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These specs should work right?


GunnDawg

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So I've got this gem of a game and figured I would be able to run it on HIGH settings with a stable frame rate, though that isnt the case. When on the ground its horrible, and in the air isnt much better (slightly better, but not worth mentioning as an improvement).

 

Here are my specs:

 

AMD Phenom 9600 2.30Ghz Quad-Core

4GB DDR2 XMS Corsair RAM

Nvidia 9800GTX+

Windows XP (SP3)

 

If that isnt a good enough system to run high settings, then what particular settings can I turn down to normal/medium in order to keep the game looking good and get it to run better.

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the only option i can think of to get it to run properly requires vista...

 

And? Go on... What option is it that you are referring to? Black Shark is just a poorly optimized game. I have a very powerful system, and sometimes the frame rate slows to a crawl, you just learn to deal with it. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the game is simulating a lot at once. This is a very CPU intensive game because of all of the AI that it has to keep track of, on a huge battlefield. If you have a 64bit CPU though, which you do, you really should be on Vista 64bit anyways, to get the most out of your PC, even if you won't get the most out of Black Shark.

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I´d suggest to use:

 

- Water: Normal

- Shadows: Active Planar

- Heat blur: Off

 

Also try searching the forums to find what file to edit to use Effects=2 (I´m sorry I just don´t remember).

 

All the rest could remain at high, with a similar setup I get around 40FPS in 1920*1200. Worthy of note, at least in my system the bottleneck is the processor, I´m running with 8x AA and 16x AF no problem.

 

RCtrl+Pause gives you on-screen FPS.

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"Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance." (Dr. A. R. Dykes - British Institution of Structural Engineers, 1976)

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Here are my specs:

 

You didn't mention the resolution you want to run at. If you want to run at 640x480, you'll be fine. If you want to push 2 triplehead2go's, each at 5040x1050, you'll be struggling. Resolution is important.

DCS Wishlist: | Navy F-14 | Navy F/A-18 | AH-6 | Navy A-6 | Official Navy A-4 | Carrier Ops | Dynamic Campaign | Marine AH-1 |

 

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visibility needs to be medium or low. effects = 2 and shadows = 2 really helps. You can also turn water completely off.

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Black Shark is just a poorly optimized game.

 

While I can't vouch for the optimization of the code, since I don't have access to the code, you should realize that Black Shark is an insanely complex piece of kit. Unlike most games it has very little GPU-related stuff to do but a massive amount of simulation work for the CPU to do. This is stuff that doesn't show up visually, but includes as varied things as radio-wave stuff for the line-of-sight communications, hydraulic flow, electrics, thermals, a lot of aerodynamic calculations (not just a simple table-model like FSX) and so on. This puts extreme stress on the CPU wherefore the standard judgements doesn't apply. In most games it's the eyecandy that's the big one.

 

Here, the CPU is really being shown that it's alive.

 

As for the OP, I would definitely recommend that you try it on Vista or W7 while using DCS-max. Since your processor is at only 2.3 with non-shared L2-caches of only 512kb you will definitely be seeing some advantages of allowing the process to hop between cores when necessary. (Though I suspect less advantage than processors that have cache shared between the cores, but I haven't seen comparative tests of that.)

 

Aside from that, I agree with sinelnic's suggestions. Water is a big resource hog due to a peculiarity with the engine structure (from what I've been told), and shadow's aren't going to be all that big of a deal when you're sitting in the cockpit anyhow. You can also test lowering the visibility distance from highest. But I do suspect that the biggest bottleneck isn't really graphics, but rather the CPU and the fact that you are using an OS that only has jury-rigged multicore support. Running on Vista or W7 gives you the ability to run tools like DCSMax which can give some really amazing benefits since you can then exploit that OS's multicore handling.

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When did you run 64? The 64-bit version was plagued by driver problems in it's early life, but I have had absolutely no problems in the last 6 months, since I got myself a new machine. It should also be noted that a 32-bit operating system will not use all of the RAM you have there. (If you have a 512MB graphics card, it'll only use 3.5GB of your system RAM.)

 

That aside, the DCSMax application and other "affinity trick" apps will work equally well with any version of Vista, 32 or 64 bit. The specific gains is in the fact that Vista was made from the start to handle multicore processors, and is therefore better at handling them efficiently (even for applications that are not multithreaded) than XP which is a lot poorer at handling them - an effect of the fact that when XP was developed and through a large part of it's service life there was no such thing as a multicore processor in the consumer market.

 

Of course, you can also just elect to be patient for a little while and check if the new beta model that W7 enjoyed makes it's release more pain-free than previous windows releases have been.

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Bah, I am all sorts of confused now. I play ArmA 2 and that game ran 10 times better on XP than it did with vista 64 bit....

 

Which would make a lot of what you said un true, heh. Though I am not calling you a liar, I dont see why it would run better on XP.

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ArmA 2 is not DCS. This is basically how I think that happens (there is some speculation in this):

 

DCS is not a multithreaded application. This means that for it to be able to take any advantage of extra cores in the processor, it has to run on an operating system that is built with the extra cores in mind. In the windows world that means Vista and W7. XP can use extra cores, but it's not really good at it.

 

However, if ArmA 2 is a multithreaded application, it can take advantage of the extra cores even on XP. And there is also the fact that the first ArmA was only made to work on Vista in any real playable state with a relatively late patch, so there might be components of Bohemia Interactive having some coding practices that just doesn't work well with Vista. (Which could make sense, since there are some pretty radical differences in how XP and Vista handle memory and such.)

 

Additionally, XP has a lesser commit charge - that is, the operating system itself eats less of the computer's memory and processor cycles than Vista does. In the case of DCS this can be seen in many tests that have been published on this forum where, if you play it without "affinity trick", there is a 5-10% (from memory) performance loss when moving from XP to Vista. However, as soon as you start using the affinity trick applications like DCSMax Vista and W7 bumps their results to high above XP's score - which remains largely unchanged even with affinity trick due to the OS's inability to trix with that. (Some people reported 3%ish gains, but that's within error margins.)

 

Also, realise that ArmA 2 and DCS are extremely different beasts in pretty much all respects. ArmA isn't a complex simulator - it uses pretty simple systems to do the simulation bits and then uses the GPU to crank out graphics for all it's worth. It's a game where graphics processing power and how the OS handles those routines is king. DCS runs a LOT of extremely complex simulations that tax the CPU insanely, which makes CPU management a lot more important than anything else. You can have all the graphics power you like, but if your CPU (and the OS's handling of that CPU) cannot crank out the power needed to run all those numbers all the time, you will get crap FPS.

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Intel i7 2600K @ 4.4GHz, ASUS Sabertooth P67, 8GB Corsair Vengeance @ 1600MHz, ASUS GTX 560Ti DirectCU II 1GB, Samsung 830series 512GB SSD, Corsair AX850w, two BENQ screens and TM HOTAS Warthog

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I run Arma 2 on Ultra High Settings without a single stutter and constant fluent FPS. Same goes for BS, and i have everything on high.

 

My rig is reference for those that want to play the latest games on max, and it's not even the most powerfull you can built on the market.

Cooler Master 932 HAF, Intel I7-920 @2.66MHz, ASUS GTX-260 896MB DDR3, 6GB DDR3 XMS 1333MHz Corsair RAM, Win7 Home Premium 64bit, Trackir 5, X52 pro, Creative Fatal1ty Headset

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I run Arma 2 on Ultra High Settings without a single stutter and constant fluent FPS. Same goes for BS, and i have everything on high.

 

My rig is reference for those that want to play the latest games on max, and it's not even the most powerfull you can built on the market.

 

I think there is definitely a sweet spot where the rig is balanced just right to get the best out of games. But I think it's important to also know what screen res you play at?

 

I have an OK frame rate with high settings even at 2560x1600, problem is with 4870X2 under XP I run out of address space and get frequent crashes. I chose a dual core CPU with 3.2Ghz core because I mainly play games without good MP support.

 

This weekend I will reinstall under Vista64 and see if that helps with address space problems.

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And? Go on... What option is it that you are referring to? Black Shark is just a poorly optimized game. I have a very powerful system, and sometimes the frame rate slows to a crawl, you just learn to deal with it. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the game is simulating a lot at once. This is a very CPU intensive game because of all of the AI that it has to keep track of, on a huge battlefield. If you have a 64bit CPU though, which you do, you really should be on Vista 64bit anyways, to get the most out of your PC, even if you won't get the most out of Black Shark.

 

I'm thinking of the affinity trick/DCS Max...

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I think there is definitely a sweet spot where the rig is balanced just right to get the best out of games. But I think it's important to also know what screen res you play at?

 

I have an OK frame rate with high settings even at 2560x1600, problem is with 4870X2 under XP I run out of address space and get frequent crashes. I chose a dual core CPU with 3.2Ghz core because I mainly play games without good MP support.

 

This weekend I will reinstall under Vista64 and see if that helps with address space problems.

 

It's not much. 1440x900. I actually bought a 19" LCD instead of a bigger one so that i wouldn't have to lose FPS with a higher resolution.

 

I have read in other threads that BS actually performs BEST under vista. Vista 64 bit will only offer you a performance gain when:

1. You have more than 4GB RAM.

2. You have a 64 bit writen program.

3. You have a multi core processor.

 

In other words in order to make BS run better you need to:

1.Ged rid of XP and install Vista 64

2.Upgrade to at least 6GB RAM (Best go for 8 )

3.Use quad core processor and set the affinity of BS to use all cores.


Edited by MisterY

Cooler Master 932 HAF, Intel I7-920 @2.66MHz, ASUS GTX-260 896MB DDR3, 6GB DDR3 XMS 1333MHz Corsair RAM, Win7 Home Premium 64bit, Trackir 5, X52 pro, Creative Fatal1ty Headset

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Vista 64 bit will only offer you a performance gain when:

1. You have more than 4GB RAM.

 

Note however that this includes pretty much every single system meant to play games that is sold today, excepting a few DDR3 systems that run with 3 gigs. Because the adress space limitation also includes vRAM. So even if you only have a 256MB graphics card in your 4GB RAM system, a 32-bit OS will still cause the system to not use all resources that are physically present.

 

There are also differences in how 64-bit systems handle the memory on the adress level that can cause gains or losses irrespective of the whether you have reached the critical RAM limit of 32-bits, but these are very complex stuff (above my own skill, but I've been given some pretty interesting executive's-summaries on this forum before on this topic).

 

But the 4GB limit with the vRAM consideration is very important. I've seen tragic cases of people getting 4x1GB sticks, a 1GB graphics card, and then giving it a 32-bit OS to effectively make a whole stick redundant... :doh:

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Vista 64bit will only improve things if DCS Blackshark is also coded in 64bit. Really this sim needs the fastest CPU core you can afford, having four cores means nothing for games only coded to run on one core.

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Vista 64bit will only improve things if DCS Blackshark is also coded in 64bit.

 

This I have never really agreed with. Yes a 32-bit application can still only address 2GB with 64bit windows (or 4GB if DCS have compiled with IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE), but what if you're running multiple applications (which we all do)?

 

OS processes: 400MB

GPU: 1GB

DCS: 2GB

 

You're already at the limit of what a 32bit OS can handle. And you've not even started adding VOIP, instruments, firewall, virus scanner and all the other little things you run. On a 32bit OS, every little app takes away from what DCS can address. On a 64bit OS, DCS will get the full 2/4GB because the OS can address the full RAM pool, so the only way DCS will get less than its maximum allocation of RAM is if you physically run out.

 

Now of course when DCS move to 64bit, DCS will be able to use every last scrap of physical RAM in your system and it will be a beautiful thing.

 

I noticed a huge performance increase going from 32/2GB to 64/6GB in day to day gaming.


Edited by ruprecht

DCS Wishlist: | Navy F-14 | Navy F/A-18 | AH-6 | Navy A-6 | Official Navy A-4 | Carrier Ops | Dynamic Campaign | Marine AH-1 |

 

Streaming DCS sometimes:

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I noticed a huge performance increase going from 32/2GB to 64/6GB in day to day gaming.

 

Could you please give more detail on what kind of improvement? I suppose not big improvement in FPS but less stutter?

 

Thank you!

Westinghouse W-600 refrigerator - Corona six-pack - Marlboro reds - Patience by Girlfriend

 

"Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance." (Dr. A. R. Dykes - British Institution of Structural Engineers, 1976)

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I didn't get any benchmarks, purely anecdotally I'd say 25% FPS increase and it feels much "snappier" if that makes sense. Stutter is a thing of the past, but I think the RAID 0 raptors help with that too.

DCS Wishlist: | Navy F-14 | Navy F/A-18 | AH-6 | Navy A-6 | Official Navy A-4 | Carrier Ops | Dynamic Campaign | Marine AH-1 |

 

Streaming DCS sometimes:

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