Who have a stable and smooth running A10c setup

[frank]

with 3 viewport "left" "center" "right"

Helios showing frontpanel inst.

and MFDs, RWR, CDU export

 

 

????????????????????????

 

I'd like to know your hardware setup

 

I have a SUPER high end PC with 2 x monster graphicscard

and i cant get it to run Smooth

 

/Frank

[agrasyuk]

Define stable. I get 40 or so fps with i5 ivy bridge and gtx470. Not with full settings though. Try to disable HDR and other eye candy perhaps? You saying you have multiple cards, DCS does not benefit from either x- fire or sli. Since you running Helios make sure that Aero is not disabled.

[joey45]

DCS is not [yet] designed for SLI/Xfire...

[metalnwood]

Thats because you can't, not really smooth. The two graphics cards will not help you as DCS does not take advantage of them. In many cases you will get slower frames with them both enabled.

 

If you have ATI it is certainly recommended to turn off crossfire.

 

I have about as high powered machine as you can reasonably get and can not run that configuration smoothly as rendering three screens independently is a machine killer.

 

As mentioned a post or two up, you should get 40 frames on a powerful machine with 3 screens set as center and another helios screen.

[frank]

Hmmm. i do not use CrossFire... and my intension was to run DCS with viewport

define 3 viewport for left, Center and right and i could use 2x 8" for MFD and 1x 3.5" for CDU

and Helios on another screen i have an i7 3ghz, with 2x ATI 5970 HDRadeon 10 GBram

 

but it's lagging.... another thing, Windows launch a error "Explore has stopped working"

 

/Frank

[metalnwood]

You currently will not get the frame rates I suspect you are after with that configuration.

 

There are a couple things with yourt configuration though, they really need to be upgraded to get a good eprformance. Most people I know running triples and helios on a 4th screen are overclocked to around the 4.5ghz mark and are running either one or two generations newer with their graphics cards.

 

A 5970 is a fair bit behind. I had a big improvement going from a 5970 to a 6970 mostly because of the extra ram, then to a 7970 was an improvement again.

 

To do what you want I would suggest a current generation gpu like the 7970 and a current chip OC's to around 4.5ghz

[Gadroc]

It's just not going to happen with 3 view ports right now. I have a 2600k over-clocked to 4.3ghz running with a 7970 3GB card and the best I can do with three 1920x1080 external views and two 800x600 mfd viewports is 30 fps. And that is on the basic instant mission which is not intensive.

 

I was just trying out this setup out again because of Cowboy10k's what's 3 vs 1 display thread.

[BHawthorne]

I have a SUPER high end PC with 2 x monster graphicscard

and i cant get it to run Smooth

 

An i7 3ghz with two 5970 was a decent system in 2009-2010 timeframe. 2013 it's old tech.

 

At issue is you've got an i7 but only 3ghz? Also 5970 are 2 GPU cards so you have 4 GPUs but as Crossfire doesn't work with DCS, 3 of the GPUs are dead weight. 10GB of ram is an aweful odd number. You running something like 2x4GB and 2x1GB? Which socket type? Back then a lot of i7's were 1366 socket and used triple channel memory configuration. That doubly makes 10GB make no sense.

 

As far as smooth, I've yet to see Quadfire work smooth on anything. It's a benchmark gimmick setup.

 

That being said, every custom camera view you add halves performance. So, you run 3 cameras and a panel you're 1/4th the performance of single camera view.

Edited December 26, 2012 by BHawthorne

[frank]

Ok Guys ;)

 

So if i want to give my self a new system (dont look at price)

What is the optimal config in the hardware to give me the best performance

 

...and HELIOS on a second PC is still an option...

 

/Frank

Edited December 26, 2012 by frank

[Kuky]

Ok Guys ;)

 

So if i want to give my self a new system (dont look at price)

What is the optimal config in the hardware to give me the best performance

 

...and HELIOS on a second PC is still an option...

 

/Frank

 

Get i7 3930K and water cool it and overclock to 4.5GHz or so, or as high as you can push it, but you won't be able to push it much further than that (not without going really extreme cooling)

Then get either HD7970 or GTX580. HD7970 can overclock to 1.1GHz easily also and if you water cool it also it'll be super cool also (see my PC specs)

 

That's about as best you can get without going to buy Extreme CPU's from Intel.

 

You can tweak some values yourself also to give bit more FPS but ultimately you will still not be able to run everything turned on and with great FPS. Up in the air the FPS will be very playable but down low and especially near/over cities and airports (especially when there are aircraft on it also) the FPS will go down... and there's nothing you can do about it right now because DCS is not coded to be multi-threaded beside sound and there is no faster hardware right now. Multi GPU setups will not benefit much either, in fact you can even get lower FPS with 2 cards then with 1.

[mladen]

My experience is that using two (different) graphic cards for the simulator will cause micro stutters.

I was using GTX580 and GTS250 for my Helios set-up. Main 27" monitor was connected to the GTX580 card and one 23" touch-screen monitor (Helios) to the GTS250. Later, after extensive testing, I came to conclusion that micro-stutters I was having were the result of this set-up configuration.

 

Once I connected both monitors to the main graphic adapter micro stutters were gone. :thumbup:

[frank]

Thx Kuky

 

You run DCS in viewport mode OTW on the 3 screen and MDF on the 2x 8"

right ?

 

Will an Intel XEON processor help to improve ??

i am ready to go extrem...

 

 

and if i use ASUS RADEON HD7970 MATRIX PLATINUM 3GB PCI-E DVI/DP

i can have 6 screen on one graphics.... ????

 

or

 

ASUS GEFORCE GTX 690 4GB PCI-E DVI/DP

4 screen (could connect a TH2G on one of the output...

Edited December 26, 2012 by frank

[Kuky]

Thx Kuky

 

You run DCS in viewport mode OTW on the 3 screen and MDF on the 2x 8"

right ?

 

Will an Intel XEON processor help to improve ??

i am ready to go extrem...

 

 

and if i use ASUS RADEON HD7970 MATRIX PLATINUM 3GB PCI-E DVI/DP

i can have 6 screen on one graphics.... ????

 

or

 

ASUS GEFORCE GTX 690 4GB PCI-E DVI/DP

4 screen (could connect a TH2G on one of the output...

 

At the moment I am not running the 8" monitors as I don't have enough outputs for them on the HD7970. As consequence I am not flying A-10C as I find weird to press buttons on Cougar MFD's but look at in game cockpit for image on what button I am pressing.

 

I honestly don't know how good Xeons are for gaming, so if go that route you're gonna be doing some gambling. Keep in mind DCS is still running on 1 core for main game code and sound engine is on another core (so no matter how many cores the CPU has, it can only use 2 and even then they won't be used fully - as sound does not need one full core for sound processing)

 

ASUS RADEON HD7970 MATRIX PLATINUM does have 6 outputs straight out of the box (no need for splitters, which were promised few years ago but still aren't really available anyway) so you can hook up 6 monitors to it.

 

GTS690 is dual GPU card but you won't have much benefit from second GPU as again DCS is not optimised to make use of it, and some have reported that they even get worse FPS with both GPU's enabled then with one.

 

With TH2G you can use 1 output for 3 monitors. Not sure if the card can support 4 (one on each output)

[frank]

Thx again....

Today i run BMS on 10 monitores... it works fine....

3 OTW on EYEfinity HIGH RES

on the other card i have 2 TH2G 1x 2400x800 for MFDs and HUD

1x 1920x480 for RWR HSI and DED and 1 vga out 800x600 for Basic T - so TH2G on every output is okay

.... but the conclusion must be, that DCS is still long from take advantage of

the hardware avaible on the market.... any idea if they ever will ????

Edited December 26, 2012 by frank

[Kuky]

.... but the conclusion must be, that DCS is still long from take advantage of the hardware avaible on the market.... any idea if they ever will ????

 

Yes, considering how many cores CPU has already and ability to use 2 o 3 video cards (so multi-cpu/gpu availablity) DCS could do better... if and when ED will get to it who knows... they have expressed wish to do it sometimes in future but all we can do is wait and see and hope they do succeed at it one day... if they stay in business that long.

 

BMS does not suffer that much from this as it also uses 1 core only but amount of processing is lower than DCS... or some might argue that it's because of better coding... you can be the judge about this... with DCS reality is with single viewport FPS can still be quite good even on high settings (I was using districts visibility distance way beyond current max 10km... to 20km) but with 3 viewports you are rendering the world 3 times, so natually the FPS will go down to almost about 1/3 also.

 

So up to you to decide what you want to do.

[frank]

okay....

Just a idea... can i set the FOV in single Center view to 180dg ??

[danilop]

DCS is in urgent need of software optimizing.

 

It's really shame that multicore processors are not fully supported in application with such a huge CPU demand. SLI & Crossfire support would be nice as well but CPU support is top priority.

 

ED, are you reading this?

[Kuky]

okay....

Just a idea... can i set the FOV in single Center view to 180dg ??

 

You can increase FoV for Center viewport and use that viewport only... but as I remember you can't increase it too much, I think 150° is about max, any more than that you get some issues... can't remember what they were, its just that game engine can't handle too much FoV angle.

 

PS: with this high FoV in triple screen you will get quite a bit of stretching on side monitors.. it's the reason why I stay with 3 viewports.

[frank]

I know.... but we can overcome a bit by http://www.immersaview.com/whitepapers/why-curved as is will be using 3 projector and a curved screen.

 

here is my test setup with BMS

Edited December 26, 2012 by frank

[Kuky]

I know.... but we can overcome a bit by http://www.immersaview.com/whitepapers/why-curved as is will be using 3 projector and a curved screen

 

Well if you get to do it and work it out please report back with images and maybe a video as quite a few people (including me) would like to see if that works well... downside will be... cost :D

[frank]

Se my attachement from last reply...

 

Can you point me to the file to edit for 140/150dg FOV - please

 

i'll give it a shoot

[PeterP]

>>>> http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1636386#post1636386

[frank]

thx.... i'm on it

[Manuel]

Well if you get to do it and work it out please report back with images and maybe a video as quite a few people (including me) would like to see if that works well... downside will be... cost :D

 

Same for me.... looking forward to it!

[frank]

GET IT UP AND RUNNING

 

ASUS 7950 3GBram

it has 3 port - the video is TH2G on first port running 3x 1280x1024... and a monitor on the second....

I will change to TH2G on Second port too - it gives me 3 port 800x600 for

MDFa and HUD - on the 3rd port i will use 3.5" for CDU - SO I AM Fxxxxx HAPPY

 

Check out this video....

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4105723/2012-12-26%2017.43.02.mp4

 

I did not have succes running HELIOS on a second PC - any help on this ???

 

....ohhh, BTW - you'r right... removing the second graphicscard, removed the lagging prob

Edited December 26, 2012 by frank