Stability problems with 1.2.5.

[kampf]

I've not played a lot with the past Patches, most only training missions with the Ka50, and my rig it's not high end.

But nowadays I've had FPS drops when looking at a certain direction, probably where there are a lot of entities, even if planes or tanks are very far away and out of sight. If I look down or sideway the FPS rise to normal.

The problem found playing SP Fast Missions with Ka50 and P51.

All settings low apart from texture witch is high. Vsync on. res 1280*1024.

The game is unplayable for me atm. A pity because I was starting to grow interest in DCS. :cry:

Edited July 30, 2013 by kampf

[xracer]

I've not played a lot with the past Patches, most only training missions with the Ka50, and my rig it's not high end.

But nowadays I've had FPS drops when looking at a certain direction, probably where there are a lot of entities, even if planes or tanks are very far away and out of sight. If I look down or sideway the FPS rise to normal.

The problem found playing SP Fast Missions with Ka50 and P51.

All settings low apart from texture witch is high. Vsync on. res 1280*1024.

The game is unplayable for me atm. A pity because I was starting to grow interest in DCS. :cry:

 

 

Do you use 1.2.4 or 1.2.5? If you now have 1.2.5 and 1.2.4 was ok then maybe wait a couple of days and see what changes ED do or reports about the next "hotfixes" before you do any major research. Until then play around with your graphics.lua. Maybe use the Mission Generator and make simple missions without AI planes and see how it goes. I think many have had this experience with less performance with 1.2.5. I dont see much difference nowadays fps wise or put it in another way its good enough still. Before when i had a much less capable graphics card fps went up and down alot...most down as i recall...

 

 

Good luck!

Edited July 31, 2013 by xracer

[doveman]

I've tried this yesterday and my stutters stopped so far:

 

I've used a RAM disk software (specifically, imdisk http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk but theres a list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RAM_disk_software) to create a ram disk (let's say F).

Then I've pointed all the TEMP directories of windows (by environment vars) to that disk ("F:\").

Fled for hours yesterdat (even multiplayer) and never had any freeze. Just in the initial cockpit loading but that's normal, i mean no freeze while flying.

 

I also often cycle all the runways with F11, too. So it loads stuff.

 

Seems that DCS makes quite some use of temporary files...

 

I'm afraid this doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you could share with us what files DCS created on your RAMDisk after doing this because I can't imagine it would do so.

 

I'm actually running DCS from a 8GB RAMDisk and I think it's OK but it might still stutter (I've probably got used to them and don't notice them unless I'm looking). It obviously loads faster than from HDD but only maybe about 2-3x faster (I guess it has to process the data as it loads and it's this that the RAMDisk has to wait for), so I still have to twiddle my thumbs for 30s and considering the RAMDisk is 6x faster than SSD, I'm not sure there's any point in my getting one of those.

[Raf]

While I was playing and keeping an eye on a second monitor, it was happening very fast, there had been quite some temp files (5 to 6), named with numbers and a dollar symbol it seemed, then gone just as quickly.

 

I'm not doing the same as you, what i'm ramdisking is not the DCS folder, but the Temp one. The difference here is reading instead of writing stuff.

Stutters for *bandwith* in multiplayer of course may still happen. Or perhaps it's even the server that stutters and reflects this to the clients.

 

I've based my tests in the single player mainly, because it was happening even there, and that's why I found it strange at that point.

[-MadCat-]

[...]

In particular, when you see the different units FPS collapse abruptly.

[...]

 

This basically killed my multiplayer experience since 1.2.5 is out.

I don't have the "resources" to build a new machine that could run DCS maxed out, so need to deal with the old system I have.

Yet I did not have any of those problems with 1.2.4...

 

Unfortunately, I cannot report any other than to express my disappointment about 1.2.5 :cry:

Brought me nothing but headaches...

 

MadCat

[BrunoDerRabe]

DCS-WORLD and pagefile on RAM-disks

 

DCS-World all maxed out - no shutters with the following settings and hardware:

 

INFO: Before using the RAMDisk and ASrockXFastRAM the game was installed on a 30GB partition on a SSD driveletter F now S. Only if I want to update the game I do remap this partition back to F without RAMDisk in use and start the game for the update.

 

Loading the RAMDisk image of 13000MB (contains the 12,1GB DCS-World gamefolder) from a ST2000DL003-9VT166 takes exactly 3 minutes. A less convinient way but a bit faster is to start RAMDisk with other settings to just fire up a 13000MB FAT32 partitition (RAMDisk grabs the first avaible driveletter/ in my example F) format it to NTFS (takes about 3 seconds) and copy the DCS-World gamefolder from a SSD manualy (remember the gameupdate steps above / neither I don´t want to save the RAMDisk image every time when I shut down DCS-World and in the next step RAMDisk itself, in particular not on the SSD drive).

 

To extend the lifetime of the SSD 830 256 GB the swapfile was always set to B: (first partitition on the ST2000DL003-9VT166) before moving it to the ASRockXFastRAM driveletter X.

 

After starting RAMDisk on a system with 24GB RAM and AsrockXFastRAM in use the Commit is 21,5/30.5GB. The max Commit is certainly wrong because the swapfile of about 6,5GB in the XFastRAM driveletter X is part of the 24GB RAM as the RAMdisk is. As a result of this setting without running the game the avaible RAM is limited to 2.6 – 2.7 GB only.

 

As a prediction I would estimate that using 32GB RAM with the settings mentioned here is a good choice and it would eliminate all concerns about using a RAMDRIVE for the swapfile because it would result into 10GB+ of avaible RAM before starting the game.

 

RAMDisk Backupfolder B:\Users\Admin\Documents\RAMDisk_Backup

AsrockXFastRAM Backupfolder B:\Users\Admin\Documents\XFastRAM_Backup\

 

XFastRAM

SETTINGS Drive Letter: X Disk Size: 7400MB OPTIONS ReadyBoost: 700MB ON all other OPTIONS OFF

BACKUP / RESTORE Backup at system shutdown ON

Restore after system boot ON

Backup To B:\Users\Admin\Documents\XFastRAM_Backup\XFastRAM_Backup\

Windows Swap File

C: 16MB - 16MB X: 6651MB – 6700MB (6667MB)

 

Hardware:

I7 2600 Asrock Z68 Extreme4 2 660Ti in SLI W8 Pro on SSD RAM:

A1: F3-12800CL10S-8GBX, RipjawsX

A2: F3-12800CL10S-8GBX, RipjawsX

B1: one piece of 4GB out of F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL, RipjawsX-Serie Quad Kit

B2: one piece of 4GB out of F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL, RipjawsX-Serie Quad Kit

XMP Profile in the bios is activated (Because of the mixture of RAM pieces (2x8GB and 2x4GB=24GB) the board underclocks the RAM at 1333MHZ using the XMP Profile of the 4GB RAM pieces.)

 

@ doveman Thank you Sir - taken the granted paragraphs :-)

 

Note:

XFastRAM by Asrock (free download / no limitation in size / can start when Windows starts / need to check tonite if it also runs on non Asrock motherboards) http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z68%20Extreme4/index.de.asp?cat=Beta

RAMDisk licence wich unlocks 64GB support is avaible for about 17€

RAMDisk and XFastRAM is proven to run on the Asrock Z68 Extreme4 at the same time. AMD Radeon RAM Disk wouldn`t work on a machine with installed RAMDisk.

Edited August 22, 2013 by BrunoDerRabe

[doveman]

You want to borrow some paragraphs ;)

 

Anyway, from that wall of text I managed to extract that you're using AsrockXFastRAM and don't want to save the RAMDisk to your SSD every time you close it.

 

I suggest you try SoftPerfect RAMDisk (which is free) as that can tell if any files have changed and only save the changed parts, so if nothing's changed then nothing will be written.

 

I use it myself for DCS, albeit only a 8GB RAMDisk as I only have 16GB, so I had to strip some stuff off that isn't important.

 

My process is

 

1) run the updater from the HDD installation

2) if it shows there's an update available, run JGSME and disable all mods

3) allow the updater to update

4) close DCS and reinstall the mods with JGSME

5) use FreeFileSync to update the RAMDisk with the changed files (sometimes if there's a lot, then I have to delete everything from the RAMDisk and copy the whole lot, minus the excluded files/folders which FreeFileSync remembers, over again as there's insufficient room to copy them otherwise)

 

I've been able to run from the RAMDisk with the swapfile completely disabled but I did get a few errors, even though I still had 2GB available, so I've had to enable it now, even though Process Hacker shows it barely gets used

[martinistripes]

Then I've pointed all the TEMP directories of windows (by environment vars) to that disk ("F:\").

 

Can you clarify what you did here exactly? When you say pointed, do you mean copied? Please explain 'environment vars'.

 

I want to give this RAM disk thing a try.

[BrunoDerRabe]

This might save you some money:

 

DCS-World all maxed out - no shutters with the following settings and hardware:

 

INFO: Before using the RAMDisk and ASrockXFastRAM the game was installed on a 30GB partition on a SSD driveletter F now S. Only if I want to update the game I do remap this partition back to F without RAMDisk in use and start the game for the update.

 

Loading the RAMDisk image of 13000MB (contains the 12,1GB DCS-World gamefolder) from a ST2000DL003-9VT166 takes exactly 3 minutes. A less convinient way but a bit faster is to start RAMDisk with other settings to just fire up a 13000MB FAT32 partitition (RAMDisk grabs the first avaible driveletter/ in my example F) format it to NTFS (takes about 3 seconds) and copy the DCS-World gamefolder from a SSD manualy (remember the gameupdate steps above / neither I don´t want to save the RAMDisk image every time when I shut down DCS-World and in the next step RAMDisk itself, in particular not on the SSD drive).

 

To extend the lifetime of the SSD 830 256 GB the swapfile was always set to B: (first partitition on the ST2000DL003-9VT166) before moving it to the ASRockXFastRAM driveletter X.

 

After starting RAMDisk on a system with 24GB RAM and AsrockXFastRAM in use the Commit is 21,5/30.5GB. The max Commit is certainly wrong because the swapfile of about 6,5GB in the XFastRAM driveletter X is part of the 24GB RAM as the RAMdisk is. As a result of this setting without running the game the avaible RAM is limited to 2.6 – 2.7 GB only.

 

As a prediction I would estimate that using 32GB RAM with the settings mentioned here is a good choice and it would eliminate all concerns about using a RAMDRIVE for the swapfile because it would result into 10GB+ of avaible RAM before starting the game.

 

RAMDisk Backupfolder B:\Users\Admin\Documents\RAMDisk_Backup

AsrockXFastRAM Backupfolder B:\Users\Admin\Documents\XFastRAM_Backup\

 

XFastRAM

SETTINGS Drive Letter: X Disk Size: 7400MB OPTIONS ReadyBoost: 700MB ON all other OPTIONS OFF

BACKUP / RESTORE Backup at system shutdown ON

Restore after system boot ON

Backup To B:\Users\Admin\Documents\XFastRAM_Backup\XFastRAM_Backup\

Windows Swap File

C: 16MB - 16MB X: 6651MB – 6700MB (6667MB)

 

Hardware:

I7 2600 Asrock Z68 Extreme4 2 660Ti in SLI W8 Pro on SSD RAM:

A1: F3-12800CL10S-8GBX, RipjawsX

A2: F3-12800CL10S-8GBX, RipjawsX

B1: one piece of 4GB out of F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL, RipjawsX-Serie Quad Kit

B2: one piece of 4GB out of F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL, RipjawsX-Serie Quad Kit

XMP Profile in the bios is activated (Because of the mixture of RAM pieces (2x8GB and 2x4GB=24GB) the board underclocks the RAM at 1333MHZ using the XMP Profile of the 4GB RAM pieces.)

 

@ doveman Thank you Sir - taken the granted paragraphs :-)

 

Note:

XFastRAM by Asrock (free download / no limitation in size / can start when Windows starts / need to check tonite if it also runs on non Asrock motherboards) http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z68%20Extreme4/index.de.asp?cat=Beta

RAMDisk licence wich unlocks 64GB support is avaible for about 17€

RAMDisk and XFastRAM is proven to run on the Asrock Z68 Extreme4 at the same time. AMD Radeon RAM Disk wouldn`t work on a machine with installed RAMDisk.

 

Tonight I have done a different test. First of all the settings of the PC haven`t changed much.

 

Thats what I did: used the Samsungs SSD software (Samsung Magican) and changed the setting from MAX realiability to MAX performance EDIT: (includes a remap of the pagefile back to C/have remaped it back to X/

ASrockXFastRAM does not save and load the pagefile anymore/each systemstart the pagefile starts with about 16MB now and rises/ I want it back as it was :-) ...)

Then I started the game from the SSD (RAMDisk with the gamefolder not in use) - the swapfile unchanged on X (the other RAMDISK created with XFastRAM / 7400MB).

 

In total just 55% of the 24GB RAM was in use - so 16GB RAM teamed up with a SSD does the job with ease. NO performance issues at all. I didn`t manage to cause any shutter at all - I realy tried my best.

I do not regret that I am going for 32GB this week (one 8GB piece is missing yet) but it is not needed at all.

So the many of players with motherboards with 16GB MAX RAM shoudn´t be pushed to get a new MOBO to extend the RAM to play DCS without shutters :-) . I think there is a cheaper /more usefull solution.

 

As a result of the testing I did I can recommend 16GB RAM, a decent SSD and a swapfile (size above/flexible 16-7000MB) on a RAMDISK - it is a better choice than to consider a RAMDISK for the gamefolder itself where 16GB RAM is not enough at all.

Remember 8GB RAM and a RAMDISK for this purpose is a totaly different story where I do agree what I have been reading somewhere here and is in my opinion too: total nonsens

If you have 32GB RAM, a decent SSD, XFastRAM (simple to use/by Asrock) and the patience to check out the settings to get RAMDisk (the programm I use myself) or any simular tool to fire up the correct image and so on you can certainly do it all with no limitations.

Edited August 23, 2013 by BrunoDerRabe

[Highwayman-Ed]

Whilst a lot of you guys have gone to some tremendous lengths here to point out ways to modify a system and use 3rd party software and tools, albeit for free to the community (and credit to you) to improve the performance issues that many of us are facing, it doesn't address the issue that there are significant performance issues for many of us in DCS 1.2.5, and it shouldn't be up to us to find solutions to fix these problems, we're paying customers and the whole platform seems to be in a constant state of beta...

 

If you hadn't already guessed, I also am experiencing stutter and poor fps since updating to 1.2.5, less so in single player, but the fps loss is still there to the point that I have shelved DCS again until the next patch comes along...

[Wolf Rider]

you need to take into account though, the many and varied systems there are out there (its not like Xbox for instance, where all developers write to the one platform) and also how the many varied owners run them (ie what they may or may not have running in the background, the many varied operating systems, etc)

[xracer]

Whilst a lot of you guys have gone to some tremendous lengths here to point out ways to modify a system and use 3rd party software and tools, albeit for free to the community (and credit to you) to improve the performance issues that many of us are facing, it doesn't address the issue that there are significant performance issues for many of us in DCS 1.2.5, and it shouldn't be up to us to find solutions to fix these problems, we're paying customers and the whole platform seems to be in a constant state of beta...

 

If you hadn't already guessed, I also am experiencing stutter and poor fps since updating to 1.2.5, less so in single player, but the fps loss is still there to the point that I have shelved DCS again until the next patch comes along...

 

We and at least i have already asked directly to ED what could be the reason why most with AMD cards have fps issues. I dont find that we get any answers. I dont really care much anymore about the subject, but if we look at the facts which is rather important, the facts are that cause the way DCSW is programmed/designed and its many high polycount objects combined with very long drawdistance, most all systems need a couple of tweaks to get good performance. I would dare to say that it is not cause DCSW is poorly programmed/designed, it is just that its a much more demanding software concept than most other games. Take the game Metro Last Night as an example. It is new tech game, but is also very demanding. And there are others too. Unless your a developer, you dont really have any idea of why some games need more power under the hood even if the visuals look worse. I think DCSW looks awesome and realistic visually so nothing wrong there. Anyway with your system spec there is alot of power and even if you have a AMD card its a strong one so you should get pretty good fps on that. The important thing is that you MUST apply some of the crucial tweaks to get good fps allround. And its definately not how many tweaks you apply its WHICH tweaks you apply to get fps. There is very little which needs to be done actually. Go through the forum and collect the important ones, Thats about it.If you really are into the sim just sell the 7970 and get a GTX. Nothiing more to it. And if you dont get the fps then something other than DCSW is the reason. I have half the CPU power of you, and need 5 min to apply a couple of tweaks then i have very good fps all the time except if lots of battle in a complex city. Another thing into the equation is that ED have another goal which most other game companies dont have, and that is that they are developing the sim to show off their potential for possible RL military customers. This can also lead to that they focus more on accuracy than performance. A possible military customer will be a safer bet for them that the virtual sim community.

 

This is just some views i personally have about the DCSW concept. What i DO really care about is that they try really hard to keep crucial gamebreakers out of the sim before they add stuff. That i think they owe to the private customers.

Edited August 23, 2013 by xracer

[Highwayman-Ed]

I appreciate your views, and I know I'm not comparing apples for apples here and I'm talking about an engine developed nearly 10 years ago compared to a brand new one, so please don't jump off the deep end with stating that they're not the same, but... Have you ever flown in the Full Real Battles mode in Warthunder? My system with all settings MAXED out acheives an average of 120fps, DCS with the same and No other non essential processes running other than T.A.R.G.E.T and Track IR gets an average of 18... No tweaks, no special hardware, and that IS a beta product.

 

I have always been a fan of ED's work all the way back to Flanker and own every module and version of Lock On and DCS that there is to support a company putting their all into a sadly dying breed of game, but for at least the past 2-3 years there have been issues and problems with almost every release and update and as much as it kills me to say it, I'd rather see all of their efforts put into making what we have a stable and reliable platform before another line of code is written for any more modules.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Highwayman-Ed

[Wolf Rider]

Warthunder? is that the mmo Warthunder you mean??

[Highwayman-Ed]

Warthunder? is that the mmo Warthunder you mean??

 

Yes it is, and yes I appreciate that it's not the same level of simulation, and yes I appreciate that there are a lot more things going on under the skin of DCS, especially with aircraft like the A-10, but if you look beyond that at the stability and the way the multi-player code works, and yes the incredibly pretty rendering engine it puts DCS to shame.

[BrunoDerRabe]

may be it is not the games fault

 

Two of my other PCs [both W8 Pro 64bit / Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4E / AMD A10-5800K Accelerated Processor / 16GB RAM XMP enabled (8GB did the job too) four pieces of 4GB out of F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL, RipjawsX-Serie Quad Kit/ no SSD / no RAMDISK / GTX470) run the game also with ease. Same resolution (1920*1080 all maxed out) - yes much longer loading time some stutters here and there for example if I switch with the F1-F12 views - nothing wrong with the game. Yes there was a stability issue within the last month but a very soon published patch did fix that. Certainly I don´t get the FPS and the 100% soft as butter feeling as I have it on the previous mentioned PC with the more expensive hardware. Compared with a AMD Phenom II 940 BE 8GB DDR2 470GTX (one of the systems I used before the replacement with above listed hardware) the new hardware is realy a step forward and offers a much smother ``flying´´ in DCS. For camparison I always use my self created mission DCS-World Freeflight. In my opinion the most issues are related to hardware/software/settings of the PC itself - and not to forget from your ISP. Within the last 12 month I used 6 different PCs for DCS and as a conclusion I see that you get what you pay for and what knowledge/tweaks you put into it.

If you want bread you pay for bread - if you want butter and bread or even candy you know what you have to pay for. One of my mates had recently an issue with DCS caused by the TrackIR software. A fresh install of TrackIR solved his stutters. As somebody said before: Consoles are defenitely more easy to handle :-) ... If I can help somebody with choosing decent hardware to play DCS-World happily just give me a shout. These 2 mentioned PCs use a GTX470 for a reason instead of a GTX460. For the same reason the other PC uses 2 GTX660Ti instead of 2 GTX660. If I would have been rich I would have prefered to buy 2 GTX 670GTX :-) ... now you know I am not rich :-) ....

Edited August 23, 2013 by BrunoDerRabe

[Wolf Rider]

Yes it is, and yes I appreciate that it's not the same level of simulation, and yes I appreciate that there are a lot more things going on under the skin of DCS, especially with aircraft like the A-10, but if you look beyond that at the stability and the way the multi-player code works, and yes the incredibly pretty rendering engine it puts DCS to shame.

 

 

Completely different genre, as far as software goes between the two... completely different mechanics happening under the hood, between the two... and highly unfair and ill-considered to compare one to the other.

 

With the creation DCS: World and the addition of all the new modules, it takes a bit to process all that information in an on-line situation... more modules, such as Combined Arms = more information to process. The sim has been, and is being, expanded on from its early original beginnings and code needs to be developed as the sim grows. Its not like the developer just gets a tried and tested template, puts the pretty pictures in and sets it up to a series of servers designed for mmo, of which pretty much all information/ engine, etc, is held on the servers - the end user just gets a cookie and couple of levers to pull and a few buttons to press.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Wolf Rider

[martinistripes]

Halp!

 

How many MB will my RAM disk need to be to cover Windows temp files? Default is 64MB but I'm guessing this isn't enough. I just did an instant action test in the Shark and I keeping dropping from 40 down to 8 fps for several seconds before it returning to 40. In my case, I can be flying out towards hills/trees with no DCS aircraft, city or airfield in view. I still get the drop.

 

Really want to get this fixed. I can't play as it is.

 

I also did fresh install and update of Windows 8 recently. It's made no difference so I know it isn't clutter on my system.

[TaliG]

As I understand, if the software continue to develop like this (main program hooks etc) the fps will degrade as the software evolves.

For the people that dnt get it, there is a main program, untouched, but the development stands on software ''hooks'' on this software, to go further.As long as the hooks multiply, there will be more RAM demand, maybe more cpu, but no graphics.

I am a ''hardware'' programmer but when I read this: I thing I got the point and what they are doing. And I fear that this is no EDs child... There is a possibility that moders bought rights from ED to do that...maybe I ll get banned for what I write, who know. The truth will shine in the future anyway...I just hope for a better SIM. A constant BETA is not ok for me and for all of you...

[martinistripes]

Windows 8

 

Some additional information on frequent FPS stutters. I've just installed BS2 v1.1.1.1 hoping to avoid the FPS stutters. It's made no difference whatsoever in my case. I can now only assume it's the use of DCS with Windows 8 that's causing my particular issue. Now I understand why many are still playing and enjoying DCS, whilst I've been scratching my head. They're probably still running Windows 7.

[BrunoDerRabe]

W8 is not an issue

 

I do run :pilotfly: W8 Pro x64 on 5 PCs and all run DCS with ease. Try to play in Window mode with a smaller resolutions and do some testing. I can assure you if I mess up with my systemsettings (pagefile and so on) I can also create shutters on the ``High End PC´´. If my systemsettings are fine it runs like a charm. 1280*960 in a window is worth a try to see that the bottleneck is probably somewhere to find in the PC itself.

Edited August 26, 2013 by BrunoDerRabe

[Wolf Rider]

A few things to look at and consider...

 

Was the sim installed in Administrator mode?

Was it installed to a root folder outside of C drive?

 

if yes to above, has the Root Folder been given Full Permissions? (slightly different to running As Administrator)

 

Turn off CPU Core Parking (Core Parking shuts down cores to save power... true DCS isn't truly MC aware, but the operating system is)

 

another for NVidia users... turn Threaded Optimisation (in NV Control Panel) to Off

Edited August 26, 2013 by Wolf Rider

[BrunoDerRabe]

it seems more related to the weak hardware

 

@martinistripes

I have checked your systemconfig (hardware)

 

quote:

My specs on system with stutter: Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz, 8.0GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6990M, Windows 8 x64

Older system not showing stutter: Intel Core2 Duo P9700 @ 2.80GHz, 4.0GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M, Windows 7 x64

 

http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/AMD+Radeon+HD+6970M+--+6990M/review

 

compared to a GTX660ti or GTX670 the mobile hd 6990m has just about one/third of the performance. Another point is how much of the 8GB RAM in your Notebook is dedicated to the GPU? The naming by AMD HD6990m is very misleading in my opinion, but as soon as you do some research on the net you will notice the HUGE difference between a H6990 and the HD6990m you are using in combination with a CPU just running @2.4GHZ.

 

Despite the weak GPU you are using on your W8 Notebook I can tell you by some comparisions (overclocking) I did with a Q6600 month ago: the difference for DCS-World beetween @2.4GHZ and running it at @3.0GHZ is tremendous. On that system I also swaped GPUs for testing - low resolution 1280*960 GTX260 was OK - high resolution 1920*1080 GTX470 was needed.

The bottleneck is in your system.

hd 6990m 3DMark GPU Score: 3390

hd 6990 3DMark GPU Score:10620

single GTX660Ti 3DMark GPU Score:8780 (me using two of them in SLI to gain the soft as butter performance plus some more other walletburners to get there 1920*1080)

As a further hint (1/3) and may be it helps you to realize were the source of the problem is: for a higher resolution (3 Monitor setup for example 3 *1920*1080 also my system is to weak/tested this with my 2 cards/ at least 3 GTX670 would be needed in my opinion to get a decent framerate then)

Edited August 27, 2013 by BrunoDerRabe

[Hamblue]

Ya just have to hang in there. Looks like ED was focused well on stabilizing the game and did very well for a while. 1.2.5 is probably nothing more than a temporary eye off of the ball.

 

I remember a couple of years ago in Aces High they had 500 plus pilots in the Friday Night match. They had just released a patch and not long after the start the server crashed.

 

Turned out that running 200 was fine but once they crossed about 450 the server couldn't handle it. (note the server type is different there and the company runs their own).

 

The following week there were the same amount of pilots and the server did not crash, so I know it's possible to do it with a server supporting 32. :thumbup:

 

And as far as things like cluster bombs. They have B-17's there that have the same amount of projectiles when they let go. And there are sometimes dozens of bombers dropping the same time.

[martinistripes]

The bottleneck is in your system.

 

Wait. So, what you're saying is, all the good times I've been having up until recently without stutter and perfectly playable frame rates between 30 - 50 was all just in my head? :doh:

 

BrunoDerRabe, I've been playing DCS for several years now. I can tell you on the lesser system DCS still manages 20 - 35 fps with settings on medium. The newer system usually has anywhere between 30 - 50 fps settings medium/high. And for your information, I've always played at 1920 x 1080.

 

I appreciate you're trying to help. But please don't talk to me like I just arrived at the forum with my first PC bought off the high street.

 

This is a reoccurring stutter I'm talking about. And not low fps due to hardware not keeping up. When the hardware can't keep up, you don't fly around happily for a minute or so at 40 fps and then dump to 9 fps.

 

EDIT: Just did re-test, fresh DCS World install. Instant action Su-25T, ground attack. Very stable between 55 - 60 fps. 1920 x 1080 all setting high apart from visible range and water at medium, AA x 2, HDR off. Occasionally dumps to 13 for a few seconds. And like I said... similar behaviour in v1.1.1.1. That rules out the DCS build. It's not the hardware, since I've been playing on this laptop a year and a half without this. There's only one way to know for sure if it is Windows 8 related and that's a fresh Windows 7 install on the newer system...

Edited August 27, 2013 by martinistripes