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[ATP]Flo May 16, 2020 @ 1:10pm
Upgrade from 16 to 32 GB RAM:
Hey guys,

people often ask how many RAM you actually need for DCS and I want to share my experience.
The DCS Shop site recommends 16 Gigs of RAM.

I have a notebook from 2015 with the following specs:
- MSI GT72 2QD Dominator
- i7 5700HQ (4x 3.5GHz, 8 Threads)
- GTX970M (BIOS-OC to achieve ~GTX980M performance)
- 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
- M.2 SSD

I normally play DCS with lowest settings here for ~60-90FPS. The RAM utilization before I upgraded to 32GB was ~ 15,9GB when I started the FreeFlight-mission of the Hornet at Persian Gulf. So, the RAM was completely filled and I often had some bad frametimes and lags. The GPU utilization was mostly at 60-100%. The game was playable but it was always much smoother on the PC.

Now I added 2x 8GB of the same RAM for EUR 83,80 and holy cow.
Stable ~100FPS, GPU utilization at stable 99-100%. No lags, no bad frametimes. Feels so damn smooth. Can 100% recommend it. I even think about increasing my settings to medium.

So, guys, if you still sit on 16Gigs of RAM, then seriously upgrade!
It's so worth it for DCS. 32Gigs will change your experience big time.

Thanks for reading!

[PS: Normally I play with my VR-PC: Ryzen 3900X, GTX1080 and 32GB DDR4 on highest settings, but when I'm out of town I normally take my notebook with me.]
Last edited by [ATP]Flo; May 16, 2020 @ 1:12pm
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Originally posted by X_Deadmeat_X:
Bit of a long post coming up but it may be useful if someone is starting off with DCS due to the free trial period without perhaps having chosen (or couldn't afford) the hardware with it in mind.


Going to echo OPs general sentiments on the effect of memory availability and it's effects on performance (but it's obviously not the whole story or only solution).

I've a lower end PC and had only 8GB of memory with two hard disks (no SSDs) so get a very different experience from those in this thread using medium, let alone high end, set-ups.

However it exposes the general bottlenecks they'll never really see until they hit peak values or edge cases which is rather where the thread has gone.

One thing to mention up front is that CPU appears to be the least of the bottle necks as even with my fairly low end i5 my GFX card and the game processing can't hit 100% CPU utilisation. Can't really prove it but I expect you can make use of a GFX card upgrade before requiring a CPU upgrade.

Background: I recently moved from the tutorials and small home made missions into using the dynamic mission add-ons and trying out on-line play.

Offline with those smaller missions my machine would run reasonably well with settings set appropriately low (mirrors off, smoke particles set to minimum, shadows and camera effects off) giving stable enough frame rates, if very little eye candy.

However, once moving to the larger scale of missions offline or online, this very quickly exposed limitations and became near unplayable with increased game crashes to the point that's how most play sessions would end.

Investigating how to squeeze more performance out of what I had showed the following.

Initial observations: Those sort of missions (plus background OS processes, drivers, etc.) used up to 24GB of RAM meaning, in my case, up to 2/3 of it was paged out to disk. This is easily confirmed in task manager during loading and when the game crash clears out 20GB of committed memory, concurrent with associated disk activity where the page file was located.

Conclusion 1: Different mission setups do vary greatly in RAM usage so this is why not everyone sees some of the RAM values mentioned in the posts above but they are absolutely achievable. Some of the dynamic "capture the bases" missions running online hit these numbers very rapidly. As far as I can tell the unit models, skins and other mission data are all read into memory at mission load time so more units + more players + more actions/triggers = much more RAM committed.

Conclusion 2: Initial load times of complex game missions are excessive using physical HDs. This is further compounded as soon as the mission memory requirements exceed physical RAM by more than a few gigabytes (about 3-5GB depending on mission specifics) as much of what is loaded in is immediately written out to disk again and must then be read back into real memory when needed in game (to be kicked back out, rinse and repeat...).

Conclusion 3: Reducing the pre-load radius in-game minimised immediate hangs and stuttering, bar the initial cockpit load sequence when you dropped into the game (which did at least reduce), by keeping much of the required "in cockpit" data in physical RAM, and thus page file access to a minimum (there's still updates as you fly for various reasons so there's a drip feed of data or page file reads or writes which can still cause frame drops and hangs).

Conclusion 4: Using any of the external views, especially those to distant objects/locations that hadn't been loaded into real memory via the initial load, caused massive read/writes from/to page file on disk, at best leading to huge hangs and, more usually, game crashes while the disks churned.

Conclusion 5: Separating out the game data files and the page file to different disks made a small difference by providing two data channels, and more importantly, two seek heads so as to remove contention between game data reads and page activity. It also made very clear what disk activity was related to game data loading and what was related to page file activity.

Conclusion 6: The page file read ins when triggered were still significant and it was always possible to get into a page thrashing scenario where it was impossible to have enough of the required data in real memory. This would always result in the game terminating.


If you've made it this far(!) the take away is that increasing physical memory from 8GB to 16GB (which is probably where most people are in terms of hardware anyway and why they don't see it as an issue) will allow much of the game data to be in real memory and massively increase both playability and stability.

Additionally, if you have an SSD/NVMe disk rather than physical spindle HDs the increased read speed and removal of disk head seek time in the SSD will help mitigate the paging in/out to real memory and will flatten out most of the remaining page activity to an acceptable* level (as well as obviously making mission loading times and game data reads much faster)

*your value of acceptable may vary!.


So for my particular set up with "slow" physical disks and limited memory the obvious "quick win" choice was to increase memory rather than having to upgrade and migrate to SSD disks.

By installing 32 GB of memory it is possible to get much of the required game data loaded into real memory resulting in minimal data disk reads once the mission is loaded and, more importantly, no paging at all to a slow disk.

External views are now mostly usable though there is still a noticeable load time for textures under certain circumstances.

However even with this the game rarely freezes and crashes much less than it did when the above happens.

The downside is of course that without an SSD disk the mission load times are still significant and the in game data loads are potentially noticeable but you can generally live with this as DCS is not the only place you'll see this.

Based on what I've found I'd suggest the optimum value for money upgrade path probably looks like this:

Low memory (<16GB) + physical disk = add as much memory as possible up to 32GB
Average memory (16GB) + physical disk = move to SSD
Average memory (16GB) + SSD = add more memory
High memory (32GB+) + SSD = Your data bottle necks are gone so other hardware upgrades (GFX and CPU) will now become worthwhile and you are really chasing the bleeding edge limited only by the size of your wallet (always a nice problem to have!).







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Showing 1-15 of 34 comments
God´s Mom May 16, 2020 @ 1:22pm 
I have 16 GB DDR4-3000 running on highest settings and only had a bluescreen once but DCS fills my ram quite much most of the time....
(16GB may work for me but it definatly wont for everyone (as you described in your examble it can differ quite much from setup to setup) your are more likely to be able to work with less RAM the higher frequency it has (and DDR4 helps too) also I would conside my general pc stats as pretty good (GTX1080 and Intel i7-6850k(X99 Chipset)yes Iknow it is a shame that I am only running 16GB with that setup)).
#1
[ATP]Flo May 16, 2020 @ 1:33pm 
Yea DDR4 helps a lot because due to its speed it can be swapped much faster to the pagefile. But nevertheless its never good when RAM is >90% filled because it's permantenly swapping and reloading files from the SSD which causes some latency, so that the GPU is often not loaded properly and this causes high frametimes and lags.
GPU should always run at 100% otherwise this indicates a CPU- or RAM- bottleneck.
#2
God´s Mom May 16, 2020 @ 3:39pm 
Originally posted by ATPFlo:
Yea DDR4 helps a lot because due to its speed it can be swapped much faster to the pagefile. But nevertheless its never good when RAM is >90% filled because it's permantenly swapping and reloading files from the SSD which causes some latency, so that the GPU is often not loaded properly and this causes high frametimes and lags.
GPU should always run at 100% otherwise this indicates a CPU- or RAM- bottleneck.
I ll definatly upgrade to 32 gigs becaise DCS will crash in complex mp missions
(also it looks stupid to have 8 ram slots and only use two :))
Last edited by God´s Mom; May 16, 2020 @ 3:39pm
#3
Maki Nishikino May 16, 2020 @ 5:04pm 
I'm still sitting on 16 GB of DDR4 RAM @ 2400, I did however just get myself a 1 TB NVMe SSD and play on pretty high settings (not maxed out). Also would like to note that I play on a MP server with a ton of scripts. The next time I have a rig with 32 GB is most likely going to be with my next PC. I just don't personally see the reason to get 16 GB more RAM when my game runs just fine (I have PG too).
Last edited by Maki Nishikino; May 16, 2020 @ 5:09pm
#4
[ATP]Flo May 17, 2020 @ 3:19am 
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:
I'm still sitting on 16 GB of DDR4 RAM @ 2400, I did however just get myself a 1 TB NVMe SSD and play on pretty high settings (not maxed out). Also would like to note that I play on a MP server with a ton of scripts. The next time I have a rig with 32 GB is most likely going to be with my next PC. I just don't personally see the reason to get 16 GB more RAM when my game runs just fine (I have PG too).
How much RAM is utilized? Is your GPU running at 100%?

I doubt that you aren't bottlenecked with 16Gigs of 2400MHz RAM in multiplayer.
But if it runs fine then that's great!
#5
Naruto 607 May 17, 2020 @ 5:13am 
Really? That sounds like a huge investment on RAM alone.

I'm sitting on 16 gigs of RAM and I seem fine with it. The only lag I got is when there's an artillery fire, either MLRS or standard artillery unit.

If you want to know my PC specs, let me know.
#6
Maki Nishikino May 17, 2020 @ 9:20am 
Originally posted by ATPFlo:
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:
I'm still sitting on 16 GB of DDR4 RAM @ 2400, I did however just get myself a 1 TB NVMe SSD and play on pretty high settings (not maxed out). Also would like to note that I play on a MP server with a ton of scripts. The next time I have a rig with 32 GB is most likely going to be with my next PC. I just don't personally see the reason to get 16 GB more RAM when my game runs just fine (I have PG too).
How much RAM is utilized? Is your GPU running at 100%?

I doubt that you aren't bottlenecked with 16Gigs of 2400MHz RAM in multiplayer.
But if it runs fine then that's great!

I never bother to look, 600+ hours on MP with 16 GB of RAM and all is peachy. The SSD did make a difference though. I'm not going to go out and get more RAM if only one game is going to really take large potentially large benefit and quite frankly my game runs great with 16 GB. If I was to up to 32 GB I would much rather get four new sticks of 8 GB getting me to a 32 GB, I just don't see the point in spending the money.
Last edited by Maki Nishikino; May 17, 2020 @ 9:38am
#7
startrekmike May 17, 2020 @ 9:34am 
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:
Originally posted by ATPFlo:
How much RAM is utilized? Is your GPU running at 100%?

I doubt that you aren't bottlenecked with 16Gigs of 2400MHz RAM in multiplayer.
But if it runs fine then that's great!

I never bother to look, 600+ hours on MP with 16 GB of RAM and all is peachy. The SSD did make a difference though. I'm not going to go out and get more RAM if only one game is going to really take large potentially large benefit and quite frankly my game runs great with 16 GB. If I was to up to 16 GB I would much rather get four new sticks of 8 GB getting me to a 32 GB, I just don't see the point and spending the money.

I ran 16 gigs of RAM (with DCS on a SSD) for a long time and while it was certainly playable, I can't say with any honesty that it ran all that great. I mean, the framerate itself was okay for the most part but maxing out the RAM produced stutters, hiccups, and a lot of problems even with smaller multiplayer co-op missions. Again, it was "playable" but I would never recommend that someone stick with 16 gigs of RAM if 32 is a viable option for them.

All that being said, I don't blame you for holding out. Right now, DCS is really the only thing I play that really uses that much RAM so while I can't pretend that getting the extra 16 gigs was a bad idea (it certainly wasn't), I can also see the logic in waiting for a whole new system build before making the leap.

#8
Maki Nishikino May 17, 2020 @ 9:36am 
Originally posted by startrekmike:
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:

I never bother to look, 600+ hours on MP with 16 GB of RAM and all is peachy. The SSD did make a difference though. I'm not going to go out and get more RAM if only one game is going to really take large potentially large benefit and quite frankly my game runs great with 16 GB. If I was to up to 16 GB I would much rather get four new sticks of 8 GB getting me to a 32 GB, I just don't see the point and spending the money.

I ran 16 gigs of RAM (with DCS on a SSD) for a long time and while it was certainly playable, I can't say with any honesty that it ran all that great. I mean, the framerate itself was okay for the most part but maxing out the RAM produced stutters, hiccups, and a lot of problems even with smaller multiplayer co-op missions. Again, it was "playable" but I would never recommend that someone stick with 16 gigs of RAM if 32 is a viable option for them.

All that being said, I don't blame you for holding out. Right now, DCS is really the only thing I play that really uses that much RAM so while I can't pretend that getting the extra 16 gigs was a bad idea (it certainly wasn't), I can also see the logic in waiting for a whole new system build before making the leap.

Those hiccups I noticed with the game on a HDD, even on SATA III they were gone, I invested in a NVMe.
#9
startrekmike May 17, 2020 @ 9:55am 
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:
Originally posted by startrekmike:

I ran 16 gigs of RAM (with DCS on a SSD) for a long time and while it was certainly playable, I can't say with any honesty that it ran all that great. I mean, the framerate itself was okay for the most part but maxing out the RAM produced stutters, hiccups, and a lot of problems even with smaller multiplayer co-op missions. Again, it was "playable" but I would never recommend that someone stick with 16 gigs of RAM if 32 is a viable option for them.

All that being said, I don't blame you for holding out. Right now, DCS is really the only thing I play that really uses that much RAM so while I can't pretend that getting the extra 16 gigs was a bad idea (it certainly wasn't), I can also see the logic in waiting for a whole new system build before making the leap.

Those hiccups I noticed with the game on a HDD, even on SATA III they were gone, I invested in a NVMe.

Even when I moved my DCS install to a SSD, I still got a lot of problems due to maxing out my RAM. I don't know what kind of settings you are running or what servers you typically hang out on but even on my fairly small scale co-op server setups, 16 gigs was not cutting it and this was especially the case with more demanding maps like the Persian Gulf and more demanding modules like the F-14. When I moved to 32 gigs, all the issues were solved and barring the occasional performance bug introduced in patches, DCS runs extremely well now and I never get any sign that my system is straining to deal with it.

Heck, I have a guy in my group who was running on 16 gigs of RAM and constantly had problems even getting into the server without a game crash. When he went to 32 gigs, that issue was solved entirely. Again, this wasn't a big, complex server with a lot of scripts or anything.

My point here isn't to say that you are wrong and should immediately go out and buy another 16 gigs of RAM, my point is that DCS's desire for 32 gigs is real and shouldn't be dismissed. Even Eagle Dynamics acknowledges that 32 gigs is really the sweet spot where you are not likely to encounter any issues regardless of the server or scenario you are running. When someone asks me if they can get by with 16 gigs of RAM for DCS, I think it isn't wrong to tell them that 16 gigs is the absolute minimum but 32 is highly recommended.

This kinds reminds me of a guy in my group who was running a rather outdated system (very similar to one that I had run some time ago) and he would have a lot of problems with DCS crashing and just a lot of general issues. When we would tell him that it was really time to think about a new system, he would scoff and say "It runs fine". Eventually, he did end up getting a new system and his tune changed immediately in regards to the performance of his old machine. He suddenly had real, tangible point of comparison to go of from.

#10
Maki Nishikino May 17, 2020 @ 10:04am 
Suggest what you want. I do have the F-14 and the PG map, it works fine and that's all I care about. I'm not going to go out and replace my RAM entirely (which is what I will end up doing as it's a bad practice to mix RAM) for a single game, that just isn't going to happen. It makes more sense for me to use that money for a module, personally I am really excited about the OH-58. I have almost all of the modules for DCS, RAM hasn't stopped me in buying them. My RAM works, all that matters to me.
Last edited by Maki Nishikino; May 17, 2020 @ 10:07am
#11
startrekmike May 17, 2020 @ 10:08am 
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:
Suggest what you want. I do have the F-14 and the PG map, it works fine and that's all I care about. I'm not going to go out and replace my RAM entirely (which is what I will end up doing, as it's a bad practice to mix RAM) for a single game, that just isn't going to happen. It makes more sense for me to use that money for a module, personally I am really excited about the OH-58.

As I said, my point isn't to tell you specifically to go out and buy more RAM. My point is that there is a reason why 32 gigs of RAM is considered the recommended amount even by Eagle Dynamics. People are not suggesting this to flex their financial muscles (considering that RAM tends to be relatively inexpensive anyway) but instead because it demonstrably and objectively produces the desired result. You may personally have no issue with how DCS runs on your setup but I am reasonably sure that when the day comes that you do get a new system with 32 gigs of RAM, you will see where people are coming from and might not be so quick to dismiss 32 gigs as a good idea for DCS.
#12
Maki Nishikino May 17, 2020 @ 10:18am 
Originally posted by startrekmike:
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:
Suggest what you want. I do have the F-14 and the PG map, it works fine and that's all I care about. I'm not going to go out and replace my RAM entirely (which is what I will end up doing, as it's a bad practice to mix RAM) for a single game, that just isn't going to happen. It makes more sense for me to use that money for a module, personally I am really excited about the OH-58.

As I said, my point isn't to tell you specifically to go out and buy more RAM. My point is that there is a reason why 32 gigs of RAM is considered the recommended amount even by Eagle Dynamics. People are not suggesting this to flex their financial muscles (considering that RAM tends to be relatively inexpensive anyway) but instead because it demonstrably and objectively produces the desired result. You may personally have no issue with how DCS runs on your setup but I am reasonably sure that when the day comes that you do get a new system with 32 gigs of RAM, you will see where people are coming from and might not be so quick to dismiss 32 gigs as a good idea for DCS.

It has nothing to do with flexing, if anyone has been flexing it's me who spends $1,800 on a 737 yoke (plus more on other flight sim related peripherals) and oddly uses a HOTAS-X for DCS. I'm in no shortage of money, there is virtually nothing that is stopping me from going out and getting 32 GB of the fastest RAM on the market. My next PC (which is going to be ~2023) will have 32 GB of RAM but till then unless 32 GB becomes the norm I'm not going to get it. I will continue to use my fun money on modules, add-ons for other flight sims and renting from an FBO in reality. 16 GB of RAM works and that's all thats matters to me.
Last edited by Maki Nishikino; May 17, 2020 @ 10:19am
#13
Randy Lahey May 17, 2020 @ 10:26am 
16GB Ram here (3600/GTX 1070/NVME SSD/16GB 3200 Corsair V RAM) and no stutters or hiccups to speak of. RAM utilization (at 1440p) in Afterburner is never above 13GB, no matter where I play it (SP or MP). I often wonder what is going on when people have issues with 'only' 16GB. Remember there is 'committed' RAM too, that doesn't mean it's using it all. Having said all that, if my RAM drops below $100 CDN again I may pick up another 16GB just to see if there actually is a difference in some aspect.

And 32GB is not the 'recommended' amount for DCS, 16GB is. 32GB only comes into play in very rare MP missions apparently...I've never been in one I guess.

This is the same dumb debate that people have on the ED forums about more than 4 core CPU's. I just a few weeks ago upgraded from an i5 4670k@4.5GHz to a ryzen 3600 and MSI Carbon AC B450 MB and am seeing literally NO difference at all in DCS. I'm actually getting lower frames in certain games now (The Division 2 in particular), yet there are posters on there that swear up-and-down about the wonderful uplift you'll get moving past 4 cores.

So take these things with a grain of salt. I knew going in to my upgrade that I likely wasn't to see much difference, if any. I'm hoping to see some gains in the future when games properly utilize more cores. Anyways, off topic now...
Last edited by Randy Lahey; May 17, 2020 @ 10:35am
#14
startrekmike May 17, 2020 @ 10:29am 
Originally posted by Maki Nishikino:
Originally posted by startrekmike:

As I said, my point isn't to tell you specifically to go out and buy more RAM. My point is that there is a reason why 32 gigs of RAM is considered the recommended amount even by Eagle Dynamics. People are not suggesting this to flex their financial muscles (considering that RAM tends to be relatively inexpensive anyway) but instead because it demonstrably and objectively produces the desired result. You may personally have no issue with how DCS runs on your setup but I am reasonably sure that when the day comes that you do get a new system with 32 gigs of RAM, you will see where people are coming from and might not be so quick to dismiss 32 gigs as a good idea for DCS.

It has nothing to do with flexing, if anyone has been flexing it's me who spends $1,800 on a 737 yoke (plus more on other flight sim related peripherals) and oddly uses a HOTAS-X for DCS. I'm in no shortage of money, there is virtually nothing that is stopping me from going out and getting 32 GB of the fastest RAM on the market. My next PC (which is going to be ~2023) will have 32 GB of RAM but till then unless 32 GB becomes the norm I'm not going to get it. I will continue to use my fun money on modules, add-ons for other flight sims and renting from an FBO in reality. 16 GB of RAM works and that's all thats matters to me.

Again. This isn't about you, your financial situation, or your obviously massive investment into the hobby. I am not telling YOU personally to go out and buy more RAM. I am saying that while you may personally not mind the performance you are getting now, it doesn't mean that a person who is asking "should I go for 32 gigs of RAM for DCS?" should be steered away from going for it. You have made a personal choice in regards to your own system and your own experience and I respect that. Still, I do hope that you can see that there are good reasons why a rather large majority of DCS players and even Eagle Dynamics themselves have put some emphasis on having 32 gigs these days.
#15
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Date Posted: May 16, 2020 @ 1:10pm
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