FPS drops when enemy aircraft present

[ShadowLinkX37]

Been away from DCS for awhile but recently reinstalled it and in all in offline games I get major FPS drops when i'm flying near an enemy aircraft. I'll go from about 80 FPS consistently down to 25 or lower every second or so. Makes it very difficult to play the game.

I've looked around a bit and seen others seem to be having FPS issues a bit in the most recent update. It's possible this is related, but my game will stutter even if there's just 1 enemy aircraft I spawn in in instant action. For reference I just did the 1v1 guns only F-15C and spawned a Su-27 and had this issue the entire fight.

I've turned off windows power service as one of the recommended suggestions and hasn't helped.

settings attached

Specs: 6600k OC to 4.4GHz, 16GB RAM @ 2400MHz,  AMD Radeon 5700XT, DCS on SATA SSD although not the only thing on the drive.

As a side note so I don't open multiple threads, the AWACS has its popups and is sending messages but there's no audio for it. Haven't seen any issues or setting related to this issue. Any suggestions?

Edited September 2, 2024 by ShadowLinkX37
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[BJ55]

16GB of RAM? My installation uses 18GB just in mission editor... Try with MSAA set to 2x or TAA, SSS off, civ. traffic off, water medium, SSAO off, SSLR off, heat blur off, forest and scenery detail factor 0.8, terrain object shadows set to flat, aniso filtering 16x, cockpit global illumination off, also check to have a fixed pagefile size of 32768 (or the double, since you're low on RAM). If this doesn't help reduce textures to medium and resolution to 1920x1080.

Edited September 2, 2024 by BJ55

[rob10]

16 GB RAM is technically the min required, but the latest updates are definitely using more and lots of people with only 16 GB RAM starting to have issues.  Increasing your pagefile is a good starting point, but you might as well plan on getting more RAM in the foreseeable future to keep playing.

[ShadowLinkX37]

On 9/2/2024 at 1:17 AM, BJ55 said:

16GB of RAM? My installation uses 18GB just in mission editor... Try with MSAA set to 2x or TAA, SSS off, civ. traffic off, water medium, SSAO off, SSLR off, heat blur off, forest and scenery detail factor 0.8, terrain object shadows set to flat, aniso filtering 16x, cockpit global illumination off, also check to have a fixed pagefile size of 32768 (or the double, since you're low on RAM). If this doesn't help reduce textures to medium and resolution to 1920x1080.

 

So I lowered all the settings and it doesn't solve the problem. I've been looking at task manager, HW monitor, AMD software to look at temps and usage and nothing is reaching 100% most of the time except the GPU, which should be there. RAM most of the time sits at 80%ish using about 13.3GB, CPU occasionally goes to 100% in certain situations but not frequently and not during the stutters. lowering settings did give me a nice FPS boost from about 70-80 to around 120 though so that's nice. Honestly have little to no knowledge of what each of those settings do but most of them probably just add a little more graphically, like dynamic lighting in the cockpit or post processing etc.

 

I didn't however increase the size of the pagefile because i've just always been low on space since I busted my HDD a long time ago. Only have a 250GB and 500GB SSDs now and a few games and the OS take up very large quantities of it. I know when your PC runs out of RAM it'll use the storage devices but it's significantly slower, and i'm not sure using that would be good for a faster paced game like DCS. Not saying there isn't a benefit, I'm just unsure if that'll even really solve the issue. I'll try and divy up some space and allot 32GB as you stated and see if that changes anything. 

Edited September 3, 2024 by ShadowLinkX37
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[BJ55]

If you're low on RAM you get stutters because it have to constantly load resources from disk, but loading from pagefile is faster than from installation folder. Are DCS folders excluded from AV real-time scanning? Could you upload the dcs.log after starting and quitting DCS?

btw: DCS RAM/VRAM/disk usage went out of control.

[ShadowLinkX37]

Here's the .log file. I did 1 round of 1v1 guns only F-15C on Caucasus and it felt a little better just from memory, still stuttering though. It really only becomes an issue when the opponent aircraft is in close proximity and in view. like within a 0.8 of a mile.

dcs.log

Edited September 4, 2024 by ShadowLinkX37
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[BJ55]

2024-09-04 17:05:11.415 INFO    EDCORE (Main): common cores: {2, 3}
2024-09-04 17:05:11.415 INFO    EDCORE (Main): render cores: {0, 1}
2024-09-04 17:05:11.415 INFO    EDCORE (Main): IO cores: {}

Your CPU doesn't have enough cores to handle all the data... Set resolution at 1920x1080 and disable all the eye-candy, I see that motion blur, canopy reflections, shadows, chimney Smoke Density, clouds, etc. are still enabled or set too high for your rig. Limit FPS at 60 or 30, better if with Adrenalin.

Also try this: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/355693-huge-sp-performance-degradation-with-29758923-and-29658056-compared-to-dcs-29555918/page/9/#comment-5513022

 

[ShadowLinkX37]

7 hours ago, BJ55 said:

2024-09-04 17:05:11.415 INFO    EDCORE (Main): common cores: {2, 3}
2024-09-04 17:05:11.415 INFO    EDCORE (Main): render cores: {0, 1}
2024-09-04 17:05:11.415 INFO    EDCORE (Main): IO cores: {}

Your CPU doesn't have enough cores to handle all the data... Set resolution at 1920x1080 and disable all the eye-candy, I see that motion blur, canopy reflections, shadows, chimney Smoke Density, clouds, etc. are still enabled or set too high for your rig. Limit FPS at 60 or 30, better if with Adrenalin.

Also try this: https://forum.dcs.world/topic/355693-huge-sp-performance-degradation-with-29758923-and-29658056-compared-to-dcs-29555918/page/9/#comment-5513022

 

I rolled DCS back to 2.9.5 and 99% of the stutters disappeared. Seems it's likely just the recent issue of 2.9.6+ which a lot of people seem to be having issues with. Thank you for the troubleshooting!