Steam: 2.9.8.1214+ FPS performance issue

[scommander2]

Hi ,

Based on the hotfix of 2.9.8.1214, I found my FPS has been dropped into around 20 in the airfield and around 70 FPS in air.

With @BIGNEWY's suggestion, I attached my dcs and dxdiag logs and hope that there is a suggestion for me.

 

Prior to 2.9.8.1107, my DCS was running okay and no complain... 

Thanks. 

dcs.log DxDiag.txt

Edited November 11, 2024 by scommander2

[scommander2]

In addition, I had the 140 FPS on the DCS main menu/dashboard and the F10 map was very smooth.  

As long as I was in the cockpit at the airfield the lagging had happened.

[Moezilla]

Some things you could try:
 - disable hotplug devices in control settings, there are hotplug events in your log, including from your audio devices.
 - google how to turn off the power-saving features on your USB ports to prevent windows power management from putting them into low-power mode.
 - you have parked cores according to the log, you could try unparking them. there are free tools available online like Parkcontrol that can do this.

I understand that DCS ran well before this time but it could be that some normal Windows/Dell updates have made some changes that may also have impacted how well DCS runs.

[scommander2]

Hi @Moezilla, thanks for tips... I will check one by one... 

[scommander2]

I have done 3 suggestions, and it seems that there is a kind of the improvement but lagging something.

Attached my dcs log.

Thanks.

dcs.log

[scommander2]

Hi @Moezilla, I really thank your help because these suggestions are very helpful for me to tune my Windows since I am a UNIX person.

I found out my issue since my DCS is running from Steam, and Steam has two versions: one is the Steam DCS version and another is the preview MT version.  The preview MT version does work perfectly for everything but not Steam DCS version (it is very buggy and lagging).

Again, thanks very helping out here...

   

[Moezilla]

Since DCS version 2.9.8.1107 both executables should be the same, just on different paths. Maybe something is profiling the executables differently?

• Some people put the entire DCS installation folder and the folder in Saved Games into the exclusion list for Windows Defender (and any other AV solution) to prevent real-time scanning from eating CPU cycles.
• Also you could go to Settings -> System -> Display -> Graphics and add both DCS paths to the custom app settings with high performance ON.
• I see you are also running borderless fullscreen, so it could also be worth trying the Optimisations for windowed games setting in Settings -> System -> Display -> Graphics -> Default graphics settings to see if it helps improve any input lag.
• With Vsync ON it might be worth trying fullscreen mode in DCS, just as a test, and also using the nvidia CP to experiment with the low-latency mode there.

Good luck, getting DCS into a sweet spot can take some tweaking, but it can run well.

[scommander2]

20 minutes ago, Moezilla said:

Since DCS version 2.9.8.1107 both executables should be the same, just on different paths. Maybe something is profiling the executables differently?

@Moezilla, it is a good point and that was the reason I ran "DCS steam version" since both binaries should be identical according to BIGNEWY's posting.

Thanks again for tuning the graph settings (I will check them again), and I did try these steps when the lagging was occurred.

 

[Kenan]

Since the other thread has been closed, just wanted to confirm I'm having massive framerate drops and stutters in VR (haven't really tested non-VR).

Hope this gets fixed in the next update...

 

EDIT: Before the update, my VR performance was very solid. Capped at and holding steady 80 fps.

Edited October 6, 2024 by Kenan

[scommander2]

Hi @Kenan, thanks for sharing.  

Based on: 

Some people did mention that they had the similar issue about FPS and some of them felt the improvement, and I am not sure that these good and worse were after applied hotfix or not.

Personally, I think that the hotfix may be the cause and I wish that I could roll back before the hotfix for re-testing again because I had no issue prior to the hotfix.

I would like to join back the patch thread to listen what are other user's feedbacks.

Thanks.

 

 

Edited October 6, 2024 by scommander2

[JohnRedcorn]

8 hours ago, scommander2 said:

Some people did mention that they had the similar issue about FPS and some of them felt the improvement, and I am not sure that these good and worse were after applied hotfix or not.

Personally, I think that the hotfix may be the cause and I wish that I could roll back before the hotfix for re-testing again because I had no issue prior to the hotfix.

I would like to join back the patch thread to listen what are other user's feedbacks.

Thanks.

 

 

 

There is no problem to roll back. Just read the following thread and follow the instructions:

You can roll back to any version that is listed in the second message of this thread in a table.

You probably won't be able to play multiplayer because the servers are usually running on the latest version. But you can play single player to check the performance.

Edited October 7, 2024 by JohnRedcorn

[BIGNEWY]

On 10/4/2024 at 3:46 PM, scommander2 said:

Hi ,

Based on the hotfix of 2.9.8.1214, I found my FPS has been dropped into around 20 in the airfield and around 70 FPS in air.

With @BIGNEWY's suggestion, I attached my dcs and dxdiag logs and hope that there is a suggestion for me.

 

Prior to 2.9.8.1107, my DCS was running okay and no complain... 

Thanks. 

dcs.log 208.72 kB · 9 downloads DxDiag.txt 153.37 kB · 6 downloads

Hi, 

please remove the F-22A mod, and run a slow repair

disable hotplug in your dcs controls to see if that makes a difference  

Some tuning tips 

Set Water to Medium or Low.
Set Shadows to Medium.
Turn down Anisotropic Filtering.
Turn off SSLR.
If you have FPS issues, try turning off VSYNC in graphics settings.
Disable civil traffic.
Turn off Depth of Field.
Enable Full Screen mode.
Turn off SSAO.

The 4080 is a capable card, just check as it is a laptop it is getting cooled correctly. 

 

let us know if any of this helps. 

[scommander2]

Hi @BIGNEWY, thanks and I will try these options...

[scommander2]

After few attempts, the best settings for are:

In OS:

• Unpack cores
• Make sure all USB devices out the power management turn off option when sleep
• Make OS in the max performance

---

In Nvidia control panel:

• Power Management Mode: prefer maximum performance
• Low Latency Mode: Ultra
• Max Frame Rate: 65 (I saw lots of YouTube videos about DCS/FPS tuning and I do not need 140 FPS @ DCS main dashboard and even my 4080 can do it)

---

In DCS:

• VSYNC: off
• Full screen: off
• Hot Plug: disabled
• SSLR: off
• Water: Low
• Shadows: Medium
• Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
• MAX FPS: 65

I had autoexec_cfg to be removed under "saved game"->"config" because it caused an issue in DCS VSYNC off.

I do move out the custom mod.

---

Testing with Instance Actions:

Map / Plane / Action / FPS

	Map	Plane	Action	At airfield	In Air
Test1	Afgh	F-14B	take off	47 - 54 FPS*	60-65 FPS
Test2	Caucasus	F-14B	take off	65 FPS	60-65 FPS

* I guess that lots of AI objects at the airfield 

 

---

Testing with Steam startup:

Startup	Test case	Comment about FPS
Play DCS Steam Edition	Test1	At airfield: 21 - 51 FPS**
Play MT Review	Test1	At airfield: 47 - 54 FPS

**  I am not sure why "Play DCS Steam Edition" makes different than "Play MT Review" . To get 21 FPS by moving  my view from center over the way to left or right.  The same action has no impact to "Play MT review".

Again, thank @Moezilla and @BIGNEWY help me here...  And, I just can't figure out why two of the Steam startups make so differently or there is something that  I can do for my Steam settings.

 

Edited October 10, 2024 by scommander2

[scommander2]

Since "Play MT Review", the option is "Play DCS World Steam Edition" for me.

I think that DCS is dead in water to me based on the following screenshots with the above test case "Test1":

1.  GPU utilization is too low - means DCS does not fully utilizes the GPU resources for the screen rendering (DCS is fully depend on the CPU resources and "Frame rate counter" does show that I am using "CPU BOUND")

2. CPU  utilization is too low - means FPS is very low because DCS does not  utilize CPU resources as well.

** I  have tried "Full screen" and/or"VSYNC" ON and I can not get my GPU unitization up to 80% or more. **

Proceed the test case "Test2", my GPU utilization can go above 80% to 95%, and "Frame rate counter" shows GPU BOUND and FPS is about 60 to 65 FPS.

I do not know why "Play DCS World Steam Edition" and "Play MT Review" can make the huge different for the test case "Test1". 

I do discover based on two test cases (I guess):

1. DCS determines more objects in the theme and it will try "CPU BOUND" rather than "GPU BOUND".  "CPU BOUND" needs to compute all data and sends over to GPU.  Yes, it makes GPU less load but it is slow.

2.  Stuttering is also occurred between context switch between "CPU BOUND" and "GPU BOUND", even though I test the test case "Test2" with the better FPS.

I think/guess that the "CPU BOUND" and "GPU BOUND" determination is required the better fine tune somehow.

Thanks.

 

EDIT: I have tried to remove my "Saved Game"->DCS, and DCS creates a DCS directory.  Test the test case "Test1" and no change/no improvement at all.   

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2024 by scommander2

[Pillowcat]

1 hour ago, scommander2 said:

based on the following screenshots

Look at CPU frequency, isn't its how thermal throttling usually looks like?

Also GPU Mem suspiciously close to the limit, so it may waste time by dragging textures from the RAM to draw every frame, i'd recommend try to lower terrain or othr textures even more.

Edited October 12, 2024 by Pillowcat

[scommander2]

10 minutes ago, Pillowcat said:

isn't its how thermal throttling usually looks like?

It is kind of normal to me and fans are not kicked in yet.  Thanks.

[NIAGARA MOHAWK]

That CPU speed ( 1.47 Ghz )looks way to Slow for getting any smooth DCS play .. 

even DCS says this == Minimum system requirements (LOW graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 10; DirectX11; CPU: Intel or AMD 3.0Ghz+  

[MAXsenna]

20 minutes ago, NIAGARA MOHAWK said:

That CPU speed ( 1.47 Ghz )looks way to Slow for getting any smooth DCS play .. 

even DCS says this == Minimum system requirements (LOW graphics settings): OS 64-bit Windows 10; DirectX11; CPU: Intel or AMD 3.0Ghz+  

Should be able to do 5.4GHz in turbo.  

@scommander2 What's the CPU temp? 

[scommander2]

I have re-unpacked my cores again from:

Reboot my system, re-run the unpark program with 0 core unparked.  Re-run the test case "Test1" and check my CPU usage:

 

The speed goes about 3.3GHz and down... (with GPU BOUND) my CPU temp is about 80.

Thanks.

EDIT: with CPU BOUND, it goes 4.6GHz.

 

Edited October 13, 2024 by scommander2

[NIAGARA MOHAWK]

something going on with that CPU ?  

I had mentioned this to someone else with FPS / stutter issues ..on another thread .. it should be an easy try ..

  I had the same issue a week or so ago -- tried some same things you did = no Joy .... so I the did an ( OPERATING SYS RESTORE ) point to a few weeks Prior. and all is back to norm == I think Microsoft updates are causing issues == good luck..     it worked for me ..  

Not DCS sys restore == Microsoft    sys restore point ..

[NIAGARA MOHAWK]

 

 

To restore your computer to a previous state before a specific event, you need to use the "System Restore" feature on your computer, which allows you to revert your system settings and files back to a selected restore point created at a previous time; essentially "rolling back" your computer to how it was before a certain event occurred. 

 

 

How to perform a System Restore: 

 

 

• Open Control Panel: Go to your Start menu, search for "Control Panel" and open it. 
   
   
• Access Recovery: In the Control Panel, search for "Recovery" and select it. 
   
   
• Open System Restore: Click on "Open System Restore". 
   
   
• Choose a Restore Point: Select the restore point that corresponds to the time period before the issue occurred. 
   
   
• Confirm and Restore: Click "Next" to confirm your selection and then "Finish" to begin the system restore process. 
   
   

 

•  

Edited October 13, 2024 by NIAGARA MOHAWK
removed a bad link

[scommander2]

1 hour ago, NIAGARA MOHAWK said:

I had mentioned this to someone else with FPS / stutter issues ..on another thread .. it should be an easy try ..

  I had the same issue a week or so ago -- tried some same things you did = no Joy .... so I the did an ( OPERATING SYS RESTORE ) point to a few weeks Prior. and all is back to norm == I think Microsoft updates are causing issues == good luck..     it worked for me ..  

Not DCS sys restore == Microsoft    sys restore point ..

Thanks.

I think that re-unpark core program I just tried did help to get more load on CPU as well as GPU for increasing FPS, but I am still trying and monitoring to see how far I can go...

[scommander2]

Day 2 after the Core re-unparked

My all cores are running unparked now and "Play DCS World Steam Edition" can maintain 51 FPS for the test case "Test 1" and 60 FPS for the test case "Test2" since I have hard set 60 FPS @ Nvidia Control Panel and DCS CONTROLS->Max FPS.

Core Unpark apps:

1. https://github.com/Fadreus/Unpark-CPU

2. https://coderbag.com/programming-c/disable-cpu-core-parking-utility

I used the first app (above) on Windows 11 an the app said that all my cores were unparked.  However, "Play DCS World Steam Edition" failed to boost up FPS in the test case "Test1" with the minimum 12 FPS, and the test case "Test2" was able to reached 60 FPS but FPS was up and down unstable.

For the 2nd app, it seemed to work for me that all of my cores are really unparked, please see below screenshot (I was taken during testing the test case "Test1"):

 

In addition, I gave followed the steps from the following forum to adjust power management for the minimum processors.

For now, "Play DCS World Steam Edition" is working good (needed more tests if I can say great) in CPU BOUND as well as GPU BOUND.  Of course, I have had followed @BIGNEWY's suggestion to adjust my DCS settings.

Moreover, I need to monitor my P/E core temperatures for not going to high, so some adjustments are still going.

"Play MT Review" was history and I could not find out why it could make stable FPS without having the core unpark.

[jackd]

Tip: clean your shader cache files with Windows Disk Cleanup.