I am dissappointed

[Jimi-46]

Hi there!

I just upgraded my computer. I had a GTX260 before and i bought an GTX295, so now I have an AMD 9950 procesor (cores at 3GHz), 8 GB of RAM (they are not all the same but they are working at 800MHz, thinking of selling the older two stick and buying a new set of 2x2GB so they would match). I run the mission Convoy hunt and i thought I will have at least 10FPS more then i did with GTX260, but the FPS is same as before. I get about 23FPS when i cabin (all high, water on normal and 1024 cockpit textures). When i switch to flyby (F3 before the takeoff; trees in the background, clouds) the FPS drop below 20 (about 16-17FPS). I am guessing the processor is holding it back. Any suggestions? Appreciate your help.

[topol-m]

My suggestion is if you are going for a CPU upgrade take the I5-750. IMHO at the moment that`s the best buy considering performance/price. This means a new motherboard (not an expensive one as MBs have the smallest impact on FPS; for instance some ASUS P7P55D version or similar from other manufacturers) and fast DDR3 memory (I don`t think you will need more than 8GB). :thumbup:

[Distiler]

Hi there!

I just upgraded my computer. I had a GTX260 before and i bought an GTX295, so now I have an AMD 9950 procesor (cores at 3GHz), 8 GB of RAM (they are not all the same but they are working at 800MHz, thinking of selling the older two stick and buying a new set of 2x2GB so they would match). I run the mission Convoy hunt and i thought I will have at least 10FPS more then i did with GTX260, but the FPS is same as before. I get about 23FPS when i cabin (all high, water on normal and 1024 cockpit textures). When i switch to flyby (F3 before the takeoff; trees in the background, clouds) the FPS drop below 20 (about 16-17FPS). I am guessing the processor is holding it back. Any suggestions? Appreciate your help.

 

Are you using Windows XP? use Vista or 7 (50% more fps due using 2 cpu cores)

Full screen more fps.

Disable mirrors and high water.

[EtherealN]

I run the mission Convoy hunt and i thought I will have at least 10FPS more then i did with GTX260, but the FPS is same as before.

 

DCS:BS is a very high fidelity simulator, which indeed means that the main bottleneck on the system is the CPU - not the GPU. A GTX260 is sufficiently far above the requirements that there is no real reason to upgrade it unless you intend to use Supersampling AA or extreme AA/AF ratios.

 

I am guessing the processor is holding it back. Any suggestions? Appreciate your help.

 

Correct. Some steps that should help you boost performance:

1) Disable mirrors

2) Cockpit displays at 512 (not 512-ever-frame)

3) View distance medium

4) Disable water. This requires editing a configuration file - get the free utility Notepad++ (do not use regular windows notepad) and find the file options.lua at C:\Games\BlackShark\BlackShark\data\scripts\ and find the part that looks like this:

 

   {
       ["multiMonitorSetup"] = "1camera",
       ["color"] = "32",
       ["heatBlr"] = 1,
       ["scenes"] = "high",
       ["water"] = 2,
       ["fullScreen"] = true,
       ["visibRange"] = "High",
       ["aspect"] = 1.6,
       ["textures"] = 2,
       ["shadows"] = 3,
       ["display_mode"] = 
       {

 

Change the number at "water" to 0

 

5) As Distiler mentioned, if you are using XP then you would probably get better performance if you upgrade to Vista or 7, since those operating systems have better support for multicore processors and can do a lot of load balancing that XP can't.

6) Overclock. DCS berformance scales almost directly with clock speed on the processor wherefore an older dual-core processor at 4GHz (like mine) usually performs better than, say, an i7 at stock speed even though the i7 is nominally more powerful. However, if you decide to go that route and haven't done so before, remember that it is possible to damage your components (and hardware warranties will be voided) unless you are careful. The risk isn't big but it does exist, so in that case do ensure that you've done some homework first.

Edited December 19, 2009 by EtherealN
Fixing confused grammar. I need more coffee.

[Jimi-46]

Tnx!

I have Win7 installed. I did overclock my CPUs too, from original 2.6GHz to 3.0GHz. It is a quadro core AMD. I don't know how much higher I can go, but there is a slight improvement already. I will try the water thing shortly. Tnx again.

[galagamo]

I actually have that same processor, 9950BE also @3Ghz with a GTX260 and 4GB Kingston HyperX ram @1066mhz. I never experience FPS under 20 'except a split second when I change views' and I've seen it as high as 60 but it mostly stay's at 30, perfectly acceptable right? My first suggestion for you is to remove the mismatched ram as that alone can sometimes hinder your performance. I don't know why but I was told that on another forum, 4GB is plenty anyway. Also the GTX295 is an SLI GPU It has 2 GPU's built into one card on one PCI rail so you were better off with the GTX260 as the DCS BS engine will only use one GPU at a time. (I just recently learned this myself)

and finaly any 64bit OS will yield a performance boost. I recomend win7 however I'm currently using XP x64 without indecent.

 

I wish you luck :)

[EtherealN]

Another point on the RAM is that depending on your motherboard using four sticks might impair performance on it's own through the memory pipes not having enough bandwidth to run all sticks on dual channels - so you might then be getting more memory but at the expense of performance even if using identical chips.

 

You could test this through running the benchmark tool in FRAPS. There's some comparisons made (and a track file) at this thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=45931

 

Run such a benchmark for a given amount of time, and check the MinMaxAvg file that was output, then turn off the computer and remove two sticks (making sure to follow the recommended positions for a two-stick layout, refer to your motherboard manual) and then re-do it. Obviously you would have to take some steps to make sure that in both cases the environment is otherwise equal - that is, no extra applications in the background.

 

All that said, in my own tests I had pretty much zero FPS impact in DCS when flipping my sticks between 800MHz, 1000MHz and 1092MHz. However, even then it might have an impact if your sticks aren't able to fully utilize dual channels.

Edited December 19, 2009 by EtherealN

[Ramstein]

I agree that the cpu performance is a must.. minimum is about 3 ghz, core2duo or equivalent..

:thumbup:

[Distiler]

Have you installed the 1.01 patch? do it, otherwise you're not using 2nd cpu core even in W7.

[Jimi-46]

Yeah sure, the first thing i did. :)

I took two stick out and leave the other two inside. On 1066MHz doesn't work (BSD), but it works fine at the moment on 800MHz and on 128-bit mode. I got nice FPS now, all settings on high except water (normal), cabin on 512. Lower FPS are when there are two or more Black Sharks in the view (close), otherwise it is ok. I overclocked the CPU to 3.2GHz (rise the voltage a little). Tnx for the help guys!

[Distiler]

Are u on full screen mode or windowed? windowed cut fps a lot

[EtherealN]

On 1066MHz doesn't work (BSD), but it works fine at the moment on 800MHz and on 128-bit mode.

 

Oooh, that sounds dangerous. If it doesn't run on it's rated speed it sounds like it is about to fail. Have you verified whether it has any JEDEC or EPP settings stored onchip? You should be able to retrieve that information with CPU-Z to verify that the motherboard isn't doing something funny to it's settings.

 

I got nice FPS now, all settings on high except water (normal), cabin on 512. Lower FPS are when there are two or more Black Sharks in the view (close), otherwise it is ok. I overclocked the CPU to 3.2GHz (rise the voltage a little). Tnx for the help guys!

 

Good to hear you've got improved performance, see you in the skies and don't hesitate to ask if you need help. :)