these benches you make are crucial to 99.9% of simmers, finally someone is doing real world cpu gpu bench in dcs in vr ! , most of us that need that extra performance and still not sure on what cpu pulling the trigger on, this will help a lot!
Ohhh, so THIS is the project you were working on! Great work! I'll see if I can get you some example multiplayer benchmarks.. it'll just be difficult to do on my usual servers where the cold starts alone often take 10 minutes to complete
Very valuable to me. I use DCS regularly always in VR and I was looking at a future PC upgrade as I suspect I am CPU bound but now I have something to work with. Excellent work.
Hey, thank you very much for this! Sim benchmarks are rare to come by and while MSFS does get some attention nowadays, same cannot be said about DCS. So a big hats off from me personally and dare I say, DCS community, for doing this!
I'll add to the chorus of thanks. It's hard to get good benchmarking done in DCS, such a niche title all the big guns ignore. So thanks again. Looking forward to future DCS content
Excellent work. Can't wait for more. Multiplayer is definitely a great follow up. There are also some "stress test" benchmarking tracks with lots of AI units and AI action running around the internet that can further expand on CPU comparissons.
So good to see. Thank you for taking the time to do this. I am also interested in the effect of memory speed. i.e. difference between DDR4 vs DDR5 memory, 32GB vs 64GB on multiplayer servers. Its my understanding that the 32 vs 64GBs become important in multiplayer, but would be nice to see the actual numbers. Liked and subscribed!
benching dcs is best when you fly over a city say Damascus with some say 50 ground and air assets moving (the more assetes \groups move on a longer path the more cpu heavy it is)
Correct. Damascus low (but not ultra low where horizon line-of-sight clipping would reduce the polygon count) where you would really differentiate between systems. Also, 4k display also pushes systems harder, or even dual-4k in high-end VR headsets. One of the biggest factors worth benchmarking for DCS is the effect of increased VRAM (video card memory), as moving textures along the bus between RAM and VRAM affects performance more than most people understand. The extra VRAM accounts for a lot of the performance difference between Nvidia's GPUS (eg. 4090 to 4080) and as someone who programmed a bit of OpenGL you were always aware of this and tried to keep as much on VRAM as possible (compressing textures, using indexed vertex buffers etc). Thanks for doing DCS Benchmark Odysseys the reward for getting good (simulated) flying is worth the effort to get there.
Welcome to the rabbit hole of benchmarking DCS 😂A couple of things to consider. The Intel 12/13/14th gen CPU have 8 P-cores but they also have additional 8 to 16 E-cores, and this game is optimised to use those too. It's also important to record the build number of the DSC version you are benchmarking, as I've seen large swings in performance from build to build, when ED make performance tweaks, which is often...
Thanks for having me ;) I did try disabling Ecores on 13700K to see if it reduced the FPS dips I noticed, but it did not. Thread usage is high so yes I can see Ecores being an asset. The build tested was 2.9.11 and it looks like ED released an update during the time it took me to produce the video. That's always a risk with these 'live' service simulators and a burden we have to benchmark them, compared to the single player titles that many benchmarkers use and don't have to worry about that.
@@BenchmarkOdysseys DCS certainly had issues with 13th and 14th gen Intel. Check how its spreading the workload over the cores. There were issues with it maxing out one or two cores and barely touching the others , which led to stutter and frame rate dips. The solution at the time was using Lasso to disable the cores it was maxing out, and it would then spread the workload more efficiently over the remaining P cores. I didn't really look into the how's and whys, but it certainly worked to improve performance.
What a great review and something that the community really needs. Few things for the next one. Moving your head around in VR would be important i think. Secondly, i would use an intensive map like Caucus or Marianas. Third, fly low to the ground. This is where there is a noticeable performance loss. Fourth, include VRAM usage. From my understanding Frame Gen does not work in VR. I wouldn't turn DLSS off though.
Windows is a preemptive operating system, meaning that while you're playing DCS (benchmarking), windows has OS tasks that need to run for other applications. Windows will suspend your DCS thread momentarily and perform other work. For the most consistent runs, shut down all non-essential tasks with taskmanager and prevent tasks from starting with the startup tab in taskmanager. Clean restarts before each benchmark run. Windows is not a real-time OS so there will always be some inconsistencies run to run. It's not necessarily a DCS coding issue, it lives inside Windows and subjected to that environment.
Well said. I make a reasonable effort, but I wish the big reviewers out there (TPU, GN, HUB, etc) shared a few more of their secrets with Windows tuning. If you have any additional guides, I'd be happy to bolster my benching prep.
Ps: by the way, it would be more realistic to have some head movements also in VR as it has a strong influence on the CPU work that needs to load / animate a much larger number of objects. Maybe it could be possible to playback the camera movement too by disabling the head tracking input from the headset...
That's an incredibly high resolution! And probably outside the reach of my 4080 Super 16GB. But I suppose the Crystal has DFR with eyetracking and Quadviews?
@BenchmarkOdysseys c is strange but I've seen benchmarks that might suggest that with huge resolutions like the one of the crystal lle 14900k could be faster than the 9800x3d, especially in frame time cpu and 0.1% low. What do you think about that, i will change my old 9900k for the best cpu possible very soon 🙏
Excellent start to benching DCS with your awesome graphs for vr! Hopefully some people come through with track files. Also please do some tests without dlss turned on, higher textures and shadows. The settings you’re using are sort of compromises to get vr to run solid, which sort of goes against the idea of benching right? You’ve shown that those settings run dcs more than acceptably in vr and pancake, so let’s see a little less compromised settings.
Thanks :) Yes the settings are more 'optimized' but I was still surprised by the GPU demand it created in VR. Even with such a low VR resolution, it was still too much for a 12GB 3080Ti (which is similar to 4070 family of cards).
8:50 If only Nsight worked with the latest DCS versions... you could see why it happens. But it just closes on launch. However, it works pretty well with the old 1.5 version. Yes, 99% means that the GPU has reached its performance limit and cannot provide more FPS, while low power usage indicates that not all CUDA cores are fully utilized in every warp. However, this changes as you increase the resolution.
hes doing the right bench at the right time before 9950-9000x3d's coming out, right on time hammer on nail this guy !. they should pay you m8. tens of thousands of dcs players are now on the hunt for new cpu to relief our 4k-8k+ vr experience , we all really bothered by this every day !
Great stuff! If you still need some help let me know. Also you can come fly with us on our servers. Lots of knowledge to get you pointed in the right direction!
This is quality content! Very interesting. Maybe put the VR headset on rotating fan to have consistent head movement, just an idea. Also, do you have some AMD GPUs to throw into a mix ? Like every game, some prefer AMD and some NVIDIA, I'd like to know which card manufacturer does better in raster VR DCS.
@@BenchmarkOdysseys Oh, and next time, you also want to try hop on Growling Sidewinder multiplayer server, that is a different beast and will TEST the RAM usage, it's taken almost as standard in DCS performance testing since single player missions are pretty lightweight, if not heavily populated with assets.
Would like to see these tests, except with something a bit newer/harder to run -- ie the most popular headset right now, the Quest 3. The quest 3 has some more unique quirks being that it has to route through the GPU encoder (NVENC for Nvidia)
Higher end headsets definitely demand more of the graphics card than CPU. So a user has to dial in their resolution and DCS settings for their GPU first with VR. So in theory, if I dialed my settings for Quest 3 with 4080 Super, the performance headroom between CPUs (as shown in the graphs) 'should' be similar as what I showed with Index. Unfortunately the streaming nature of the Quest 3 disguises proper performance analysis, so I cannot produce the same data sets.
oo and another thing i almost forgot , most of us run QUADVIEWS, fixed foveated rendering, now this my friend take a lot of load from the gpu but kills the cpu, Literally kills it!!! so , our only refuge from dcs killing our gpu's is to use quadviews with high end cpu , and thats it folks , we just need the right cpu and were done with the never ending struggle!
i have a 7900xtx and 5800x3d 64gb ram and i get max 70-75 fps in the situation stated below, now am sure if i had a better cpu say 9950x3d (16 cores) it will run better, how much better ? well we dont know until you make a bench on it ;) (also 9800x3d-7800x3d bench in dcs will help a lot to decide on what cpu upgrade should i go for , and not just me).
DCS is a CPU intensive Simulator! The faster the CPU the better thing are for DCS. DCS loves faster CPU's the 3D V-cache in the AMD processors is a help but not as much as having a faster processor. I have a friend in the DCS flight School I'm a member of who has 2 top end 4090 systems one is 7800X3D, he just upgraded to 9800X3D but what he told me was based on his 7800X3D setup, His second system is 4090 with 14900 Intel CPU. He states that the Intel system is faster and smoother than the 7800X3D system. He now only flies in the Intel system as it's a better experience for FPS and Frame times and micro stutters. DCS has great grapgics detail and look amazing but unlike MSFS 202/2024 it has to calculate everything on the map accurately. So what do I mean. Well MSFS 2020/4 is a gorgeous looking GPU hog that basically only has to simulate the plane your flying and monitor some AI traffic and if your online position other players in you line of sight but it doesn't have to worry about calculating the other players Physics of that plane only it's position. MSFS biggest worry is making everything LOOK fantastic, yes there are Flight models to calculate but only your own planes! It's a Looking pretty SPU hog simulator not a CPU Hog! I describe DCS as a Physics simulator first and foremost as it has to calculate the physics of your plane all AI planes, AlI the ground assets (tanks Sam Sites) and more importantly it has to calculate using ballistic real life equations the exact position and future position of EVERY SINGLE BULLET, ROCKET, MISSILE, BOMB on the ENTIRE map! DCS does not do dice roll or random generator type calculations for the weapons like other more arcade sims do (Warthunder for example) Despite how good DCS looks it's definitely more CPU locked than GPU locked unlike MSFS which is the other way round. DCS actually calculates everything on the map even if its weapons or fighting happening hundreds of miles from you that you can't see, Every bullet, rocket ect, in that fight is realistically calculated, hence the slow down in Multiplayer servers when things get active and lots of AAA, SAM and HIMARS and Cluster bombs are going of, as every bomblet from the cluster bomb is accurately calculated. I always suspected faster CPUs would be more helpful for DCS than better GPU or the 3D V-cache of the AMD chips but they will definitely help when using high end VR headsets but even these headset should see a significant boost if Eagle dynamics unlock more cores for the game engine to use. I could not prove what I suspected but but my Friends 2 systems which are identical apart from one is AMD and the other is Intel seems to prove my point, As the Intel 14900 runs faster than the AMD X3D chip and runs DCS smoother than it also, I suspect that the new AMD 9950X3D CPU will benefit DCS more than the 9800X3D as it will be a slightly higher clock speed than the 9800X3D. DCS does use multi core to help out on this and Eagle Dynamics are definitely looking to improve DCS's multicore capability as it is still very limited to only 2>3 cores I think and they cannot launch the Dynamic campaign until DCS is running several more Cores/Threads to help out in the calculations side of the sim!
I'm currently looking to upgrade from 2060super to a 9800x3d and either 4080super, 4090, 5080 or 5090 all subject to reviews and costs for a full new PC. Will be watching as it's mostly for DCS VR that I'm upgrading
DCS is often data bandwidth limited. SSD->system RAM->VRAM. Do you have specs and settings for your system RAM? Maybe interesting to test bandwidth/latency
Yes, I noticed with VR that the system memory usage shot up to over 32GB and started using a paging file. So I did this benching with 64GB DDR5 6000 CL30 and 64GB DDR4 3600 CL18. I am using Gen4 NVMe drives from WD and Samsung.
8:48 My setup is a 12700k 64 GB Ram 6900XT and I also observe low wattage on the GPU while playing DCS even though the game itself claims to be GPU limited.
I already explained why it happens with NVIDIA in the message above. The same applies to AMD, but with different terminology. Instead of CUDA cores, AMD uses Compute Units (CUs), and rather than warps, AMD's architecture operates with wavefronts. The core principle remains unchanged: if the GPU is at 99% usage but power consumption is low, it suggests that not all CUs are fully occupied in every wavefront. Increasing the resolution similarly raises the workload, leading to better utilization of available resources. Nothing curious :)
Unfortunately Multiplayer tracks don't usually work, crashing the client on playback. But I could cook you a mission in Syria with several units doing stuff and some scripts running? Unfortunately i can't track it for you as I don't own the F-18. Do you also have the F-16 or F-14 or F-4? Hello, I can for sure say that on difficult situations the CPU is a huge bottleneck. I have a 4090 and 13700K running at 80hz (quest3). Sometimes the frames are not in time and i see my CPU had 1 or 2 cores pegged to 100%. And when that happens sometimes the frames missed are several, like 5 or 10 frames missed. Otherwise my GPU is never at maximum usage, but at around 90-92% due to the frame cap. I am gonna buy a 5090 very probably and I will be frustrated to see my pc not able to push more than 80hz anyway, so your work is very useful to me
Thank you for the feedback! I do not know how to script a mission, so I do appreciate that. Currently I only have F18 but I can pick up another aircraft next sale. Pushing a 5090 to it's limits will demand the fastest CPU available. The 13700K is very capable but I think you will see the same FPS dips if you replace 4090 with 5090.
@ i’ll see if I can edit the mission this week and i’ll send that to you. The goal would be to have a scenario where you just need to fly trough it and has timed actions happening
I have a TL;DR explanation following the question, but could you please do a run where you disable frame generation/interpolation both for the NVIDIA GPU and the Valve Index, then run it in its max 144Hz mode (at a lower pixel density to remove the GPU bottleneck) and report on the frametime distribution that a fully unlocked (power limit, power saving, C-states, etc. all disabled in the BIOS) and OC'd 9800X3D can achieve, especially when looking around rapidly with the headset? I'd really love to be able to play DCS, but after years of trying to run it, it seems like the engine itself is incapable of smooth, low frametime frame pacing, especially when flying low and looking around rapidly, and I've just given up trying and wasting time and money on someting that seems like it's never going to improve, especially with everyone that keeps saying that 90-100fps is perfectly smooth and anyone that wants more fps is just looking to brag and can be ignored. *TL;DR* For whatever reason, frame rates 300W, even at idle), cooled by a custom loop running on chilled (~10 °C) water with direct-die cooling the delidded CPU and a custom block on the GPU, all in a cold (~16°C) room.
Whoa dude, that was quite the 13900KS + 3090 build you had! Unfortunately I had to send my 4080 Super away for an RMA, so it may be a month or longer until I get it back for 144Hz testing. I just don't think the 3080 Ti is fast enough to tackle it without heavily reducing the graphics to the lowest settings. I've been doing VR sim racing since the original Rift, and I was an OG owner of the Valve Index. I definitely know what you mean by the annoyance of hitching. Suffered through a lot of that and latency issues in the early days. I don't even think it's resolved in well-regarded VR sims like iRacing.
@@BenchmarkOdysseys Thank you for reading all of that! I can't even tell you how many people just dismissed my issues or mocked me (especially on the old forums), taunting me with strawman arguments like "How can you watch movies at 24 fps then, so you must be full of it!"; Nevermind the fact that I would explain how, as a child, I was indeed never able to watch TV or play games, until we got our first 120Hz monitor and I eventually discovered the MVTools plugin for Avisynth. In those days I had to wait for ~10 hours for it to finish interpolating a ~2 hour movie at an acceptable quality (which still meant a lot of artifacts in fast-moving scenes), but at least I could finally see some blurry motion and was able to watch it all the way through! Anyway, I don't mind waiting another couple of months, but I do hope that they're able to quickly fix your card without too much cost or unforseen issues. :) DCS has really been a roller coaster over the years, but when they introduced the MT branch that crashed when you disabled E-Cores or HT/SMT, I eventually just gave up; because DCS had bad frametime pacing issues when it was running on anything other than the physical P-cores (I also had a 5950X before that system, where the 0.1% lows would tank if DCS had any threads scheduled onto the 2nd CCD. Of course DCS would also crash if I disabled the 2nd CCD, or if I enabled AMD's Ryzen Game Mode). Even Process Lasso couldn't improve things since they hardcoded the number of threads that would spawn, based on the detected CPUID. That reminds me, you should always remember to clear the autogenerated temp folders that DCS stores compiled shaders and other hardware-specific generated files in, when swapping graphics cards (at least this was the case when I last tried to debug the frame pacing issues when quickly looking around over populated areas).
2 things. Once you identified that the 1080p behaviour was odd for the top CPUs and even suggested that it may be because you were breaking the default 300FPS threshold - why didn't you retest at 1440P to see if you could see normal behaviour between CPUs return? Second. Is there a 5090 in your immediate future? There's so much hype around it but I would love to see how it will actually benefit iRacing and short of buying it myself, I think you're probably the only reviewer I'd trust to test it cleanly.
Great questions! I did complete a few runs with 1440p and 4K using 9800X3D and 7600X (same graphic settings). This definitely introduced a GPU constraint and closed the distance between the two CPUs, and at 4K, they delivered the same average FPS. Dips in frametime were still present, but affecting the 7600X more. I figured I'd explore this in more detail on the next set of DCS benchmarks, where I use a track file that is more CPU intense than the ED mission in this video. As for the 5090, I think those are going to be impossible to find for awhile. Heck I think AMD is calling Nvidia's bluff with the 5080, which will probably have underwhelming performance and also limited supply. Rumors are Radeon 9070 won't even launch until late March.
I'm running a 7950x with a 4090. 1440p and 4k are no problem, I can run 165 fps with a 162 1% absolutely butter. Yet both the quest 3 and Cristal light will bottlenecke my CPU. We're talking about it drops GPU usage down to 35- 40%. And that's with an extremely choppy image. In a single player it will do OK at around 45 to 50 fps with a slight stutter. But in a multi player server I have to drop the graphics down to potato just to maintain a jagged 45 fps. It's unplayable. The 7950x is just not fast enough because it's forced to use ram as cash.
@BenchmarkOdysseys I decided I was going to switch to the 9800X3D. Then I found out there are none available without paying a insane markup to a CPU scalper. I ordered a 7800X3D because it seems like they are almost gone as well.
few things when benching on dcs , dcs has 4 modes \versions, single thread and MT=MULTI THREAD, openxr and steam vr , most of us use MT with openxr to get the best performance, 4k+ i usually the res we have , say hp g2 runs on openxr at min 3100+3100 res per eye as openxr default,
Very good depth. But width in terms of meaningful GFX settings tweaks toward max would be very welcomed. Your "hardware" graphs, combined with "software" (settings) study like this - th-cam.com/video/NOPUpKU8i9s/w-d-xo.html would be a magical/dream combo!
I appreciate your testing, many thanks. However, the video should be named instead as "CPU and GPU analysis with DCS F/A-18C module on Syria map". What I mean is, it's incomplete, testing with different modules and maps, and their different combinations, will give different results - now that would be an "analysis with DCS World" like you named it. For example, you focused on the F/A-18C Hornet and that one is, perhaps, the best optimized FF module of DCS. It is just one among dozens of FF modules for DCS. Now try that again but with the F-4E Phantom II, or F-14A/B Tomcat, or AH-64D Apache, or CH-47F Chinook, or Mi-24P Hind, or KA-50 BlackShark (the newest version), and etc. You'll probably see significantly different results, which get even more dependant on the combination of certain modules with certain maps/terrains. Syria is now (finally) a well optimized terrain/map, as is the default Caucasus (by far the most performant), it's a world appart in terms of resources requirements if you get into something like the Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Kola, or South-Atlantic maps.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I appreciate your feedback. I am familiar with the difficulties of benchmarking racing simulators, and I think there is crossover with flight sim. Variables like weather conditions, locations visited, time of day, number of opponents and the user's proximity to them, type of vehicles being used, speed travelled, size and length of the event, etc. Each factor influences performance. Simulators like iRacing also charge per DLC, and there are 136 cars and 126 tracks, of which only 12% are included free. Optimization of DLC is also a tricky thing to navigate. Too new or under-developed, and I'm testing poor code rather than hardware. I picked Syria because it is widely enjoyed in Multiplayer, and I picked F18 because several guides suggested it was the most versatile full fidelity aircraft. Turns out 'most versatile' doesn't equate to popular. My best effort is to pick something that reasonably equates to DCS World experience. It may not match your favourite craft or flight scenarios. Just like how I use GT3 road cars at international race circuits to evaluate iRacing, but thousands of racers only drive NASCAR ovals in southern USA. Then there's the different resolutions and aspect ratios of monitor(s) people use. Or all the different VR headsets and software packages. Also, I only have 10 CPUs and 6 GPUs at my disposal, while hundreds of different models sold over the last few years. The combinations of sim variables + personal preference + individual PC configuration are infinite.
@@BenchmarkOdysseys Yes, for sure, I understood it, and by no means am I underrating your efforts here, which are worth of praise. What I mean is, how the results you got here will be perceived by both newcomers and veterans of DCS. What you get from here is, very likely, "the best case scenario", and that's why (IMO) it should be interpreted with caution, and why I call it "incomplete". Instead, and if the choice was there, I'd rather see these tests done with other combinations of popular module/map of DCS (and even more so in a populated MP server), because the increased demand on resources that such does bring is a better representation of "what to really expect across the board".
PLEASE a benchmark without DLSS. We want RAW performance. No made up imaginary frames. Please please test AMD GPUs. There are so many of us out here that cannot afford NVIDIA stupid prices.
I plan to look at this more closely when I get a better track file. DLSS definitely carries some mixed opinions (forum.dcs.world/topic/341683-how-do-you-like-dlss/). With VR performance, my initial impression is that it will be quiet difficult for anything beneath a 4070 Ti to run DCS without DLSS. But ultimately it's a personal choice between image clarity and smoothness.
Agree , buying Intel new Ultra CPUs is worse than AMD. 9700X is still better than Ultra 7 265K . Not to mention the high cost of 8400M/T CUDIMM , without that you are much worse than a 12th gen intel CPU . IF price is right , 9800X3D should be the king for DCS .
Thank you so much for doing some proper testing. I can't offer a Syria track but I might be able to provide you with a track on Marianas next week. There won't be much happening in terms of AI but it's going to be a bunch of F/A-18C's, F-16Cs and other aircraft operating around Andersen AFB (we are doing ATC training with the squadron on Thursday). It's not a very intensive mission though. The track would be F/A-18C. There are a bunch of statics at Andersen, an American CSG, a Russian carrier group, some Tankers and an AWACS but not much else. Unfortunately most of my multiplayer flying features quite long transit times, often exceeding 30min, and it's usually not in modern aircraft as most of my time is spend flying Warbirds on the Project Overlord WWII Server or flying the F-4E Phantom with the the Squadron. I am waiting for the 5090 release because I fly DCS in VR and plan on upgrading the VR Headset this year. Unfortunately my 3080ti does show its limits these days although my recent upgrade to a 9800X3D with 96GB DDR5-6000 made frametimes much more consistent which is also shown in your benchmarks (I upgraded from a 5900X with 64GB DDR4-3600).
FIRST MISTAKE, GET DCS OFF STEAM!!! DCS IS MEANT TO BE STANDALONE. SECOND MISTAKE, ANYTIME YOU START A BENCHMARKING YOU STATE YOUR SYSTEM SPECS. INTEL AND NVIDIA ARE THE CHIPS OF CHOICE.
DCS is +250GB installation, and Steam supports Game Backups. So I can wipe my OS on any of the test systems and reinstall DCS from another drive without redownloading it. Sorry about excluding specs, I do normally clearly state mobo/ram/psu/etc.
I agree with Tom for most users when it comes to the stand alone version, but given the case of uninstalling/reinstalling constantly I get why you’re using it on Steam.
these benches you make are crucial to 99.9% of simmers, finally someone is doing real world cpu gpu bench in dcs in vr ! , most of us that need that extra performance and still not sure on what cpu pulling the trigger on, this will help a lot!
Well you know which one to pull the trigger on, too bad there isn't any in stock at a decent price lol
So glad to see someone doing VR benchmarks in simulation. Would love to have seen RX7900XTX in this comparison like in your iracing vid.
Yeah, I'm curious why it wasn't included. I guess it was similar to 4080s. Also multi-player performance would be nice to see
DCS benchmarks? Yes please! Perfect timing for my build upgrade thanks!
Cool, this is so much valuable! We need a proper benchmark basis for DCS in VR. Instant subscribe to your channel.
Ohhh, so THIS is the project you were working on! Great work! I'll see if I can get you some example multiplayer benchmarks.. it'll just be difficult to do on my usual servers where the cold starts alone often take 10 minutes to complete
Very valuable to me. I use DCS regularly always in VR and I was looking at a future PC upgrade as I suspect I am CPU bound but now I have something to work with. Excellent work.
What a great vid, liked & subbed!
Most excellent foray into DCS bench marking. Looking forward to your subsequent reports.
Hey, thank you very much for this! Sim benchmarks are rare to come by and while MSFS does get some attention nowadays, same cannot be said about DCS.
So a big hats off from me personally and dare I say, DCS community, for doing this!
I'll add to the chorus of thanks. It's hard to get good benchmarking done in DCS, such a niche title all the big guns ignore. So thanks again. Looking forward to future DCS content
What a gread Benchmark - and for VR. Thank you very much for this!!!!!! This is so rare on TH-cam!
Great job, I hope you get your hands on 5090 I need to know the VR performamce. This is the best place to get that info.
Excellent work. Can't wait for more. Multiplayer is definitely a great follow up. There are also some "stress test" benchmarking tracks with lots of AI units and AI action running around the internet that can further expand on CPU comparissons.
So good to see. Thank you for taking the time to do this. I am also interested in the effect of memory speed. i.e. difference between DDR4 vs DDR5 memory, 32GB vs 64GB on multiplayer servers. Its my understanding that the 32 vs 64GBs become important in multiplayer, but would be nice to see the actual numbers. Liked and subscribed!
benching dcs is best when you fly over a city say Damascus with some say 50 ground and air assets moving (the more assetes \groups move on a longer path the more cpu heavy it is)
Correct. Damascus low (but not ultra low where horizon line-of-sight clipping would reduce the polygon count) where you would really differentiate between systems. Also, 4k display also pushes systems harder, or even dual-4k in high-end VR headsets. One of the biggest factors worth benchmarking for DCS is the effect of increased VRAM (video card memory), as moving textures along the bus between RAM and VRAM affects performance more than most people understand. The extra VRAM accounts for a lot of the performance difference between Nvidia's GPUS (eg. 4090 to 4080) and as someone who programmed a bit of OpenGL you were always aware of this and tried to keep as much on VRAM as possible (compressing textures, using indexed vertex buffers etc). Thanks for doing DCS Benchmark Odysseys the reward for getting good (simulated) flying is worth the effort to get there.
Thank you for this. This is very helpful for the community!
keep up the good job m8 we really apricate it a lot ! (and need it)
It doesn't matter if you know anything about flightsims. Proper benchmarking for simulators such as these is very useful : )
Welcome to the rabbit hole of benchmarking DCS 😂A couple of things to consider. The Intel 12/13/14th gen CPU have 8 P-cores but they also have additional 8 to 16 E-cores, and this game is optimised to use those too. It's also important to record the build number of the DSC version you are benchmarking, as I've seen large swings in performance from build to build, when ED make performance tweaks, which is often...
Thanks for having me ;) I did try disabling Ecores on 13700K to see if it reduced the FPS dips I noticed, but it did not. Thread usage is high so yes I can see Ecores being an asset. The build tested was 2.9.11 and it looks like ED released an update during the time it took me to produce the video. That's always a risk with these 'live' service simulators and a burden we have to benchmark them, compared to the single player titles that many benchmarkers use and don't have to worry about that.
@@BenchmarkOdysseys DCS certainly had issues with 13th and 14th gen Intel. Check how its spreading the workload over the cores. There were issues with it maxing out one or two cores and barely touching the others , which led to stutter and frame rate dips.
The solution at the time was using Lasso to disable the cores it was maxing out, and it would then spread the workload more efficiently over the remaining P cores. I didn't really look into the how's and whys, but it certainly worked to improve performance.
What a great review and something that the community really needs.
Few things for the next one. Moving your head around in VR would be important i think. Secondly, i would use an intensive map like Caucus or Marianas. Third, fly low to the ground. This is where there is a noticeable performance loss. Fourth, include VRAM usage.
From my understanding Frame Gen does not work in VR. I wouldn't turn DLSS off though.
Windows is a preemptive operating system, meaning that while you're playing DCS (benchmarking), windows has OS tasks that need to run for other applications. Windows will suspend your DCS thread momentarily and perform other work. For the most consistent runs, shut down all non-essential tasks with taskmanager and prevent tasks from starting with the startup tab in taskmanager. Clean restarts before each benchmark run. Windows is not a real-time OS so there will always be some inconsistencies run to run. It's not necessarily a DCS coding issue, it lives inside Windows and subjected to that environment.
Well said. I make a reasonable effort, but I wish the big reviewers out there (TPU, GN, HUB, etc) shared a few more of their secrets with Windows tuning. If you have any additional guides, I'd be happy to bolster my benching prep.
Ps: by the way, it would be more realistic to have some head movements also in VR as it has a strong influence on the CPU work that needs to load / animate a much larger number of objects. Maybe it could be possible to playback the camera movement too by disabling the head tracking input from the headset...
Interesting idea, I'll see what I can do.
What would be extremely interesting is VRAM comparison, e.g. 12v16v24 or so.
Great.👍 finally THE game😊
could you one day compare the cpu ms with a big resolution (crystal) 4300x5100 per eye? 🙏
for DCS in multi, I'm not sure that a .track shows the "problem" I don't think it's only because of the number of units, I'll check
That's an incredibly high resolution! And probably outside the reach of my 4080 Super 16GB. But I suppose the Crystal has DFR with eyetracking and Quadviews?
@@BenchmarkOdysseys yes, but with regular games, this resolution is fine in 120fps with 4090 and i9 9900k 😬
@BenchmarkOdysseys c is strange but I've seen benchmarks that might suggest that with huge resolutions like the one of the crystal lle 14900k could be faster than the 9800x3d, especially in frame time cpu and 0.1% low.
What do you think about that, i will change my old 9900k for the best cpu possible very soon 🙏
can you do a bench without dlss\upscaling (rasterized) and with say x2 msaa ?
MSAA is pretty much dead. DLSS and DLAA is much better.
Excellent start to benching DCS with your awesome graphs for vr! Hopefully some people come through with track files. Also please do some tests without dlss turned on, higher textures and shadows. The settings you’re using are sort of compromises to get vr to run solid, which sort of goes against the idea of benching right? You’ve shown that those settings run dcs more than acceptably in vr and pancake, so let’s see a little less compromised settings.
Thanks :) Yes the settings are more 'optimized' but I was still surprised by the GPU demand it created in VR. Even with such a low VR resolution, it was still too much for a 12GB 3080Ti (which is similar to 4070 family of cards).
8:50 If only Nsight worked with the latest DCS versions... you could see why it happens. But it just closes on launch. However, it works pretty well with the old 1.5 version. Yes, 99% means that the GPU has reached its performance limit and cannot provide more FPS, while low power usage indicates that not all CUDA cores are fully utilized in every warp. However, this changes as you increase the resolution.
hes doing the right bench at the right time before 9950-9000x3d's coming out, right on time hammer on nail this guy !. they should pay you m8. tens of thousands of dcs players are now on the hunt for new cpu to relief our 4k-8k+ vr experience , we all really bothered by this every day !
further more , dcs bench when plane on the ground near grass and trees that move by the wind and jet blast tank the cpu sometimes heavily ,
Great stuff! If you still need some help let me know. Also you can come fly with us on our servers. Lots of knowledge to get you pointed in the right direction!
FYI: DCS doesn't utilize more than 2 cores. AFAIK, there is one thread for logic and one for rendering, unless they changed it recently.
can you also add to dcs bench a rasterize test with no dlss \upscaling, with say at least x2 msaa ?
These benchmarks are already running at very low resolutions, we shouldn't be benchmarking with DLSS which lowers the internal resolution further.
Most people are not using MSAA anymore.
This is quality content! Very interesting. Maybe put the VR headset on rotating fan to have consistent head movement, just an idea. Also, do you have some AMD GPUs to throw into a mix ? Like every game, some prefer AMD and some NVIDIA, I'd like to know which card manufacturer does better in raster VR DCS.
Thank you :) I do have a 7900 XTX and 6700 XT, and I will take a look at them in February!
@@BenchmarkOdysseys Oh, and next time, you also want to try hop on Growling Sidewinder multiplayer server, that is a different beast and will TEST the RAM usage, it's taken almost as standard in DCS performance testing since single player missions are pretty lightweight, if not heavily populated with assets.
Would like to see these tests, except with something a bit newer/harder to run -- ie the most popular headset right now, the Quest 3.
The quest 3 has some more unique quirks being that it has to route through the GPU encoder (NVENC for Nvidia)
Higher end headsets definitely demand more of the graphics card than CPU. So a user has to dial in their resolution and DCS settings for their GPU first with VR. So in theory, if I dialed my settings for Quest 3 with 4080 Super, the performance headroom between CPUs (as shown in the graphs) 'should' be similar as what I showed with Index. Unfortunately the streaming nature of the Quest 3 disguises proper performance analysis, so I cannot produce the same data sets.
oo and another thing i almost forgot , most of us run QUADVIEWS, fixed foveated rendering, now this my friend take a lot of load from the gpu but kills the cpu, Literally kills it!!! so , our only refuge from dcs killing our gpu's is to use quadviews with high end cpu , and thats it folks , we just need the right cpu and were done with the never ending struggle!
i have a 7900xtx and 5800x3d 64gb ram and i get max 70-75 fps in the situation stated below, now am sure if i had a better cpu say 9950x3d (16 cores) it will run better, how much better ? well we dont know until you make a bench on it ;) (also 9800x3d-7800x3d bench in dcs will help a lot to decide on what cpu upgrade should i go for , and not just me).
DCS is a CPU intensive Simulator! The faster the CPU the better thing are for DCS. DCS loves faster CPU's the 3D V-cache in the AMD processors is a help but not as much as having a faster processor. I have a friend in the DCS flight School I'm a member of who has 2 top end 4090 systems one is 7800X3D, he just upgraded to 9800X3D but what he told me was based on his 7800X3D setup, His second system is 4090 with 14900 Intel CPU. He states that the Intel system is faster and smoother than the 7800X3D system. He now only flies in the Intel system as it's a better experience for FPS and Frame times and micro stutters.
DCS has great grapgics detail and look amazing but unlike MSFS 202/2024 it has to calculate everything on the map accurately. So what do I mean.
Well MSFS 2020/4 is a gorgeous looking GPU hog that basically only has to simulate the plane your flying and monitor some AI traffic and if your online position other players in you line of sight but it doesn't have to worry about calculating the other players Physics of that plane only it's position. MSFS biggest worry is making everything LOOK fantastic, yes there are Flight models to calculate but only your own planes! It's a Looking pretty SPU hog simulator not a CPU Hog!
I describe DCS as a Physics simulator first and foremost as it has to calculate the physics of your plane all AI planes, AlI the ground assets (tanks Sam Sites) and more importantly it has to calculate using ballistic real life equations the exact position and future position of EVERY SINGLE BULLET, ROCKET, MISSILE, BOMB on the ENTIRE map! DCS does not do dice roll or random generator type calculations for the weapons like other more arcade sims do (Warthunder for example) Despite how good DCS looks it's definitely more CPU locked than GPU locked unlike MSFS which is the other way round.
DCS actually calculates everything on the map even if its weapons or fighting happening hundreds of miles from you that you can't see, Every bullet, rocket ect, in that fight is realistically calculated, hence the slow down in Multiplayer servers when things get active and lots of AAA, SAM and HIMARS and Cluster bombs are going of, as every bomblet from the cluster bomb is accurately calculated.
I always suspected faster CPUs would be more helpful for DCS than better GPU or the 3D V-cache of the AMD chips but they will definitely help when using high end VR headsets but even these headset should see a significant boost if Eagle dynamics unlock more cores for the game engine to use. I could not prove what I suspected but but my Friends 2 systems which are identical apart from one is AMD and the other is Intel seems to prove my point, As the Intel 14900 runs faster than the AMD X3D chip and runs DCS smoother than it also, I suspect that the new AMD 9950X3D CPU will benefit DCS more than the 9800X3D as it will be a slightly higher clock speed than the 9800X3D.
DCS does use multi core to help out on this and Eagle Dynamics are definitely looking to improve DCS's multicore capability as it is still very limited to only 2>3 cores I think and they cannot launch the Dynamic campaign until DCS is running several more Cores/Threads to help out in the calculations side of the sim!
Yeeeeeesssss!
I'm currently looking to upgrade from 2060super to a 9800x3d and either 4080super, 4090, 5080 or 5090 all subject to reviews and costs for a full new PC. Will be watching as it's mostly for DCS VR that I'm upgrading
How did you figure out your settings? Trying to dial in 13900, 64GB, RTX 4000 Ada, at the minute
I referenced the videos I watch 3:27 :) Good luck!
DCS is often data bandwidth limited. SSD->system RAM->VRAM. Do you have specs and settings for your system RAM? Maybe interesting to test bandwidth/latency
Yes, I noticed with VR that the system memory usage shot up to over 32GB and started using a paging file. So I did this benching with 64GB DDR5 6000 CL30 and 64GB DDR4 3600 CL18. I am using Gen4 NVMe drives from WD and Samsung.
8:48
My setup is a 12700k 64 GB Ram 6900XT and I also observe low wattage on the GPU while playing DCS even though the game itself claims to be GPU limited.
Hrmmm, very curious!
I already explained why it happens with NVIDIA in the message above. The same applies to AMD, but with different terminology. Instead of CUDA cores, AMD uses Compute Units (CUs), and rather than warps, AMD's architecture operates with wavefronts. The core principle remains unchanged: if the GPU is at 99% usage but power consumption is low, it suggests that not all CUs are fully occupied in every wavefront. Increasing the resolution similarly raises the workload, leading to better utilization of available resources. Nothing curious :)
You should do a benchmark with the Intel Arc B580 and DCS :D
Unfortunately Multiplayer tracks don't usually work, crashing the client on playback. But I could cook you a mission in Syria with several units doing stuff and some scripts running? Unfortunately i can't track it for you as I don't own the F-18. Do you also have the F-16 or F-14 or F-4?
Hello, I can for sure say that on difficult situations the CPU is a huge bottleneck. I have a 4090 and 13700K running at 80hz (quest3). Sometimes the frames are not in time and i see my CPU had 1 or 2 cores pegged to 100%. And when that happens sometimes the frames missed are several, like 5 or 10 frames missed. Otherwise my GPU is never at maximum usage, but at around 90-92% due to the frame cap.
I am gonna buy a 5090 very probably and I will be frustrated to see my pc not able to push more than 80hz anyway, so your work is very useful to me
Thank you for the feedback! I do not know how to script a mission, so I do appreciate that. Currently I only have F18 but I can pick up another aircraft next sale.
Pushing a 5090 to it's limits will demand the fastest CPU available. The 13700K is very capable but I think you will see the same FPS dips if you replace 4090 with 5090.
@ i’ll see if I can edit the mission this week and i’ll send that to you.
The goal would be to have a scenario where you just need to fly trough it and has timed actions happening
No rush, I won't be cycling back to DCS until later in February.
I have a TL;DR explanation following the question, but could you please do a run where you disable frame generation/interpolation both for the NVIDIA GPU and the Valve Index, then run it in its max 144Hz mode (at a lower pixel density to remove the GPU bottleneck) and report on the frametime distribution that a fully unlocked (power limit, power saving, C-states, etc. all disabled in the BIOS) and OC'd 9800X3D can achieve, especially when looking around rapidly with the headset?
I'd really love to be able to play DCS, but after years of trying to run it, it seems like the engine itself is incapable of smooth, low frametime frame pacing, especially when flying low and looking around rapidly, and I've just given up trying and wasting time and money on someting that seems like it's never going to improve, especially with everyone that keeps saying that 90-100fps is perfectly smooth and anyone that wants more fps is just looking to brag and can be ignored.
*TL;DR*
For whatever reason, frame rates 300W, even at idle), cooled by a custom loop running on chilled (~10 °C) water with direct-die cooling the delidded CPU and a custom block on the GPU, all in a cold (~16°C) room.
Whoa dude, that was quite the 13900KS + 3090 build you had! Unfortunately I had to send my 4080 Super away for an RMA, so it may be a month or longer until I get it back for 144Hz testing. I just don't think the 3080 Ti is fast enough to tackle it without heavily reducing the graphics to the lowest settings.
I've been doing VR sim racing since the original Rift, and I was an OG owner of the Valve Index. I definitely know what you mean by the annoyance of hitching. Suffered through a lot of that and latency issues in the early days. I don't even think it's resolved in well-regarded VR sims like iRacing.
@@BenchmarkOdysseys Thank you for reading all of that!
I can't even tell you how many people just dismissed my issues or mocked me (especially on the old forums), taunting me with strawman arguments like "How can you watch movies at 24 fps then, so you must be full of it!"; Nevermind the fact that I would explain how, as a child, I was indeed never able to watch TV or play games, until we got our first 120Hz monitor and I eventually discovered the MVTools plugin for Avisynth.
In those days I had to wait for ~10 hours for it to finish interpolating a ~2 hour movie at an acceptable quality (which still meant a lot of artifacts in fast-moving scenes), but at least I could finally see some blurry motion and was able to watch it all the way through!
Anyway, I don't mind waiting another couple of months, but I do hope that they're able to quickly fix your card without too much cost or unforseen issues. :)
DCS has really been a roller coaster over the years, but when they introduced the MT branch that crashed when you disabled E-Cores or HT/SMT, I eventually just gave up; because DCS had bad frametime pacing issues when it was running on anything other than the physical P-cores (I also had a 5950X before that system, where the 0.1% lows would tank if DCS had any threads scheduled onto the 2nd CCD. Of course DCS would also crash if I disabled the 2nd CCD, or if I enabled AMD's Ryzen Game Mode).
Even Process Lasso couldn't improve things since they hardcoded the number of threads that would spawn, based on the detected CPUID.
That reminds me, you should always remember to clear the autogenerated temp folders that DCS stores compiled shaders and other hardware-specific generated files in, when swapping graphics cards (at least this was the case when I last tried to debug the frame pacing issues when quickly looking around over populated areas).
2 things. Once you identified that the 1080p behaviour was odd for the top CPUs and even suggested that it may be because you were breaking the default 300FPS threshold - why didn't you retest at 1440P to see if you could see normal behaviour between CPUs return? Second. Is there a 5090 in your immediate future? There's so much hype around it but I would love to see how it will actually benefit iRacing and short of buying it myself, I think you're probably the only reviewer I'd trust to test it cleanly.
Great questions! I did complete a few runs with 1440p and 4K using 9800X3D and 7600X (same graphic settings). This definitely introduced a GPU constraint and closed the distance between the two CPUs, and at 4K, they delivered the same average FPS. Dips in frametime were still present, but affecting the 7600X more. I figured I'd explore this in more detail on the next set of DCS benchmarks, where I use a track file that is more CPU intense than the ED mission in this video.
As for the 5090, I think those are going to be impossible to find for awhile. Heck I think AMD is calling Nvidia's bluff with the 5080, which will probably have underwhelming performance and also limited supply. Rumors are Radeon 9070 won't even launch until late March.
So many reviewers have just completely dodged PCVR performance, complete bias towards pancake 😢
Hey man, I'm going to record some tracks with the Kiowa, Apache, F-18 and I'll send em to you if you'd like.
I'd appreciate that! Thank you :)
I'm running a 7950x with a 4090. 1440p and 4k are no problem, I can run 165 fps with a 162 1% absolutely butter. Yet both the quest 3 and Cristal light will bottlenecke my CPU. We're talking about it drops GPU usage down to 35- 40%. And that's with an extremely choppy image.
In a single player it will do OK at around 45 to 50 fps with a slight stutter. But in a multi player server I have to drop the graphics down to potato just to maintain a jagged 45 fps. It's unplayable. The 7950x is just not fast enough because it's forced to use ram as cash.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing. DCS becomes a performance hog with VR, it's a totally different beast than single screen performance.
@BenchmarkOdysseys I decided I was going to switch to the 9800X3D. Then I found out there are none available without paying a insane markup to a CPU scalper. I ordered a 7800X3D because it seems like they are almost gone as well.
few things when benching on dcs , dcs has 4 modes \versions, single thread and MT=MULTI THREAD, openxr and steam vr , most of us use MT with openxr to get the best performance, 4k+ i usually the res we have , say hp g2 runs on openxr at min 3100+3100 res per eye as openxr default,
I believe all DCS is now MT by default.
@@madigorfkgoogle9349 i sure hope so
Very good depth. But width in terms of meaningful GFX settings tweaks toward max would be very welcomed.
Your "hardware" graphs, combined with "software" (settings) study like this - th-cam.com/video/NOPUpKU8i9s/w-d-xo.html would be a magical/dream combo!
I appreciate your testing, many thanks. However, the video should be named instead as "CPU and GPU analysis with DCS F/A-18C module on Syria map". What I mean is, it's incomplete, testing with different modules and maps, and their different combinations, will give different results - now that would be an "analysis with DCS World" like you named it.
For example, you focused on the F/A-18C Hornet and that one is, perhaps, the best optimized FF module of DCS. It is just one among dozens of FF modules for DCS.
Now try that again but with the F-4E Phantom II, or F-14A/B Tomcat, or AH-64D Apache, or CH-47F Chinook, or Mi-24P Hind, or KA-50 BlackShark (the newest version), and etc.
You'll probably see significantly different results, which get even more dependant on the combination of certain modules with certain maps/terrains.
Syria is now (finally) a well optimized terrain/map, as is the default Caucasus (by far the most performant), it's a world appart in terms of resources requirements if you get into something like the Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Kola, or South-Atlantic maps.
Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I appreciate your feedback.
I am familiar with the difficulties of benchmarking racing simulators, and I think there is crossover with flight sim. Variables like weather conditions, locations visited, time of day, number of opponents and the user's proximity to them, type of vehicles being used, speed travelled, size and length of the event, etc. Each factor influences performance. Simulators like iRacing also charge per DLC, and there are 136 cars and 126 tracks, of which only 12% are included free.
Optimization of DLC is also a tricky thing to navigate. Too new or under-developed, and I'm testing poor code rather than hardware. I picked Syria because it is widely enjoyed in Multiplayer, and I picked F18 because several guides suggested it was the most versatile full fidelity aircraft. Turns out 'most versatile' doesn't equate to popular.
My best effort is to pick something that reasonably equates to DCS World experience. It may not match your favourite craft or flight scenarios. Just like how I use GT3 road cars at international race circuits to evaluate iRacing, but thousands of racers only drive NASCAR ovals in southern USA.
Then there's the different resolutions and aspect ratios of monitor(s) people use. Or all the different VR headsets and software packages. Also, I only have 10 CPUs and 6 GPUs at my disposal, while hundreds of different models sold over the last few years.
The combinations of sim variables + personal preference + individual PC configuration are infinite.
@@BenchmarkOdysseys Yes, for sure, I understood it, and by no means am I underrating your efforts here, which are worth of praise. What I mean is, how the results you got here will be perceived by both newcomers and veterans of DCS. What you get from here is, very likely, "the best case scenario", and that's why (IMO) it should be interpreted with caution, and why I call it "incomplete".
Instead, and if the choice was there, I'd rather see these tests done with other combinations of popular module/map of DCS (and even more so in a populated MP server), because the increased demand on resources that such does bring is a better representation of "what to really expect across the board".
PLEASE a benchmark without DLSS. We want RAW performance. No made up imaginary frames.
Please please test AMD GPUs. There are so many of us out here that cannot afford NVIDIA stupid prices.
I plan to look at this more closely when I get a better track file. DLSS definitely carries some mixed opinions (forum.dcs.world/topic/341683-how-do-you-like-dlss/). With VR performance, my initial impression is that it will be quiet difficult for anything beneath a 4070 Ti to run DCS without DLSS. But ultimately it's a personal choice between image clarity and smoothness.
Why? Most players use DLSS or DLAA now. Frame Gen does not work in VR from my understanding.
Agree , buying Intel new Ultra CPUs is worse than AMD. 9700X is still better than Ultra 7 265K . Not to mention the high cost of 8400M/T CUDIMM , without that you are much worse than a 12th gen intel CPU . IF price is right , 9800X3D should be the king for DCS .
Thank you so much for doing some proper testing. I can't offer a Syria track but I might be able to provide you with a track on Marianas next week. There won't be much happening in terms of AI but it's going to be a bunch of F/A-18C's, F-16Cs and other aircraft operating around Andersen AFB (we are doing ATC training with the squadron on Thursday). It's not a very intensive mission though. The track would be F/A-18C. There are a bunch of statics at Andersen, an American CSG, a Russian carrier group, some Tankers and an AWACS but not much else.
Unfortunately most of my multiplayer flying features quite long transit times, often exceeding 30min, and it's usually not in modern aircraft as most of my time is spend flying Warbirds on the Project Overlord WWII Server or flying the F-4E Phantom with the the Squadron.
I am waiting for the 5090 release because I fly DCS in VR and plan on upgrading the VR Headset this year. Unfortunately my 3080ti does show its limits these days although my recent upgrade to a 9800X3D with 96GB DDR5-6000 made frametimes much more consistent which is also shown in your benchmarks (I upgraded from a 5900X with 64GB DDR4-3600).
FIRST MISTAKE, GET DCS OFF STEAM!!!
DCS IS MEANT TO BE STANDALONE.
SECOND MISTAKE,
ANYTIME YOU START A BENCHMARKING YOU STATE YOUR SYSTEM SPECS. INTEL AND NVIDIA ARE THE CHIPS OF CHOICE.
DCS is +250GB installation, and Steam supports Game Backups. So I can wipe my OS on any of the test systems and reinstall DCS from another drive without redownloading it.
Sorry about excluding specs, I do normally clearly state mobo/ram/psu/etc.
I agree with Tom for most users when it comes to the stand alone version, but given the case of uninstalling/reinstalling constantly I get why you’re using it on Steam.
There is no performance difference between the Steam version or standalone install.