Ram usage

[u/Sea-Respond3186]

Do you guys find 16gb enough for everything?
Are there any memory leaks since the game is old?
I plan to switch to BMS from DCS because of constant ram problems (sometimes I can’t play certain SP missions because of constant freezing).

Since Im not planning to pay 200-300€ for new ram, I think just switching to BMS is a better choice.

[u/Lowball72]

16 GB is the min sys req for 4.38 .. should be fine. You'll probably want to have at least 8 GB pagefile to back it up.

https://wiki.falcon-bms.com/start-with-falcon-bms/hardware-requirements

The total working-set is usually around 15 GB.. the "hot" working-set touched each frame, in flight, is much less, just ~200 MB.

> Are there any memory leaks since the game is old?

I find this question funny -- the amounts of memory we are talking about did not exist in any PC in 1998.

It's almost as if.. this game which is 50+ GB to download.. is not actually old.

[u/Sea-Respond3186 → u/Lowball72]

Will I miss out if I play 4.37?
I’ve seen that 4.38 is like a huge updtae and step up from 4.37, but its 2 times more difficult to run it

[u/Lowball72 → u/Sea-Respond3186]

You could.. watch a couple youtube vids to see the visual difference. 4.37 is end-of-life, it has been over a year since we've made any bug fixes or improvements on that branch -- but there are still more theaters available for it, I think.

Your rig is not terrible -- I think it's probably fine for 60fps 1440p, on 4.38, maybe if you turn down a few settings.

[u/MnMailman → u/Sea-Respond3186]

.38 is graphically a step up. But it has its own issues due to that.

.37 is definitely still worth playing.

[u/Verzillion]

From my experience, 16 GB RAM is more than enough. I usually have BMS with chrome running together and never had ram cross 80%

The issue is CPU & GPU usage. The CPU temp sometimes momentarily jumps to 95°C.

[u/Sea-Respond3186 → u/Verzillion]

Does frame lock helps?
I think locking the sim to 30fps and using something like lossless scaling (frame gen), since the gameplay is slowpaced, it should work alright.

That should lower cpu usage and gpu usage by a half if you are getting like 90fps without the lock

[u/Xeno_PL]

Certainly 4.38 could run, however it's close to min specs. Any 4.37 should be fine
https://wiki.falcon-bms.com/start-with-falcon-bms/hardware-requirements

[u/AsdrubalGarcia → u/Xeno_PL]

I have 4.38 and it kinda struggles sometimes do you think 4.37 is much of a downgrade?

[u/Xeno_PL → u/AsdrubalGarcia]

Mostly in terms of terrain accuracy and visuals. But still solid option if even with the tweaks your system cannot handle 4.38 good enough.

[u/AsdrubalGarcia → u/Xeno_PL]

I just tried and while it does look quite worse at low altitude it’s probably fine and performance is snooth as long as I don’t use AA.

Also load times are faster which is welcome since I’m doing my first baby steps on this sim.

I could squeeze my gpu a bit more on windows since I saw this game in particular takes a very heavy hit on Linux but I’m too lazy for installing it.

[u/Obvious-Day5469]

No leaks. Have the game on for days at a time lol.

[u/gillers67]

RAM is but one element. 16gb is OK for both (depends on your system as well). But it's your CPU and graphics card that have bigger impacts. Both sims are heavy on CPU usage, DCS was single core but now has multi core options but your CPU has to be able to handle that. The graphic card comes on top of that to make things look nice. Now that BMS has much higher fidelity terrain options then the graphics card has more influence. But it is the CPU that is the base for good performance for both.

I have been analyzing my set up using AI and it provides useful info. Basically told me system was more or less maxed out and would need to upgrade (my PC is 8 years old!) Go to say, ChatGPT, put in your specs (CPU, ram, graphics card) and ask it about running DCS and BMS. It will give you a nice summary and some options. Use other AI tools as well for comparison. Much better before you shell out any cash on RAM! You can also use MSI Afterburner software to see what is happening when you play.

[u/Sea-Respond3186 → u/gillers67]

I have rtx3080 (playing 1440p) and R5 5600. Not the best combo in the world, but best my budget could buy when I was building it.
I hope there are some options to reduce cpu usage (like you have in Msfs series) that are pretty much reducing detail in the distance and not rendering any AI units before you get in certain range).

[u/Xeno_PL → u/Sea-Respond3186]

For non-VR use should be fine, even for 4.38. Sure if you could snatch a v-cache CPU (5700X3D, 5600X3D) would be cool, but people are running BMS on lower specs systems,

[u/Arty_Thanos → u/Xeno_PL]

Yeap that's me i72600K at 4800Mhz 32gb at 2100xmp gtx1080Ti and hp reverb g2.