DCS:W procces is running in efficiency mode, causing extreme frame stuttering.

AJaromir · July 13

This is a problem I've been dealing with for a long time (since I have W11), but only now have I found out the cause. Sometimes I just have to restart the game to get it to recover and have a stable FPS. If I don't do that, the FPS looks like the picture here.

You can see extreme stuttering in the graph on extremely hi-end PC.

But always after game restart all have been fixed. Then it looked like this:

In short: super smooth!

And now I've probably found out why it's happening. For some reason unknown to me, the game is and is not running in efficiency mode. And my question is: How do I prevent the game from running in efficiency mode?

Here is the picture in which you can see what is running in efficiency mode. It is not dcs.exe itself, but some subprocess for which I am not able to turn efficiency mode off:

Edited July 13 by AJaromir

speed-of-heat · July 13

a couple of ways: make sure you are running ultimate performance on your power plan, and you can also go to Settings > System > Display > Graphics. Here, you can add your game executable and set it to "High performance," which might help prevent it from entering efficiency mode. HTH

AJaromir · July 13

Just now, speed-of-heat said:

a couple of ways: make sure you are running ultimate performance on your power plan, and you can also go to Settings > System > Display > Graphics. Here, you can add your game executable and set it to "High performance," which might help prevent it from entering efficiency mode. HTH

Yes, I have set ultimate power plan and DCS is in the high performance list. Also I have forced core parking off for my 13900kf, done by editing windows registries.

MAXsenna · July 13

Yes, I have set ultimate power plan and DCS is in the high performance list. Also I have forced core parking off for my 13900kf, done by editing windows registries.

Can you post your DCS.log?

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

AJaromir · July 13

Just now, MAXsenna said:

Can you post your DCS.log?

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

Hi. Do you want to send my log when the process is in efficiency mode? It is quite difficult because I have to restart game few times until this stuttering randomly cames in. It often requires to restart whole PC, so give me like 10 minutes.

MAXsenna · July 13

Just now, AJaromir said:

Hi. Do you want to send my log when the process is in efficiency mode? It is quite difficult because I have to restart game few times until this stuttering randomly cames in. It often requires to restart whole PC, so give me like 10 minutes.

Sure, no problem!

AJaromir · July 13

29 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Sure, no problem!

Murphy's Law of Order says that things always go wrong (get fixed) at the "right" time. So at this time, as if on purpose, I am unable to reproduce the problem. This screenshot is from my last attempt, when it was at least partially successful. In the normal case, when everything works as it should, the line on the graph is absolutely straight. Here it is slightly lame. Reproducing the problem is often helped by setting a low FPS limit like 30 or less. I normally use a limit of 60.

In the attachments is the game log:

dcs.log

Edited July 13 by AJaromir

MAXsenna · July 13

17 minutes ago, AJaromir said:

Murphy's Law of Order says that things always go wrong (get fixed) at the "right" time. So at this time, as if on purpose, I am unable to reproduce the problem. This screenshot is from my last attempt, when it was at least partially successful. In the normal case, when everything works as it should, the line on the graph is absolutely straight. Here it is slightly lame. Reproducing the problem is often helped by setting a low FPS limit like 30 or less. I normally use a limit of 60.

Yeah, the Demo Troll likes to play.

Nothing out of the ordinary in the log. You could try to turn off the hyper-Visor and set a pagefile manually at 32768MB, while I guess that doesn't matter when you have 64gigs physical.

Cheers!

AJaromir · July 13

Thank you. Will try. Just for your info. Now the issue is back (without turning off the hypervisor) and there is no "efficiency mode" mark in task manager. There is very often red CPU bound(main thread) message.

Here is log:

dcs.log

scommander2 · July 13

Is it possible that selects all P-Cores for dcs.exe from Task Manger Process affinity? This test is to ensure that DCS runs in P-Cores only even though DCS has made P-Cores for the render/common cores and E-Cores for IO cores.

Another test is to disabled Power management so that all CPUs will run in the full power, and it is the final resort.

MAXsenna · July 13

1 hour ago, AJaromir said:

Thank you. Will try. Just for your info. Now the issue is back (without turning off the hypervisor) and there is no "efficiency mode" mark in task manager. There is very often red CPU bound(main thread) message.

Nothing new in the log.

jnr4817 · July 14

Does this command do anything: --disable-features=UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess, if used with DCS, when modifying .exe

AJaromir · Monday at 02:53 PM

14 hours ago, jnr4817 said:

Does this command do anything: --disable-features=UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess, if used with DCS, when modifying .exe

Should I add this into "autoexec.cfg" file?

cesarferrolho · Monday at 04:11 PM

..For me, the proper solution was to disable E-cores in the BIOS. I had tried everything else. And solved the problems not only in DCS, but also another game.

scommander2 · Monday at 04:16 PM

instead of disabling E-Cores, why not set dcs.exe to be bounded with all P-Cores alone. Let E-Cores take care the background processes to reduce the system context switches within P-Cores.

cesarferrolho · Monday at 04:27 PM

1 minute ago, scommander2 said:

instead of disabling E-Cores, why not set dcs.exe to be bounded with all P-Cores alone. Let E-Cores take care the background processes to reduce the system context switches within P-Cores.

Like i said, i had tried just about everything. I used, for like a year or more, Process Lasso, which does that: bounding DCS with P-Cores alone (or any config i want).

Then, ED, after some update, advised to not use Process Lasso anymore, and indeed, it wasn't needed in general and using it would cause problems. But, some more updates after, the problems came back, and this solution of disabling the E-cores has been great so far, with no performance downside that i can observe.

I'm not saying it's the best solution overall or that it will work with any Intel processor, but in my case, it was the best solution i found.

scommander2 · Monday at 04:34 PM

Beside PL, the process affinity can be set though Task manager->Details->[select dcs.exe]->[click mouse right button for "set affinity]

With the script:

:
: set CPU affinity to the process
:
: Binary to Decimal at https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/hex-to-decimal.html
: For example for 12 P-Cores
: Binary  = 1111111111111111
: Decimal = 4095
: "1" - select
: "0" - not select
:
powershell.exe "$process = Get-Process \"dcs\"; $process.ProcessorAffinity = 4095"

cesarferrolho · Monday at 05:31 PM

Ok, but ultimately, when i looked at the DCS logfile, it complained about core parking in the first lines (now i remember it better) and although i had used some registry alteration or something along those lines to unpark, it remained the same, in terms of the DCS logfile. Disabling the E-cores in BIOS was my only remedy, at the end of the day

sleighzy · Monday at 07:07 PM

1 hour ago, cesarferrolho said:

Ok, but ultimately, when i looked at the DCS logfile, it complained about core parking in the first lines (now i remember it better) and although i had used some registry alteration or something along those lines to unpark, it remained the same, in terms of the DCS logfile. Disabling the E-cores in BIOS was my only remedy, at the end of the day

Sounds like possibly your registry change wasn’t right…. Try using the ParkControl software to disable core parking. You are using Windows 11 right?

Turning off all your E-cores sounds like a bad idea. You’ve basically spent money on a good CPU, and then turned off half its power.

4 hours ago, AJaromir said:

Should I add this into "autoexec.cfg" file?

No, you’d add it as an parameter on the end of your DCS shortcut command.

cesarferrolho · Monday at 08:00 PM

44 minutes ago, sleighzy said:

Sounds like possibly your registry change wasn’t right…. Try using the ParkControl software to disable core parking. You are using Windows 11 right?

Turning off all your E-cores sounds like a bad idea. You’ve basically spent money on a good CPU, and then turned off half its power.

No, you’d add it as an parameter on the end of your DCS shortcut command.

No, i'm using Windows 10.

Half the power? No, it's a 12th gen i7 12700. Only a few cores are E-cores. I don't notice any loss of processing power at all. Seems to me like Intel really droped the ball with that E-Core BS.

I'm not inclined to install more third party software to solve bad engineering/programming from Intel and/or MS. It's good as it is now, for my needs

AJaromir · Monday at 08:10 PM

Core parking is issue only in W11

cesarferrolho · Monday at 08:19 PM

4 minutes ago, AJaromir said:

Core parking is issue only in W11

I'm using Win 10 and i can assure you my DCS log pointed out to parked cores in the beginning of the log file. And once i disabled E-cores in my BIOS, it showed no more parked cores and i stopped having problems (Stutters and Freezes). I also used to have stutters in another completely different game, before disabling E-cores

AJaromir · Monday at 08:23 PM

3 minutes ago, cesarferrolho said:

I'm using Win 10 and i can assure you my DCS log pointed out to parked cores in the beginning of the log file. And once i disabled E-cores in my BIOS, it showed no more parked cores and i stopped having problems (Stutters and Freezes). I also used to have stutters in another completely different game, before disabling E-cores

In Windows 10 power settings you can set core parking threshold. This setting is not available in W11

cesarferrolho · Monday at 08:29 PM

4 minutes ago, AJaromir said:

In Windows 10 power settings you can set core parking threshold. This setting is not available in W11

Doesn't seems like a smart move for 11. So you can't manage it? Or thrid party software is needed for Win 11?

AJaromir · Monday at 08:33 PM

10 minutes ago, cesarferrolho said:

Doesn't seems like a smart move for 11. So you can't manage it? Or thrid party software is needed for Win 11?

In W11 it is possible to manage that ony by editing windows registries.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583\

There are two values. One is named "value max" and one is named "value min" This values in % determines the minimum and the maximum allowed ammount of parked cores. When the both values are set to 0, no core will be ever parked.

After that the system restart is needed.

Edit: Or I can change value "Attributes" to 0 and this will unlock the core parking setting in power settings, just like it is in W10

Edited Monday at 08:40 PM by AJaromir

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