly any information!

If OP provide more information, we can help him.

Guessing is not my table!

[MAXsenna]

DCS does not use 32 RAM. If it has 32 RAM, it will be enough for DCS. The bottleneck here is the 3080 and his VRAM and the operation of processors on the MT version, especially if he has a series of 11, 12, 13 or 14. Gen.

Disagree somewhat. I have 32Gigs, let Windows manage the swap file, it'll bring it up to around 28Gigs, with stutters. Set it manually to 32Gigs and it gets better. I don't do MP. I'd say 32Gigs are the bare minimum for DCS these days.
I do agree though that going from 32 to 64 won't do much in this case.
Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[YoYo]

15 minutes ago, Irisz said:

Because you are wrong about VRAM, if VRAM runs out, it uses physical memory. As long as there is no CPU limit and there is enough memory, the only settings that limit the computer are whether DCS World runs at maximum performance or energy saving or optimal Windows setting. If someone doesn't make the tweaks so that every component in the computer works performance centric, you can talk about whatever you want. If you've done all the tweaks and everything is performance centric and still lags or stutters, you're using graphics settings that are too high.

The problem is here: "I even reset my pc"

It doesn't even mention how you set up your VR.

It is difficult to solve the problem if there is hardly any information!

If OP provide more information, we can help him.

Guessing is not my table!

DCS takes about 8.5-12 VRAM, with VRAM at 16 (for example 4080) it will not touch regular RAM memory, which will not improve performance, even if VRAM is too small and RAM is too much. In this configuration, if he has too little VRAM and too much RAM, he will not achieve anything.

5 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

I do agree though that going from 32 to 64 won't do much in this case.

But we talk here about case 32 to 64. Will less quantity of RAM I agree, you have right.

Generally, on microstutter, changing from 32 to 64 did absolutely nothing for me (December 2023), only unparking all the cores made DCS work perfectly (or quite perfectly ) now for me.

Edited July 11, 2024 by YoYo

[Irisz]

Setting the preload radius to 100 also helps, because reading a lot of small is better than sometimes reading a BIG that hangs the game.

ED should have locked this preload radius to 100 by default long ago and deleted it from the settings!

The huge texture size is also a problem, ED solves the whole thing by not caring about these things! (buy faster and bigger) and they are surprised that DCS World is a layered game and not a popular mass game.

Buy a big SSD and 64GB of RAM, it leads to the road to unpopularity, not to popularity!

If DCS World runs on a toaster they could make a lot more money because a lot more people would spend their money on ED products instead of expensive computer parts!

Edited July 11, 2024 by Irisz