Fps drops from around 120 to 30 every 10 seconds or so

[PatientSquire27]

I dont know if attaching my logs would help but this problem doesn't change whether im on the ground or in the air but every 10 seconds or so my game goes from a nice 120 fps to 30 and then back up and I've tried tweaking with a bunch of settings, setting it to low, low preload, turning SSAO, SSLR off and nothing seems to help.

cef_log.log dcs.log dcs.log.old debrief.log

[silverdevil]

5 hours ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I dont know if attaching my logs would help but this problem doesn't change whether im on the ground or in the air but every 10 seconds or so my game goes from a nice 120 fps to 30 and then back up and I've tried tweaking with a bunch of settings, setting it to low, low preload, turning SSAO, SSLR off and nothing seems to help.

Hello. i dropped your dcs.log to the Discord analyzer. here is advice and tuning tips

Advice
 
Disable Core Parking.
Verify that this is configured correctly in Windows:
Game Mode disabled
Hardware accelerated GPU scheduling disabled
Core Isolation disabled

Tuning Tips
 
Set Water to Medium or Low.
Disable civil traffic.
Consider using DLAA.
Disable Tacview for performance reasons.
Set Shadows to Medium.
Turn off SSAO.
Tuning tips are recommendations for better FPS based on your CPU, GPU and RAM.
They might result in slightly decreased display quality.

your log in the start has this line which matches up with disable parking. you should also disable hypervisor if you do not need it for anything else.

2025-03-31 08:59:38.821 WARNING EDCORE (Main): hypervisor is active
2025-03-31 08:59:38.821 WARNING EDCORE (Main): CPU HAS PARKED LOGICAL CORES (this can be source of stuttering and reduced performance especially on hybrid CPUs with P/E-cores)

Edited March 31 by silverdevil

[Hiob]

I might add, that OPs description of symptoms doesn't necessarily suggest general performance issues. So the GFX settings probably aren't the issue.
Things like Core-Parking or Windows settings are more likely to cause such intermittent frame drops.
I would put the pagefile settings on the list of suspects (if too small).

[HanuXXL]

Also check that you have excluded DCS folders from Microsoft Defender. That is one pain in the butt...on and causes random stutters.

[Hiob]

Good point! 

[Czar66]

1.  Parked Cores

   2025-03-31 08:59:38.821 WARNING EDCORE (Main): CPU HAS PARKED LOGICAL CORES (this can be source of stuttering and reduced performance especially on hybrid CPUs with P/E-cores)

   See: 

   https://www.dannymoran.com/windows-cpu-core-parking/

2. Turn down your visibility range to Ultra or lower if unparking cores doesn't help. Extreme vis range can cause weird frame drops.

3. Turn off Mods.

4. Make exclusions on your AV of DCS root folder and DCS inside 'Saved Games'.

 

 

[PatientSquire27]

Yeah I thought my CPU cores were already unparked but apparently they weren't.

[PatientSquire27]

I thought it solved the problem at first but it didn't, still same drop to 30 fps every now and then.

[Czar66]

1 minute ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I thought it solved the problem at first but it didn't, still same drop to 30 fps every now and then.

Have you reduced Visibility Range to Ultra or Lower? On your Log file it was 'extreme'.

[sleighzy]

3 hours ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I thought it solved the problem at first but it didn't, still same drop to 30 fps every now and then.

Have you tried this with completely disabling TacView, i.e. removing from the exports.lua file as well? It can cause performance issues as you are currently recording all telemetry data, and I see that you are also exporting this to OneDrive vs. just a local dir so I wonder if this is also caused by I/O which can block things.

The regularity of this occurring every 10 seconds does indicate some kind of process performing an action on a regular scheduled basis of some description.

Edited March 31 by sleighzy

[MAXsenna]

6 minutes ago, sleighzy said:

The regularity of this occurring every 10 seconds does indicate some kind of process performing an action on a regular scheduled basis of some description.

Like MSI afterburner? Or was that a thing only with AMD CPUs? 

 

[sleighzy]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

Like MSI afterburner? Or was that a thing only with AMD CPUs? 

 

I think it was primarily AMD (at least on some comments) but was more of a stuttering due to the polling it did (like millisecond type stuff). This massive fps drop sounds like something different.

Been awhile since I've used Tacview so can't recall if it constantly writes the telemetry data to disk so not saying root cause, but lets at least rule it out. Noticed it was being exported to a OneDrive directory so possibly an auto-sync to the cloud...?

[Leg2ion]

On 3/31/2025 at 10:45 AM, PatientSquire27 said:

I dont know if attaching my logs would help but this problem doesn't change whether im on the ground or in the air but every 10 seconds or so my game goes from a nice 120 fps to 30 and then back up and I've tried tweaking with a bunch of settings, setting it to low, low preload, turning SSAO, SSLR off and nothing seems to help.

Have you checked your power settings and ensured they are on high or performance (and not balanced or lower)?

[PatientSquire27]

On 3/31/2025 at 10:13 PM, Czar66 said:

Have you reduced Visibility Range to Ultra or Lower? On your Log file it was 'extreme'.

Yep problem still persists on all visibilities.

21 hours ago, Leg2ion said:

Have you checked your power settings and ensured they are on high or performance (and not balanced or lower)?

I've got an ASUS and GPU mode is Ultimate and power is on turbo.

I've also unparked my CPUs.

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I've got an ASUS and GPU mode is Ultimate and power is on turbo.

What about your Windows power plan? I understand Core Parking should be disabled in Windows 10 and 11 High Performance power plans by default.

[Hiob]

Simply open the services app in window, find the power service and disable it. 

That will get rid of any adverse effects in regards to energy management. If it doesn't help and if you feel the need to have all those (unnecessary) power shannanigans running, simply enable the service in the same way again.

There is no harm in trying.

[Leg2ion]

4 hours ago, PatientSquire27 said:

Yep problem still persists on all visibilities.

Out of curiosity what map or all?

Is it worth disabling head tracking so there is nothing interfering with output? 

Also ensure anything screensaver related is disabled/turned off.

Nvidia graphics card? Ensure power set to maximum preferred in the nvidia control panel.

Anything overclocked (cpu or memory) - reset it back to base. Likewise GPU. I have an old MSI 3090 which has a switch on it to swap between standard and gaming configuration. My setup gets worse if I put it into gaming mode?

[PatientSquire27]

21 minutes ago, Leg2ion said:

Out of curiosity what map or all?

Is it worth disabling head tracking so there is nothing interfering with output? 

Also ensure anything screensaver related is disabled/turned off.

Nvidia graphics card? Ensure power set to maximum preferred in the nvidia control panel.

Anything overclocked (cpu or memory) - reset it back to base. Likewise GPU. I have an old MSI 3090 which has a switch on it to swap between standard and gaming configuration. My setup gets worse if I put it into gaming mode?

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

Simply open the services app in window, find the power service and disable it. 

That will get rid of any adverse effects in regards to energy management. If it doesn't help and if you feel the need to have all those (unnecessary) power shannanigans running, simply enable the service in the same way again.

There is no harm in trying.

I've only got the Caucasus map which I think is the least demanding, I haven't got head tracking, tried disabling the power settings, nothing changed.

 

 

[Hiob]

6 minutes ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I've only got the Caucasus map which I think is the least demanding, I haven't got head tracking, tried disabling the power settings, nothing changed.

 

 

Maybe it's a matter of wording, but did you disabled settings or actually canceled the power service? I'm just asking because thats a big difference.

[PatientSquire27]

17 minutes ago, Hiob said:

Maybe it's a matter of wording, but did you disabled settings or actually canceled the power service? I'm just asking because thats a big difference.

I went to the properties, startup settings, disabled, restarted, my brightness was really low and I couldn't change it, changed nothing in the game.

[Hiob]

17 minutes ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I went to the properties, startup settings, disabled, restarted, my brightness was really low and I couldn't change it, changed nothing in the game.

That's not what I meant.
In Windows you need to open services find the power service, right click, open properties and make start type "disabled", then disable the current running and restart windows.
That will disable ALL powersaving functions of windows (not sure about the core parking tbh.), but most importantlly it will reduce latency a lot.
This may improve your issues if it is related to the root cause but I can't guarantee it, because we don't know yet what the cause is, but it is a usual suspect and disabling this windows service is good practise for smooth(!) performance.

I can however guarantee you that the only adverse effect of doing this would be increased power consumption if you are on a Notebook. If you are on a desktop system, plugged to a wall outled there is really no downside. Ultimately you can re-activate the service in the same way.

(are you on an english windows version?)

p.s. running ANY kind of power plan in windows, especially the ultimate one, will NOT alleviate stuttering problems in the same way as disabling the service altogether does.

 

[Czar66]

5 hours ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I've got an ASUS and GPU mode is Ultimate and power is on turbo.

What is your GPU? It can be the bottleneck with certain gfx parameters turned on in DCS. Disable that 'turbo' mode, keep everything default on hardware.

Set 'Terrain Object Shadows' to FLAT if your GPU ends up at 100% when the drops happen. The performance taken from the 'default' shadowmaps is immense and can induce violent fps differences. It is odd from 120 to 30fps though.

[sleighzy]

@PatientSquire27, what happened when you tried without TacView enabled (given both the performance hit and your files going to OneDrive)? Removed from Scripts\Hooks and commented out/removed the line from the export.lua file?

[Leg2ion]

4 hours ago, Hiob said:

p.s. running ANY kind of power plan in windows, especially the ultimate one, will NOT alleviate stuttering problems in the same way as disabling the service altogether does.

Maybe not but fixed my issue a couple of years ago where I had almost exactly the same issue? First became noticeable after 'accidentally' installing MSI Dragon Centre thinking it might improve things - it absolutely murdered my system - managing to bring my FTTP connection of around 300MB/S down to around 4! After uninstalling it things were smoother - the bi-product being it had cranked my system up to Ultimate in the power settings. Never looked back. That said what does disabling the Power service do over and above setting things to ultimate? 

@PatientSquire27 Can you confirm what you have/haven't done - or whether you need any further advice in achieving some suggestions?

9 hours ago, PatientSquire27 said:

I've got an ASUS and GPU mode is Ultimate and power is on turbo.

Not sure what that means - when you say GPU mode is ultimate, and power is on turbo - think those are GPU settings via Armoury Crate? Have you tried setting GPU back to standard and power back to performance - just to gauge if things go better/worse?

When I mentioned Power settings I am more suggesting the power mode of the PC (so System/Power and Battery/Power Mode - select Performance mode if not already. In addition you can try setting PCI Express Link State Power Management to Off (Control Panel, System and Security, Power Option, Change Plan Settings, Change Advanced Power Settings - then in the box that appears select PCI Express, LSPM and set it to off for either battery, plugged in or both). Not sure if that would be affected by @Hiob suggestion to stop the overall power process.

[PatientSquire27]

1 hour ago, sleighzy said:

@PatientSquire27, what happened when you tried without TacView enabled (given both the performance hit and your files going to OneDrive)? Removed from Scripts\Hooks and commented out/removed the line from the export.lua file?

I don't understand how to disable tac view