Request for guidance by our beloved ns2 community

oldassgamers

Hello guys, at current stage im hosting 2 servers with winAFC + n2update, having hyperthreading off and dedicated cpu 0,1 for server 1 and cpu 2,3 for server 2.
Server has i7 940 3,7ghz, 1600ddr3 , 320ssd intel 320. (at current beta stage it's lagging).


I'm thinkin on investing all my spare money to build a monster server with i7 sandy bridge E 3930k 4GHZ. Then creating 3 virtual servers for 3 ns2 servers.

Any suggestions on having hyperthreading on or of ? Or to make the NS2 server as optimize as possible.

Please give your thoughts I'm really looking forward to it.

Kouji_San

AFAIK Hyper-threading is only useful for rendering and encoding (and other stuff that benefits from this). Not so much for games or game servers, in some cases it even causes a performance hit... The extra cache on the CPU might work, compared to the i5...

Also the i7 3930k (12288Kb cache) is actually too expensive compared to for example a i7 2600k (8192Kb cache) or i5 2500k (6144Kb cache). I've listed the L3 cache on the chip, however cache isn't a magic bullet either, for servers it might help a tiny bit more though...


[edit]
The i5 2500k is the best value for money you can get. That is if you overclock it, which is very easy to do on today's CPU's (4.0Ghz - 4.5Ghz is easily obtained) and it leaves you with money left to spend on other areas. i7 2600k with a bit more cache comes in as a close second (disable Hyper-threading though, which kinda negates the advantages of the i7 cores as 8Mb vs 6Mb is not all that much different)




[edit2]On stock speed or same speed as your i7 940, you won't really see a huge improvement on the i5 2500k. OC-ing is where you will see it take off and leave the first gen i7's behind...


[edit3]
i5 and i7 second generations are 32nm CPU's and a 940 is a 45nm's CPU, less power consumption, less heat means easier to overclock :)

The upcoming Ivy Bridge will be 22nm, so the potential of those is that with the same architecture and less heat/power consumption, it could potentially mean it can OC even easier and further...

player

Hyper-threading does didly-###### for single-threaded processes (which Server.exe is). Turn it off, it'll improve the CPU's stability in case it is overclocked.

And we could really really really use a server-section on these forums. Right now server-operators are left to figure most things out by themselfs.

ScardyBob

It might be worth waiting for the i7 3770k (Ivy Bridge) to come out, otherwise I'd go with what Kouji said and get a 2500k or a 2600k. Both are OC beasts, which is what you really need for a good NS2 beta server.

oldassgamers

Ivy bridge isn't optimize for gaming performance, it only has 16 lains out .. Really dont know the exakt word in english. But anyways, I'm pm max about whats the best way to optimize the server performance.

<b>I'll keep this topic updated when I recieve intel and also to the UWE team, we as server operator has to have clear intel how to optimize the server performance sa good as possible, to provide our members the best quality service, to keep NS2 alive during beta stage.</b>