I've been having trouble getting decent framerates in some missions specifically and overall in DCS in general. I was spectating on some of the guys flying the Death Valley mission and realized from the conversation that I wasn't alone. The first time in SP on that one it was unplayable right from the landing pad. On a whim I went and shut off the rain and my fps jumped to a playable level at least.

Put me on a quest to see what I could do without killing all the great scenery. Killing most of the buildings in Flaming Medivacs for instance makes the whole mission look really stupid.

Last night, again on another whim, ( means I don't really know what I'm doing but not afraid to try stuff ), I unchecked "MSAA" and fps took a noticeable jump up, not big but very effective. Suddenly I was not trying to fly a slideshow anymore when going into the city in Flaming Medivacs. And in less intensive missions my control and finesse in transitions and hover and landings etc really improved. Yippee ! It wasn't just me....

I had most graphic in DSC set on the default Medium and I just lowered ones even more that didn't really strip the buildings etc. So far things are definitely better but I'm really just taking shots in the dark here.

Could use some real advice from the more tech savvy guys. In FSX, Cliffs of Dover, Wings of Prey, LOTRO, and most other programs my settings are mostly on high and fps is pretty nice.

i7 - 3770K @ 3.5 ghz. Quad
Win 8 64 bit
8 gb ram
GeForce GT620, Dedicated video mem 2 gb, Shared sys mem 2 gb

I have a fairly average pc in terms of gaming and run most settings on high. My frame rate will drop below 40 occasionally. I see a significant drop below this when at nova with lots of hueys and jets with smoke billowing out. Lowest seems to be 25

I will give you my exact settings when im home tonight. I would suggest turning everything down to low then slowly moving everything up and trialing till you find a sweet spot. I have been surprised to hear some of fps quoted during game play, which have been as low as 8. Seems like the game doesnt run efficiently and can't utilise all cores

My pc:

I5 ivy bridge 3570 (from memory) defo k version
Asus Gtx 660 2gb
Crucial m4 ssd
8gb ddr3
asus z77 deluxe
W7 64 bit


Only have fsx, dcs, gaming apps and work related software on this hd. I have another hd which has an OS on it, all other software and is for general use. Then i use a third hd for storage. I have done some optomising to win 7 and ssd as well

DCS is a bit of a strange beast as it does some of the work on the built in GPU on the CPU and then the rest is handled by your card.
And I am not 100% sure but I think it only uses 1 core of the CPU might be 2 so there is the bottle neck have you tried over clocking your CPU for me that helped smoothing out frame rates even though I am running the Evga GTX690 with 3 screens she was struggling till I overclocked the CPU.
Also in your Bios make sure you have not set all graphics to be handled by your GPU DCS doesn't like this as some of it has to be done on the CPU.

Hi gents...I'm not a computer wiz either but have seen on the DCS site something about missions that have a lot of AI and triggers not responding well in game. Something to the effect that the triggers (even when your not close enough to activate them) have to be up-dated in the memory of your system so it takes a lot of your memory and reduces your frame rates. I'm not sure what all of this means and if anyone who had a clue about mission design wanted to do the research, I would love to hear what is needed to fix the issue.

Honestly I'm lucky to get into the low teens in DCS with a lot of stuff turned low. At least I now have a shot at a decent hover. Frustrating cause other programs with what appear to have a lot going on (lots of AI aircraft, etc) run so much smoother.

Forgot to mention I was running Razer Game Booster which made a real difference in "Combat Pilot".

In one MP mission everything runs ok till I get near a smoke signal, (theirs look a little fatter then the norm for some reason), and then my fps suddenly drops into the basement till I turn away.

When I started the default Death Valley mission with the rain, FRAPS showed an fps of 4 or 5 !

Not sure how my Bios was set McCoy but will take a look.


i7 - 3770K @ 3.5 ghz. Quad
Win 8 64 bit
8 gb ram
GeForce GT620, Dedicated video mem 2 gb, Shared sys mem 2 gb.

The smoke signals are killers to FPS a real drain on the game, it amazes me that something so small in the game has so much of an impact.

I only have a i5 - 2500k @ 3.3 ghz overclocked to 4.2 ghz
Win 7 pro 64
Mobo Asus P8Z68-V Pro
Gskill Ram 8gb
Cooling CM 690II advanced
Power supply OCZ ZX series 80 plus gold
Drives SSD's Intel 120g with os on it, Intel 40g dedicated to DCS only soon to be upgraded
HDD Samsung 1TB
Monitor's Samsung M230x3 Triple set up
GPU Evga Nvidia GTX 690 Sli'd to GTX 570 multi GPU enabled on the 690 and PhysX running on the 570

And with the above I get around 40 to 60 fps sometimes higher running all settings in DCS to High.

Isn't FRAPS a resource hog? What kind of hard drive are you running?

You would think but I think that's an old wives tale I have run the DCS counter and Fraps at the same time and get exactly the same results as I do when I run them separately.

My drive is just a standard Toshiba 1TB, no SSD. Fraps was supposed to be easy on resources. I don't perceive any dif with or without it activated.

I took a look at the bios McCoy, and Internal Graphics is set to Auto. I tried switching to "Enabled" and didn't see an improvement. Internal Graphics Memory Size was set at 64M and I changed to 1024M (the max) just for the heck of it. If it made a dif it was pretty tiny.

This is frustrating as other programs are very smooth in comparison. Pretty new system..... not mega bucks quality but far from low quality too.

Hi Trapper, 2 things that made a big difference to frame rates for me was putting windows and DCS onto a SSD. The other was overclocking my CPU. I have an i7 2600k that i run at 4.6GHz . I'd also suggest searching the ED forums, I know theres a few threads about this, and may point you in the right direction for a solution.
I'm running:  
i7 2600k @ 4.6GHz
16 GB DDR3 ram
GTX 570 (1GB)
Vertex 3 SSD
and I run most things on high (water - med / civ. traffic - low / HDR - off) and average mid 30s fps.
One more thing that i recall, not sure if its still right, but try turning everything to application controlled in the Nvidia software. The threads on the ED forum will shed more light on this too.

Thanks for the tips guys. An SSD drive would have to wait a bit. I'll work on a couple of the other suggestions in the meantime. Still seems that my present specs should be able to do better then low teens on avg for most missions with most graphics turned down. FSX with most everything high runs SMOOTH.

i7 - 3770K @ 3.5 ghz. Quad
Win 8 64 bit
8 gb ram
GeForce GT620, Dedicated video mem 2 gb, Shared sys mem 2 gb.
Toshiba 1 TB drive

The biggest fps issue in DCS has something to do with the explosions. There is quite a bit of models that arent optimized at all, that all cause some sort of lag. Smoke markers are a big FPS killer, as well as CBU explosions. My rig sometimes has problems handling it all, and my rig can play FSX comfortably with a ton of addons.

Hi,

Looking at your system specs Trapper, I think your graphics card is your bottelneck.
I got a similar set up to you, and I get rather good performance most of the time. However, there are also situations where performance will drop noticably, like if there are lot's of burning units visible, etc.

My setup:

i7-3770K @4.5 GHz
8 gb ram
GTX560Ti Direct CU II
1 TB of storage on two drives (one rund W7, the other DCS).

Similar to you, my graphic card seems to be the bottelneck. I am personally looking for a decent GTX 790 / Titan to fix that issue.

What I would suggest to you, is also to look for a decent graphics card which isn't completly out of your price range.
Additionally, depending on how mouch you are in to computers, you might decide to get a bettter cooler for your processor (I use the Corsair H60 water cooling) and try to overclock it. I can run my i7 at 4.5 GHz stable all day long with that cooler.

Best regards,

John

If John is struggling with that GPU, unfortunately Trapper your card doesn't have a chance in hell.

Although John I would recommend a SSD before the new GPU. You will see an overall significant boost to your system. But it may be worth just changing your GPU to save on energy, that TI is a huge power consumer, changing that would save you enough in energy bills to buy a SSD  

Trapper I would replace both the GPU and move to a SSD if the funds allow.

Also when comparing to FSX to DCS it's like comparing apples to oranges, they are two completely different beasts.

Haven't seen anyone recommend more mem. I'm assuming that has less benefit then Graphics Card or an SSD drive.

I do understand that there are major differences in the demands placed by programs like FSX. But still I can run IL2-COD, IL2-HSFX, Wings of Prey (for an arcade rush) and other combat flight sims with,graphics turned up, dozens of aircraft in the air and all hell breaking loose and the perceived smoothness is way better.

Really love DCS though ( can't stop going up just "One More Time" in the Huey ) and will continue to work on these tips but also seems that maybe DCS could do a bit more to optimize performance on their end ? Is it my imagination but do similar missions with the KA-50 seem a bit smoother ?

Well with them moving towards putting everything on Steam I would've thought they would have to pull their socks up and sort it out how the game is handled that is either using more cores or hyper threading or summit.
Steam won't tolerate unhappy customers that want a refund.

I hope at least that the new graphic engine will sort out some of those performance issues.
Doing a rewrite of such a big piece of code is definitely the right time to introduce the use of multiple cores and other things we have available today.

But I agree. In the current state DCS World is very performance hungry in many situations. Explosions, other aircraft and many other things create ridiculous performance issues. Some "old model" (low poly) ground vehicles create much more performance hit, than some of the nice looking high poly new ground vehicles, etc.
In my opinion those issues, and also other long time problems like multiplayer performance have to be addressed before adding any new fancy functions which will just reduce performance even more.

But it is up to ED what they decide to do. We (people which are on forums and squadrons flying online and investing much time and money into our simulator) just make out a small part of ED's customers as it seems...

I still find it mystifying exactly which missions will have the biggest performance hits.... some that look more complex seem to run better then others that look simpler. And then there's one MP mission in which encountering a smoke signal sends my fps into the basement. In most others, the smoke has much less affect. Rain makes any mission unplayable for me. Do nothing but shut off the precipitation and my fps makes a big jump up.

Funny thing re Steam. When I tried to run IL2 - Cliffs of Dover under Win 8 it would not even start. Steam is still getting lots of complaints and not posting a fix (last I checked). On the 1C Forums, a friend of a user who doesn't even play the game, wrote and posted a tiny utility that addressed and fixed the problem beautifully. And still nothing official from Steam or 1C.

Thank goodness for FORUMS

Trapper, here's my 2 cents to pimp up your PC  and it can help.

As an IT guy too, hope I can help, but I'm not an ED tech bye the way, I'm bit limited about specific Info about DCS. Depend on what kind of applications, an application can use more a specific resource than an other one and so one. Video games (today simulators included), even there's a great Engine, primary task is to shown its virtual world. So, the primary resource for this is Video card. In DCS, special effect (bullet trails) are great but specifically lower down special effect. My primary recommendation would be to change your video card. AMD or nVidia, I don't care, you go with your budget and compare bench. If you use/expect to use 3 monitors, go with a huge one.

In DCS, you can balance between HDD and RAM with the "Preload Radius". The issue is with big triggered missions with use allot of RAM. You're OK with 8 RAM but just OK but you'll get frame drop faster than other having 16Gb on big triggered missions. If you monitor your RAM during mission, you'll see it's still going full after abig trigger/script long misison, I don't know if is a DCS or script bug. If you can pimp up RAM, add RAM would be my second recommendation.

About SSD, if you can afford, fine, but a good alternative is HDD WD Velociraptop.

Hope this help

I'm everything BUT an IT guy. Used to have a lot of knowledge on it, but that's years and years ago.

Yesterday the framerate was bugging me. So I started messing around. Didn't do a thorough job, because I'm impatient, but I did find out that for me, changing the resolution makes hardly ANY difference. I have most graphics options set to low, except scenery which is high, and textures at medium.

I disagree with FlyingFrog on getting a better GPU. I used to have a Radeon HD5770, and last week I installed a HD7950. I hardly notice any difference. What really matters in DCS is your CPU. I have an old one, an AMD Phenom II X4 955, running at 3.2Ghz. Last night I did some googling on overclocking. Overclocked it to 3.7Ghz. CPU got really hot, around 90 degrees C, so I took apart my CPU cooler and cleaned it, there was a lot of dust in there. Now it's running at 3.7Ghz at around 65 degrees C, totally stable, and DCS is noticably smoother.

Don't have any FPS numbers to compare or share with you guys, but believe me, you notice it instantly, it's a big improvement.

(Oh yeah, also I pimped up my RAM from 4GB to 16GB, no noticable difference)

After running the server up for almost 8 straight hours yesterday with all of the missions, DCS topped out at just over 4gb of memory use. 8gb of ram is more than enough to run DCS flawlessly, so I will say that you will need a better video card for DCS. Ive went from a GTX570 2048 to a GTX680 4096 and didnt see any improvement, so get yourself a decent GTX series card...doesnt matter what generation it is.

Ummm... Isn't a GTX680 high-end? And you say no improvement? Doesn't that contradict saying you need a better video card?

Yes, a GTX680 is high end, but so is a GTX570, GTX580, GTX590...
A GT620 is not considered high end, thats closer to low end, mostly reserved for low end laptops. Let me put it this way: you are going to get better graphics off of a low end tier card, than you would with just using the graphics processor on your cpu. You are going to get a huge performance increase using a low end tiered card over the processor, but eventually you will top out somewhere. Top of the line GFX in DCS world is around the GTX570 level, and you can only hope for better than 10fps increase when upgrading from THAT to...lets say...a GTX780, or even the Titan.

I don't think I get what you're saying. A CPU doesn't have a graphics processor, or does it? Most mainboards have a graphics processor. At least, to my knowledge.

All I can say that a serious GPU upgrade didn't show any improvement for me, while a reasonable CPU overclock really did make a noticable difference for me.

So the best bet would be to get a better CPU. I know that's what I'm getting next upgrade

(B/229) Grizzly wrote:
I disagree with FlyingFrog on getting a better GPU. I used to have a Radeon HD5770, and last week I installed a HD7950. I hardly notice any difference. What really matters in DCS is your CPU. I have an old one, an AMD Phenom II X4 955, running at 3.2Ghz. Last night I did some googling on overclocking. Overclocked it to 3.7Ghz. CPU got really hot, around 90 degrees C, so I took apart my CPU cooler and cleaned it, there was a lot of dust in there. Now it's running at 3.7Ghz at around 65 degrees C, totally stable, and DCS is noticably smoother.

Grizzle, Trapper have more recent CPU&mother board then me, I hace a Core2 Quad core running a 2.83GHz. When monitoring CPU and RAM, CPU is very fine, no need to crank it up nor change it. I got an old system, built it before i7 was on market and I run DCS but I target about 60fps even with good rendering: texture High, Scene High, Trafic Med, Water Low, Vis range Med, Heat Blur Off, Shadow Med, res 1680x1050 (1 screen), MSA x2, HDR off, Bush 500m, Trees 7km, Preload 80km, VSync ON, Tree Shdow Off, CP shadow ON, TSSAA ON. My VCard is not recent but it's a "Game" card, GTX470. Note that there's a huge frame rate drop when getting under fire, there's a relation here with graphic. FYI, I have G15 keybard which let me monitor CPU&RAM frequently. I confirm my old Quad CPU is not satturared.