Real minimum specs

[King_Hrothgar]

I've played the flanker/lockon/DCS series off and on for quite a long time now (flanker 2.0 originally) and one thing that's kept me away from the current DCS set is poor performance on my machine. I have both blackshark and blackshark 2, but never played them that much due to poor performance, even on a computer that didn't even exist when blackshark was originally released (get 20fps!).

 

I'm not one obsessed with 300 fps or some such nonsense, a stable 40-50 is enough and that's what I get in RoF on medium-high detail in a fight. But here I get 10 on max detail, 13 on minimum while sitting on the runway in a Su-25T with no other units present. This is on a single monitor running 1920x1080 with TIR. My GPU is a Radeon 6850. Now either something is very wrong with my setup (unlikely since I also tried it on my laptop and it didn't fair any differently despite being a full intel/nvidia setup) or their minimum specs are no where near what they actually are.

 

So here's the question, what are the real minimum specs to run this game (stable 40-50 fps in a fight) or alternatively, what must be done to make it playable on my current system. CPU and memory don't seem to be issues. For the sake of completeness, specs below:

 

Desktop

Radeon 6850 1GB

AMD Athlon II x4 640

Win7 64bit

8GB DDR3

 

Laptop is as follows:

I7-2670QM

Nvidia GT 640M (crap I know, it's a laptop)

8GB DDR3

Win7 64bit

 

Oh, and before you bring it up, no, I don't have anything running in the background other than TIR and various drivers.

Edited November 4, 2013 by King_Hrothgar

[SkateZilla]

AMD CPU around 3.5 GHz, and a Top Teir Level GPU

 

(7900, 670,680,770)

 

The HD6850 GPU is Very weak, I put one in my brother's system and it had issues with everything.

[VanjaB]

Sorry Maj Death, but minimum specs mean minimum performance. Judging from your specs your desktop is too outdated to run this game at 1080p.

 

I recently upgraded to a 760GTX and Im happy with its performance, but the rest of my rig is no slouch either. I would suggest you upgrade your graphics card first and foremost and then take it from there. If the performance is not there at that point you will definitely need a complete overhaul, new MBO, CPU and most probably powersuply. Your RAM should be usable as its DDR3.

[NineLine]

 

Desktop

Radeon 6850 1GB

AMD Athlon II x4 640

Win7 64bit

8GB DDR3

 

Your desktop is very similar to mine, that is if my limited knowledge is anywhere close to right and the 6850 is close to performance as the GTX460.... I get decent performance, I can maintain a solid 30 fps on average (if I look straight up I get 100+ fps lol), of course its with some tweaking and lower visuals than you might like.

 

I think you would be ok, but would be like me, longing for an upgrade :)

[King_Hrothgar]

Yeah, the GTX460 and Radeon 6850 are very similar in performance. It is a generation down but its high end generation down. This is the only game where it's an issue and honestly, the graphics aren't that impressive compared to RoF. They aren't bad either, but they are at a lower level. And as I already noted, adjusting graphics settings seems to have no impact on performance. What I'm really looking for here are some recommendations on what will run the DCS series well without any fuss. By well I mean 40+ fps at low level strafing a column of tanks. Money is an issue however and even today SLI/crossfire is hit and miss in most games, so would prefer a single GPU solution and a $900 Nvidia whatever is not a realistic option.

Edited November 4, 2013 by King_Hrothgar

[NineLine]

Yeah, the GTX460 and Radeon 6850 are very similar in performance. It is a generation down but its high end generation down. This is the only game where it's an issue and honestly, the graphics aren't that impressive compared to RoF. They aren't bad either, but they are at a lower level. And as I already noted, adjusting graphics settings seems to have no impact on performance.

 

DCS is pretty CPU intensive, and it matters what is going on in the mission, even outside of your view. Looking at it again, my CPU is probably a few steps up on yours, that might be the difference.

 

The graphics engine is old, and its not out of the realm of possibility that you will get better performance from EDGE, that said, we are still on the tail end of requirements. All we can do is either upgrade or tweak as much out of our systems as possible.

 

I am slowly trying to put some money to the side to start upgrading myself...

[Devrim]

I can live with slower performance but freezes and stutters!

 

So, I think I'll advice my friends to get 2GB vRAM and more than 8 GB RAM...

[xaoslaad]

My only two cents on top of what everyone else said: If you've got labels on try it with them off. They are a performance killer. I also think being on the ground at the runway is notoriously slow, at least among my group. More so with labels on (all the more reason to learn to play without them).

[Irregular programming]

An SSD shouldn't give you anything in terms of performance. It'll affect load time but that's all.

[Buzpilot]

An SSD shouldn't give you anything in terms of performance. It'll affect load time but that's all.

 

We are not talking about fps here (SSD), stutter is load time.

Maybe it will be different on EDGE engine.

[Mustang]

The HD6850 GPU is Very weak, I put one in my brother's system and it had issues with everything.

 

Funny, i've been using an XFX 6850 for the past year or more and i never have any problems with DCS (release and beta) or any other games, you must have had a bad experience with a dodgy card.

[Devrim]

...SSD = No freezes and stutters!...

You're right actually. I'll buy one at weekend.

 

An SSD shouldn't give you anything in terms of performance. It'll affect load time but that's all.

You seem right. It's OK what you said. But actually I don't need performance. DCS's problem is not performance to me. In my opinion a SSD has addition to performance.

 

Look; Normally I can play DCS with 30~60 FPS with my system (with %72 (of 8GB) RAM load). That means this system is very decent to launch it. But it stutters sometimes. If I abort pagefile.sys, it doesn't stutter but memory load reaches %85. So at least if I buy a SSD and use pagefile.sys I suppose I/O data speed will be faster than my current hard drive. And this will cause higher performance.

 

Of course my logic may definitely be wrong. We'll see this this weekend. :D

[VanjaB]

On some games that access the hard drive all the time, stuttering can indeed be a problem. Unless you are flying with 4 GB Ram, DCS is NOT one of those games.

 

I have 16 GB of Memory and an SSD drive, performance is the same regardless of whether I use pagefile.sys or whether I delete it. (I currently have it deleted)

 

Stuttering, or frame drops in DCS is caused by something else, most of the time the GPU is at fault although it could be anything that is the bottleneck in the system.

 

I used to have an XFX 6870 card and I can tell you that this card did not perform well in DCS. By well I mean @1080p resolution. The game was certainly playable but for fine helicopter manouvers in the Huey or Hip-8 there was way too much lag. 15-20 FPS is not acceptable when trying to avoid VRS and come in for a smooth landing.

[El Hadji]

Stuttering, or frame drops in DCS is caused by something else, most of the time the GPU is at fault although it could be anything that is the bottleneck in the system.

 

I suspect a memory leak or something. I use a GTX 680 (2GB and running at 1300MHz) and I still get the stuttering since 1.2.6. Never had any issues before.