-- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Actually I take what I said back.
At the rate SRCDS is gobbling up CPU resources, our only bloody hope of successfully running even 1 decent SRCDS process is for SRCDS to support multi-threading and 64bit and as many CPU cores as you can throw at the damn thing. On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:48:55, Dan Sorenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > At 08:25 PM 4/15/2007 -0700, Alfred fesses up: > > >Right now all the SMP work revolves around client side optimisations, it > >is unclear what benefits can be found on the server. > > At present we're stuck at 2.6Ghz a core, so to my way of thinking > if the game requires a 3Ghz or 3.5Ghz CPU to sustain performance then the > options are to 1) put SMP support in the engine so it can get an effective > 2*2.6GHz to work with, 2) drop the number of players and tick rate to > compensate, or 3) forget about purchasing quad-core boxes and dedicate a > Pentium D at 3.8Ghz with the 1024MHz FSB and eat the costs of the extra > hardware. > > I doubt we'll see this in CS:S any time soon, but in DoD:S the > mappers seem to want to put everything from Normandy to the Maginot Line in > one map, and you know better than most how larger maps and the greater > number of entities to calculate around increase load. And users scale in a > logarithmic manner. > > Granted, Valve's bread and butter is CS:S, so I wouldn't expect > DoD:S alone to prompt this. Granted also, DoD:S has sort of caused its own > problem in this regard and it's not Valve's obligation to fix it. This is > still going to become a problem that current hardware cannot address, if not > with CS:S then perhaps with TF2 when the mappers get crazy or when we try to > run 32-player servers of Deathmatch four months from now. > > To me, my choices are coming down to money. If SMP support is > four months from now I can slide a bit, maybe move my DoD:S server to a box > that only handles that game and maybe a web service, and I can leave my CS:S > servers on dual-core or quad-core machines and consolidate them a bit. If > SMP support is a year away on the server side, and a 2.6Ghz core isn't > cutting it, either I need to buy faster single-core processors and dedicated > boxes and adjust my budget, or I need to tell my folks that a 32-player box > at 100 tick isn't feasable for that game on today's hardware. > > Which reminds me, we're fast approaching the time where there > needs to be a decent benchmark tool for servers. Something that can > simulate 32 users or 24 users and just put a load on the box so we can tell > if we're hitting the limits of CPU, memory, disk, network, etc... before > promising the customer a Great Gaming Experience. I'm afraid that "Sorry, > the custom map you loaded is at fault" or "try it without any mods" isn't > going to be an adequate defense in the near future. Such a tool might be > justified in development time mainly by documenting limitations and thus > setting priorities in development of the server code. > > - Dan > > * Dan Sorenson DoD #1066 A.H.M.C. #35 [EMAIL PROTECTED] * > * Vikings? There ain't no vikings here. Just us honest farmers. * > * The town was burning, the villagers were dead. They didn't need * > * those sheep anyway. That's our story and we're sticking to it. * > > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds > -- _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
