We're in the same boat- Too much load and not enough CPU. We host about 10 Garry's mod public servers, and are unable to reasonably run anything more than 16 players (sandbox). It's very disheartening to think that we pay $500 /mo. for top-of-the-line machines, and STILL see cpu loads consistently hitting 90-100%.
Valve, we NEED server side support and optimization!! How sad to have to explain to provisioning that no, we don't want the free sub-upgrade to the Xeons, but instead flop us back to the Pentium D 950. :-( Come on Valve. Please revisit the issue of server side SMP. If we can't take advantage of our big machines to finally run your game binaries with adequate CPU, then I for one will be forced to give up the source hosting, which would be a real disappointment. Rob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Sorenson Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 10:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [hlds] RE: DoDS cpu and SMP time-line 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
