DCS BS² - Low FPS

[felixfsx]

Hi,

 

I just bought and download Black Shark 2, I have a good PC (I play Battlefield 3 in "ultra").

 

My configuration is :

 

- AMD Phenom II x4 (3.4 gHz)

- MSI Radeon HD 6950 (2 Gb)

- 8 Gb RAM

 

As I can play BF3 in "utra", I thought I can play DCS in "hight", but even if I go down some parameters, (and put the maximum FPS to 45), my FPS does not exceed 15...

 

I don't know what to do.

 

Thank you.

[flanker0ne]

Start with these settings:

 

• Water - LOW
  
• Heat Blur - OFF
  
• Shadows - LOW
  
• Res. of Cockpit Display - wich you prefer but avoid "every frame"
  
• Shadow Trees - Unchecked
  

But I think you bottle neck is the processor, DCS doesn't use all the 4 cores. Peoples with dual cores often reach higher performances than the one's with 4 cores.

[felixfsx]

Hi,

 

Thank you for your answer, I can say that is it beter (my FPS is between 25/29).

 

But (there is a but...), when I look at an other plane, car, KA-50, helicopter... On the parking, the FPS go down to 15.

 

See you.

[mmaruda]

Check in the CCC if your gfx card clocks are maxed out, if not it, power saving kicks in (due to BS not utilizing your gfx card's resources to the full). Tampering with windows power plan might help.

 

Another problem is that AMD CPUs aren't really good for DCS.

[felixfsx]

Is it this ?

 

 

Sorry it's in frensh.

[PeterP]

Please read and follow the listed steps to prepare your system optimal for DCS: Stutter and low FPS solutions here! (Updated 04/25/11)

[Mustang]

Another thing, make sure you're not using any forced AntiAliasing or Anisotropic Filtering from your CCC settings, keep them at application preference.

[felixfsx]

Thanks for help guys.

 

Now My FPS is at 40, when I look an other vehicle they go down at 28 (this is annoying but I can play with that...), I've a little more of aliasing but it is not very annoying.

 

See you.

[PeterP]

Nice!

 

But,:)

would be nicer if you would share what you have done - so others that visit this thread via a search will got a rough idea where to look to have similar results like you:

from

my FPS does not exceed 15

to

Now My FPS is at 40

Well, that's a plus of 166% ! I'm also curious.

 

_____________________________

 

 

Edit:

 

Hello felixfsx,

I just looked at your post-count and your join-date.

 

So here comes my "standard Ka-50 newbie reply" :

 

Read also besides the manual this:

DCS: Black Shark...

Technical, Simplified

-Coaxial Rotor Aerodynamics

-Trimming the Ka-50 Black Shark <<<!!!! very important to understand this fully!

-Part 1 - Autopilot <<<this too!

-Part 2 - Autopilot

 

 

And when you still have time , read this too:

A Stick and Rudder Man's Guide

to DCS: Black Shark

 

Here is a useful tweak if you using real rudders:

How to unchain the rudder from trim - solution

 

Things you want to have some day too:

 

KA-50 collective: another picture-tale

 

Two MS FFB2 with Cougar Grip

 

 

 

Now there should be (for the next time) no questions left!

Welcome aboard!

Edited June 26, 2012 by PeterP

[joey45]

Unlike most other games out there DCS needs to render..

 

Larger areas

AI

Physics

higher detailed models

[mmaruda]

Is it this ?

 

 

Sorry it's in frensh.

 

Seems like your memory is at full swing, but the GPU isn't.

 

You might want to try going to control panel>power options>edit power plan than edit advanced setting and turn off the option at PCI express (sorry for not being too precise, mine is in Polish). Or just change your power plan to high performance. This helped me get a few FPS.

[Erforce]

this is a normal behavior of ATi

 

GPU speed stepping is 250Mhz/500Mhz/850Mhz (or any stock frequency)

No speed step on the memory.

if the system were powersaving at this time 2 things should happen :

 

Frequency should be @250Mhz

Game should be unplayable, not 15fps.

 

I often see my 500mhz speed stepping when i don't use 3D but do use my computer. like taking a screenshot ;)

 

anyway, the sky in DCS is not always your FPS friend. Try a Dynamic weather with some nice cyclones, and tell me your fps while flying in the clouds.

 

Anyway, setting everything to low could result in lowering framerate somewhere, and water to low is sooo ugly !

in the helping thread it's said shadow to high could be better, i'm using this now and i don't see any bad things happening.

 

Xeon 2.66 or 3.2Ghz / ati 4890. running between 40 and 15. usually 24. playable.

Overclocking my GPU didn't do any good. apart a nice crash if i try to fly right through a smoke.

 

one thing for sure, take some hours to test a same path. and change things.

[mmaruda]

No speed step on the memory.

 

Wrong, most people think that because the driver defaults to a multiple screen setup, even when there is only one. With that option, memory is always maxed out. Setting it to single display clocks the memory down in 2d mode (and gets @10C of the temps).

 

I had and ATI 6870 and ground my teeth on it with DCS. Clock should go to 850 as a target set in the screenshot. 500 means that whatever small percentage of the card is used works slower than it could. The way DCS works, it only uses around 50% of the GFX card depending on the model and the situation in the game, this causes the clocks to vary speeds since the driver cannot decide if it's a highly demanding app. This often results in TDR errors (happens with NV cards as well but their drivers are better at handling this if you just turn off adaptive mode).

 

Same goes for CPU - while Intels get maximum clocks constantly in DCS, AMD CPUs bounce up and down not being able to decide if they need the extra juice (since the sim only uses one core at most and not fully).

 

AMD does a good job in general gaming, but with simulation games it's better to stick to Intel/NV or at least get rid of any active power saving options (C1E, speedstepping ect) for AMD stuff. This is actually mentioned in the DCS performance guide though I guess they focused on CPUs since the older engine was CPU intensive only, now it's both.

 

Anyway, this is an issue with the game engine I would assume. Multi-core support is one thing that we all keep asking for, but I think while we wait, ED could try to improve the single core and GFX card utilization somehow (I believe it was a bit better around 1.0.0.8).

 

PS I may be a little wrong in some things mentioned - for two month now I own a beast rig, so I stopped looking into getting DCS to run properly, but I feel the pain of all those with still descent machines that still struggle.

[Erforce]

Wrong...

 

You right, my bad.

I'm in dual screens since 7 years and i will never ever go down to 1 screen.

 

I'm looking closely to my °temps with gpu-z and never saw a change in memory speed.

But like you said, i'm in dual screen. With 48xx series which is not the most power-saving card they've made.

i will now consider to underclock my memory clock if i'm idling.

 

As for AMD/Intel... not any clue.

 

But overclocked or not, GPU load is about 80-90% now.

Edited June 27, 2012 by Erforce

[felixfsx]

Seems like your memory is at full swing, but the GPU isn't.

 

You might want to try going to control panel>power options>edit power plan than edit advanced setting and turn off the option at PCI express (sorry for not being too precise, mine is in Polish). Or just change your power plan to high performance. This helped me get a few FPS.

 

Is it possible that you make screenshots ?

Because I don't find.

 

Thank you for help !

[mmaruda]

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/836/beztytuuxuz.png/

 

As I said earlier on, it's in Polish, so you might have to do a little searching to get there.

[felixfsx]

Thank you.

 

I tested it but it didn't change anything.