How much will multithreading help if your PC is old and slow? | DCS Multithreading Tested

We've been delving into multithreading in this channel lately and that coincides with the recent release of a multithreading update to DCS. Performance gains are expected but how much is realistic if you don't have the fastest PC?
That's what we'll discuss in this video.
Obligatory disclaimers:
The presence of DOD Visual Information in this video does not constitute endorsement by the DOD or any of its departments. Any views expressed by the presenter are those of the presenter and do not represent the views of the DOD or any of its components.

[@bukhariali71]

Good job on showing the comparison using a mid range PC. Mostly all others on KZbin so far seem to using SpaceX PCs.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

I figured you guys would prefer to see something that hasn't been done by a dozen other channels already.

[@Eduard_Kolesnikov]

@@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom yessssss

[@goldfishPACIFIER]

so thats mid range? well im wayyyy below that

[@Thumper770]

@@goldfishPACIFIER Right?! I'm sitting on a Ryzen5 3300 and a 1080ti thinking I'm pulling up the rear but, I'm still with the group. I guess not. ROFL.

[@lancedooley9304]

I think people are only looking at top FPS and I feel like the biggest gain is in bottom FPS being far higher and consistent. That’s what I’m seeing, as I use VR and am capped at 40 FPS from the HMD. But I used to see huge dips in FPS and now I’m not see much if any drop in high saturated missions.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

That's a good point. I wanted to stick more stats on the screen but I also didn't want to go overboard and make it hard to follow.

[@jonesy66691]

Having a consistent frame rate is far more important for VR than maximum frame rates.

[@caleblindgren8211]

Super helpful to see a comparison and test with an older system. As someone who flies in VR on a near-peer system to the one you performed this test on, so far yours is the only video test of multithreading that I find relevant as few others perform their tests on anything but high-end equipment, which is out of my price range currently. So, thanks for giving us plebs some helpful data for comparison. Kudos!

[@PaletoB]

If this is an "old" computer then mine is ancient...😅 I currently see 10-30fps improvement, about the same as I loose when turning on mirror's. Gtx1060 (2017) X5660 4,2ghz (2011) 24gb ddr3 Asus p6t deluxe (2009) 👴

[@Malzanar2010]

Where I really noticed the improvement from multi threading was actually in the VR experience.

[@AviAssayag]

Great video. Straight, simple to understand and o erall in good vibes. Thank you!

[@ttdsi5745]

Just out of curiosity on why this was put together so well, what do you do for a living?

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

I'm a programmer. This is stuff I'm in interested in. Thanks for the compliment!

[@NicoGrosso78]

I'm here with a 1050ti and i5 7400 and this man comes with an rtx 2080 and i7 saying the computer is basically garbage lmao

[@oczhaal]

Thanks for this interesting test ! As for my rig, I got a good 10-15% framerate improvement in VR on the HP Reverb G2,

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Glad to hear you're seeing an improvement in VR. I know this has been requested for a long time.

[@coyoteeffect]

5600x/3070 build, i saw some minor improvements to frames but what really changed for me was switching cameras switching from F1/F2 to another vehicle or weapon probably took 10 seconds to load, and the game would just freeze for those 10 seconds; now it's practically instant, i can rapid fire F6-F9 and not watch a powerpoint i've never fully understood how frame times work but i feel like the game looks smoother, might be related to that but idk

[@Farming-Technology]

i'm gpu bound so not much fps uplift. BUT the lows and lag spikes are so much better with mt. Test again showing the 1% and 0.1% lows to really see the difference.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Glad to see you're seeing an improvement on the lag spikes.

[@richarddiss1643]

Thank You very much for the job.

[@pinkfloyd7572]

Good video! Thank you.

[@sthompson3]

I have an even older and less capable PC than the one in your tests. I'm running a 1060 GPU and an older i9 CPU with 20 Gb of RAM. I'm seeing significant increases in framerate with MT, even with graphics turned up higher than previously, but still far short of maxed out. Much to my surprise, the new framerate tool that you can activate with control-Pause is showing me CPU bound most of the time in missions. I've mostly been testing in the JF-17.

[@TacticalFragAddict]

Did you notice improvement? When I initially tried MT, I was getting cpu bound (ik 9900K 2070 64 GB). Graphics looked a bit better but wouldnt go bevond 45 fps. Once I changed my nvidia (*enable MultiThread, and Set Max Frames to 1000) setting, My fps went over 100 FPS. And now showing GPU bound as I had expected.

[@markslandingsandaviationvi3123]

In terms of the f14, they need to try to optimize it a little better. It's a great aircraft, but the performance and the points you had in this video reminds me of the exact same thing I experienced ever since I bought the F14 by Heatblur, It is HEAVY on fps!! This needs to be adressed soon, because it's one of the modules that is on the fps heavy side. Others like the F16 and F18 run good, but this should be looked at:) Thanks for the video, I thought I was the only one who noticed worse fps with the F14:)

[@TallyVisual]

Your GPU usage seems to be at almost 100% in every single test. Since you run 2k and a 2080 I think that is realistic. These tests only indicate that the mt setup even improves FPS when GPU limited. So in the F-14 case the difference was the smallest since the GPU was more of a factor. A mission with lots of units where your GPU usage drops below 90% in st will probably show a good difference. You can also reduce the resolution to make the GPU less of a factor.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Good points. These kind of tests are also great for pointing out where a system's bottleneck is so the owner can fix it.

[@somecallmetim42]

Exactly. I have an i9 12900k and 3080ti and don't see much FPS increase as I run in 4k with very high graphics settings so I'm GPU limited anyway at about 80 to 120 fps. However if I drop the res down to 1080p or 1440p I get even more of an FPS increase with MT, not that I care as my TV is only 120Hz anyway so whether I can do 160 or 170fps is moot.. What's probably more important is that you're less likely so see any FPS drops in large missions. For anyone whos' currently GPU limited we'll mostly likely see good FPS increases when they add DLSS and move to Vulkan.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

@@jjcdrumplay The test specs I used can be found at 1:12 mark in the video.

[@Darrylx444]

PSA: This new DCS OB has switched from OpenVR to OpenXR, for both ST and MT modes. This means that some crucial third-party utilities are now useless for DCS, such as Openvr_fsr, and OVR Advanced Settings. However, similar alternatives do exist such as OpenXR Toolkit, and XRNecksafer.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Good to know for VR users.

[@lolmao500]

Why they did that... does FSR work in OpenXR?

[@tinzalix8624]

@@lolmao500 OpenXR Toolkit has FSR yes, and they switched becuase OpenXR has better performance

[@Ala13ManOWar]

I believe it was already done some previous patch, anyhow you can choose whatever VR app of your choice including OpenVR, it's just you have to select it in the settings, force in .exe, or whatever the way but can be done. Check current and previous changelogs for further details on how to do that, or the forums should have threads about it

[@jjcdrumplay]

When I put together my system I mostly used dcs as a starter, since my older p.c. was barely able to run 2.5 dcs world. Now it's not too bad, with r5 1600af, but the game is more demanding in 2.8. My question is, Should users not autoclock, to allow the cpu to work without locking the voltage or other o.c. settings? Well now the memory is spread, so does it matter as much to overvolt or lock it with overclock? I'm using Harrier mostly, but not sure what specs he is using in this demo.

[@gwagnsso]

Perhaps your F-14 multi-core dynamic mission test ran into the Nvidia GPU driver overhead. As now the old 7700K is so heavily loaded, that the driver has trouble getting enough free cycles to properly feed that 2080.

[@frankeagle73]

Software you use to benchmark GPU and CPU cores?

[@theflyingfool]

Thanks Mike, you always explain things really clearly and well. Excellent video!

[@frankbizzoco1954]

If your pc is old, mine is ancient lol. Im on a i7 4790k 32 gig ram and a gtx 1080. I have experienced a 30 fps gain on average. I play in 1080p and sometimes in vr. I havnt tried multithreading in vr yet because there is no .exe for vr with multithreading in the Steam launcher. I'm sure there is a workaround but I haven't found it yet.

[@sammy080798]

If you're using an oculus quest 2, just use link cable and run dcs with MT turned on in steam. I saw atleast a 10% increase. My specs are an i5 4690k at 4.5ghz 32gb 2133mhz ram and a 3060ti

[@AndrewH428]

Could I ask what settings you were using?

[@FuriouslyFurious]

I have a Ryzen 9 3900x with a 2080 with a G2 VR. The MT test I did increased my FPS from around 30 to 35ish. Didn't do very thorough tested, though. Just instant action on Syria in the Apache.

[@AIRWARFAREGROUP]

Could it be Mirrors Solly?

[@davedundas]

What did you use to display those GPU and CPU usage values?

[@sammy080798]

He's using MSI Afterburner with Riva Tuner loaded

[@clemensklompken3600]

I did not test mt intensively yet, just started a quick start free flight mission in MiG-21. First with "lowered" graphical settings, then more "quality" added (f.e. MSAA 2x). Both far from beeing the lowest or highest. Comparing mt and non-mt using DCS own FPS Monitor my FPS increased by about 10 to no-mt on both settings. Running a 4770K quadcore 16GB DDR3 RAM and a 1070 Ti. Nice, I take it.

[@irenemengouli590]

I have a 4790K + 3060ti. Playing only at 4K. Most fights are simple 1v1 bfm missions that i host with a friend (so not a single other AI unit). GPU is running always at 99%, CPU at 20-40% with some spikes to 70% . I play most of the time in the 50 - 60 sometimes to 70 fps, have also some drops further down. Really curious if a 4070ti will increase performance for that specific mission types i fly (something similar to the free flight missions shown on the video).

[@grantechsweng5268]

CPU that is an avg for all threads there will be one that is the scheduler and takes on more load that thread gets the bottleneck.

[@user-ev5ur7fw4t]

Amezing thanks.

[@abekanda-olmstead8174]

Can you test the fa18?

[@_DANZIG_]

could you share this " randomized" mission?

[@tsangarisjohn]

It made a huge difference on my old girl. And I’m running a Ryzen 5. Got her on High settings with minor adjustments. The Sim is smooth as butter. 🎉

[@RTSchramm]

They need to divide the logic thread for AI, Aircraft module operating system, and audio on the client side. On the server side the AI threads needs to divided between red and blue.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

I agree. Thankfully, they did say in a newsletter that this is just the first iteration. Future updates will split the threads even further.

[@rcl99tlr65]

I saw someone comment that you have to run DCS from a file inside the BIN folder to activate multi threading, is that true or does multi threading work from the regular .exe ?

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

For this patch they provided two executables. One with the new multi-threading and another with the way they did things in previous patches. There is a FAQ on the DCS forums explaining how to use the new executable. It should answer all your questions: forum.dcs.world/topic/320618-dcs-multithreading-faq/

[@rcl99tlr65]

@@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom thanks yea I just looked that up and it looks like its not for dcs world yet..just beta and steam

[@leighgordon9311]

Perhaps a better analysis of the F-14 module isn’t to focus on max FPS, but average sustained FPS during the course of a blown mission?

[@user-uq2xx9fb9i]

I also confirm the increase in performance on old PCs thanks to MT! My configuration from 2009: 980x: 6x oc cores at 4.44Ghz (WC), 48gb DDR3 2133mhz 1x nvme 970pro 1tb for ltsc 2019 1x nvme 970pro 1TB for dcs v2.9 MT stable 2080ti oc at 2070/8000mhz Dell AW2721D 1440p gsync My average values in M2K, and offline: 124 fps in free flight in M2k 110 fps on basic and moderately loaded missions 75 fps on very busy missions in FA18 And this with all the options pushed to the maximum for pure visual quality and immersion! no DLSS...MSAA4X! As well as the addition of Reshade filters and Barthek's and Taz1004 mods for the beauty of the rendering (or the discovery of another game...). Result, the 6 cores are all active, and oscillate at the lowest at 65%, 75% on average and 100% for missions loaded in FA18, the GPU is 99/100% utilization the vast majority of the time for 63°C max and the CPU 74°C max. For me, this optimization linked to CPU management convinced me to wait a little longer to rebuild a complete PC! because the fluidity is perfect, and I only play DCS. A piece of advice for those who have problems in MT: launch the game and at the reception (before choosing a mission) go to the OS task manager to deactivate 1x core then reactivate it afterwards, mandatory for me anyway.

[@unotoli]

Flying over clouds is best scenario for ST. Low level + action around is more realistic, where MT saves CPU thread that feeds GPU that suffers less. Stutters and issues are there, but in general - you get what you GPU-ot.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Good to know.

[@SasNolan]

Cool and all, but i need tests for VR. My friend has ryzen 3950x with 3080ti and with oculus quest 2 has barely 20fps (WITH MOTION REPROJECTION) with F-14.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Sorry to hear about your friend. The upcoming render graph and DLSS updates should help with VR a lot more than just multithreading alone.

[@SasNolan]

@@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom seems promising, thank you.

[@jubuttib]

"None of the components are newer than 5 years old." RTX 2080 was released 4 and a half years ago... =)

[@bukhariali71]

He did say he upgraded the GPU.

[@jubuttib]

@@bukhariali71 Yes, but importantly he said "none of the components are newer than 5 years old" AFTER he said he'd upgraded the GPU. So his lines go "a computer I built 6 years ago" -> "later upgraded the GPU" (so GPU is less than 6 years old) -> "none of the components are newer than 5 years old" (suggesting the GPU is still at least 5 years old). Of course this is semantic nitpicking, but everyone's gotta have a hobby, you know?

[@Eduard_Kolesnikov]

@@jubuttib hehe, that's a good one

[@bowsewr7074]

Man I'm ready to move on from a 1080 but life expenses won't stop getting in the way.

[@Wyatt_B]

I have a feeling that ED made modules will have bigger improvements over second party developers as their codes are different and so ED can only be so good at working with someone else's code. Thats my guess on the difference at least.

[@jstorm7757]

Mileage is definitely varying. My i9-10900k/3080/64Gig rig in VR is getting about the same results as before the MT update. 2D, its screaming at 130+ For some reason, VR just isnt getting the stability or gains.

[@TacticalFragAddict]

Ive seen people state the same as you but later were able to get better performance by adjusting some settings.

[@jefsonb]

MT improve from 110 FPS to 160 FPS max and 85 to 105 average (i9 9900k, RTX 2080 waterforce, 32 GB RAM, 1440P) in specific scenario considering F-18C. More CPU usage: from 13/15 to 25/30%.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Grats on extra FPS.

[@davido1953]

doesn't work on my midrange pc

[@jonesy66691]

It should make the future dynamic campaign a lot more viable.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for. More CPU power means more stuff for them to add to DCS.

[@breadboi1248]

you might want to retry this test because if it was done recently after 26th febuary because of an nvidia graphics driver 531.18 being bugged and messing up performance by liek 10%

[@bodasafur6078]

Something people dont seem to understand on cpu usage on hyoerthreaded chips is 50% load on a hyperthreaded chip is technically 100% load, so if you are looking thinkin well i dont have a cpu bottleneck im only using 54% no you are maxing out the cpu , on ht cpu you need the load below 50% .

[@alphapicturesentertainment]

Where can we find that dynamic mission?

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

This is one I'm working on and is still in a beta state. There's a lot of parts to it. Once I'm happy with it and I'm sure I caught all the bugs it will be a free download from the user files. Plus I'll make a video on it.

[@hidayatoceandar5004]

​@@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom Oh this is so cool. Can't wait for it. You just earned new subscriber. Thanks

[@ThePaulv12]

God, my idea of an old computer is a 2009 i7 1366 rev1 Gigabyte EX58 Extreme. Mine is actually upgraded to an OC'd 6 core 3670 Xeon running at a pathetic 4Ghz on water, 16gb ram and a factory OC 1080Ti. 3rd motherboard, 2nd PSU, 3rd set of ram, 3rd graphics card and about the 8th monitor. I don't know how it will play this yet but I feel as long as it gets over 40fps at 1440 on my 32" monitor I'll keep persevering with it. I have 1 more NOS mobo left for it LOL. See if I can't get it to the year 2030 with another couple of secondhand cards. I must say GA EX-58 Extreme mobos aren't really very good - they only last about 4 or 5 years before they die.

[@jaromirandel543]

I have Core I7-6700K, RTX 2080 Ti 11GB OC, 64GiB DDR4 RAM, got 20% performance gain with MT. (tried F-16C in Persian gulf cold start instant action)

[@alexandrebini4688]

I have 6700K too. I'm buing a 3060 ti, that is similar to your 2080 ti. What is your resolution and fps befour and now?

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Glad to see you're getting more frames. This seems to be a great patch for just about everyone.

[@jaromirandel543]

@@alexandrebini4688 2560*1440 with MSAA4x From 40 right after mission start to 50fps. SSAA in MT version does not work right now. After some discussions, my CPU is definitely the bottleneck. People are getting much better performance with my GPU.

[@nomad_simulations]

i7-4770 and rtx3060ti. had no improvement. and also on f5 campaign i have about only 20% load on gpu.. is it because my cpu is struggling?

[@annezwart5083]

That's a very old CPU you've got... Nearly 10 years old, I think. Although I would expect it to benefit of MT regardless. Maybe RAM could be an issue as well? My setup isn't much younger btw; I'm rocking a 7th gen i7, gtx 1070 and 16 GB of RAM. I did see massive improvements though; my cpu efficiency trippled and FPS went from an avg of 30 to 50. The 1070 is the bottleneck now.

[@nomad_simulations]

@@annezwart5083 Yeah, I was hoping for at least some improvement..i also don't understand why my gpu is so underused, like 20-40% load maximum. That causes huge frame drops

[@LupusAries]

Currently running an i5-6600k @4.3 ghz, with 32GB of DDR4-3000 CL15, System and DCS now on a 2TB 970 Evo Plus and an RTX 2060 (6GB Non-super) Soon to be replaced by an Ryzen 7 5800X3d, 64GB of DDR4-3600 CL18, System and DCS on a 2TB WD SN850X (+the 970 Evo Plus), as well as an RX7900XT (XFX Merc 310 Black Edition)...whenever I get the time to build that. Might be worthwile to check out the difference in performance on that. I had some pretty good improvement in the lower fps metrics going from a SATA SSD to an NVME...especially smoothness has increased a lot.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

I think the other replies might be right. Without actually seeing the real time stats it's hard to tell where the problem is. But it could be more than just the CPU. The parts that feed the CPU (and GPU) are probably also struggling. Another thing to check is system settings that might throttle the CPU (like power saving mode). I've seen reports that this can slow things down. I'm just speculating here though. The low GPU usage sounds like your system is trying to tell you something though.

[@sammy080798]

If the 4770 is non-k then it's running at stock speeds.... that 3060ti needs atleast a 4ghz cpu....

[@martinlagrange8821]

Well...I got a 67% fps jump ! And this is on a Ryzen 5 3600, 32 GB RAM, and a Silicon-Shortage GTX 1660, overclocked...

[@alexandrebini4688]

I got another year to wait to replace my 6700k and its motherboard. For now I'm changing the old gpu (1070) for a 3060 ti

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

That should help a lot. The 2080 in this test system replaced a 1070 and the improvement was huge. A 3060 Ti will be even better.

[@alexandrebini4688]

my only doubt is if the 6700k will have any benefit with its 4 cores

[@mytubehkjt]

Sweet FA in my experience..

[@jamesyoungquist6923]

Lol when you said old I expected something at least 10 years old...

[@lolmao500]

DCS has said the limit is 32 cores for now. Or is it 32 threads... hmm

[@somecallmetim42]

32 Threads total but that's made of up to 16 main threads on P cores and up to another 16 background task threads running on E cores. So this suits my i9 12900k very well which has 8 P cores and 8 E cores. Not noticed much FPS improvement though as I run DCS in 4K with all the bells and whistles on a 3080ti and it's mostly GPU bound anyway. Don't get any slowdowns though with MT and should be able to run bigger missions.

[@Dropbear64]

I have a high-end PC and it made no difference :(

[@wirelessmouse9579]

If you have a high-end PC and are not getting good framerates in DCS, then something might be wrong. I had a similar experience and used some benchmarking tools to to discover my RAM was not performing properly. I also learned via Enigma's Cold War Discord that having Tacview installed can cripple your framerate in DCS. After addressing those problems, and running the new MT client, I can maintain >60 fps on ECW at a busy airfield while the server is at max population.

[@Dropbear64]

@@wirelessmouse9579 I get 70fps before MT.... It's the same after. I'll try removing Tacview as I have it on the server.

[@marekkasprzak1215]

I 7 8700k oc to 5 ghz asus 1080 ti oc no improvements even worse. 2.7 was smoother on single core.

[@TheOpsCenterByMikeSolyom]

Really sorry to hear that. I hope something changes in the future to improve that.

[@zaelu]

1:23 ....no... that's not old. :)