nhouck Posted July 31, 2008 Share Posted July 31, 2008 As much as I hate to pander to the kiddies who think 1000 fps servers are the bomb, I'm getting sick of them asking for it (everyone that wants cs/css asks for 1000 fps now, ridiculous), so I'm looking to setup 1 server to support this and see how it goes. Besides, other companies are charging 2x as much as we do for 500 fps so why not right? Does anyone know any specific hardware that easily supports this with a solid 1000 fps? I run Supermicro dual xeon 5420's for all my servers, but they don't run 1000 fps, only 500 max. I am using 2008 server and HPET enabled. I think the mobo just can't hang at 1000 fps. It is 1333 fsb. I have built up an enthusiast board 2u server out of some spare parts, and even it will not run 1000 stable, it only hits that about 10% of the time, and under low load. I may be looking to get just a single quad xeon for this setup, to help minimize context switching impacting the performance. Thanks for any advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spitfire Posted July 31, 2008 Share Posted July 31, 2008 No Point in running 1000FPS 1 - With 1 Server on the machine with no people connected , the CPU can spike to 100% - thats with no one on it 2 - the 1000FPS is not Stable , Can jump up and down like a yo yo 1000FPS servers are not worth the hassle , 1 server with no people connected can spike the CPU to 100% like Cronnic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted July 31, 2008 Author Share Posted July 31, 2008 Why would the CPU spike to 100%? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spitfire Posted August 1, 2008 Share Posted August 1, 2008 Because the FPS Server Side Jumps a hell of a lot.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monk Posted August 1, 2008 Share Posted August 1, 2008 Because the FPS Server Side Jumps a hell of a lot.... Server FPS is measured by how much latency a Sleep(1) call has. The lower the latency the more jitter because of erroring/jitter vs realtime. Most of all motherboards can do 1k FPS, it doesn't really matter the hardware. It's the OS. Intel has very high interrupt latency compared to AMD, therefor AMD will produce better overall results. Plus most Intel boards have very weird latency because of SMI interrupts firing off.. Windows 2003 uses the PIT for interrupts and it takes approx 2-3uS to read because it lives off somewhere behind a PCI bridge. Windows 2008 can use, if the hardware/BIOS supports, HPET. HPET is the replacement for the PIT and has a 10mhz master clock with both 64bit and 32bit counters. This is what really gives high (1k) fps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 1, 2008 Author Share Posted August 1, 2008 Good insight Monk. So is there any particular setup you'd recommend? I have yet to get any Intel based server to hit 1000 fps steady, only jumps up there about 20% of the time at best. This is with latest hardware too on both server boards and 3 different home based enthusiast overclocked PCs. Looks like maybe AMD is the way to go then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monk Posted August 1, 2008 Share Posted August 1, 2008 You will never be able to reach 1000fps on non RTOS. Too much interrupt latency even with AMD gear. Also; Windows is *not* a RTOS; there are too many things that can effect FPS that I can list. Besides, you can't even adjust the timesource on windows without breaking shit. Once upon a time there was a hack to adjust the timeres in boot.ini but those options are long gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 1, 2008 Author Share Posted August 1, 2008 So basically you are saying that even with 2008 Server and HPET it won't work. So use Linux instead? So far I'm hearing what won't work which is fine, but I'm looking for some recommendations of what will work. Someone mentioned in another thread that dedicated servers from colocrossing were hitting 1000 fps no problem. (at least if I remember that right) I assummed this was on 2008 Server because it was on this forum, but maybe they were referring to Linux boxes. Maybe you can clue me in on that Monk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monk Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 1000 all the time or 950? Hard to get 1000 on windows unless you do some serious hacking of HAL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 2, 2008 Author Share Posted August 2, 2008 I guess 950 would be fine. It only does 500 now, sometimes spiking to 1000 but not often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boostedg Posted August 5, 2008 Share Posted August 5, 2008 if it is doing 500 with random spikes to 1000 in css, try setting the fps_max to (fps_max 0) instead of 1000, setting it to 0 sets it to unlimited and for some reason it seems to run upwards of 1000 more stable than it does when set to 1000, when we were testing, when we had it set to 1000, it would be at 1000 about 25% of the time and 500 about 70% of the time, setting it to 0 it is constantly around 1000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 5, 2008 Author Share Posted August 5, 2008 I had it set to fps_max 2200 to give it plenty of head room. I'll try 0 just to see what happens. Do you mind posting your hardware and any tweaks you might have done? Was this on 2008 server? tia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xpservers Posted August 6, 2008 Share Posted August 6, 2008 On one box im running Supermicro X7sbi MOBO with 1 Intel Quad Q6600, 4 Gig Ram FSB 1066mhz Windows 2008 Server. All I can say is the 1000FPS servers run like a charm, there are no cpu spikes at 100%. I have 3 people renting 1000 fps servers off this box and at full load the cpu does not hit 25%. Servers to not crash and are very stable. I get tons of compliments and people will pay for the 1000fps. Its worth RUNNING them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 6, 2008 Author Share Posted August 6, 2008 I had a theory that this has a whole lot to do with the motherboard architecture. The higher end server boards such as dual xeons with over 8GB RAM seem to have a higher kernel latency. I can only assume this is because of the FB RAM architecture or something along those lines adding latency to the system. I used a DPC latency checker on this system and it was rouand 3100us, which seemed very high. The problem is that even on regular setups like my home PC I cannot get 1000 fps to work on Vista with HPET enabled. DPC latency on this system is around 30us. Maybe that has nothing to do with it but who knows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gameguy32 Posted August 10, 2008 Share Posted August 10, 2008 No Point in running 1000FPS 1 - With 1 Server on the machine with no people connected , the CPU can spike to 100% - thats with no one on it 2 - the 1000FPS is not Stable , Can jump up and down like a yo yo 1000FPS servers are not worth the hassle , 1 server with no people connected can spike the CPU to 100% like Cronnic That is not true With the right hardware and server settings, 1000 FPS can be very stable I run windows 2008 on a dual intel xeon e5405 (octi-core), i can run 8 1000fps servers on it with players and they are all stable at 1000fps, and they NEVER hit 100% cpu --- And Monk, I tested CentOS 5 with a custom kernel - never got over 950fps. Then tried win2008 and I get 1000 solid... it is 1000 3/4 times and the other times it is 980 or 970. I think you're underestimating Windows 2008 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 15, 2008 Author Share Posted August 15, 2008 XPServers & GameGuy: Is there anything special you had to do to get things working at 1000 fps? I have servers running Windows 2008 at 1333 FSB with 2x E5410 Xeon 2.33GHz on a SuperMicro board and am not able to get 1000 fps at all. Looking in device manager the HPET hardware says there is no driver installed, though it is working normally. Is there a driver that needs to be manually added? Googling around it appears there are drivers for HPET for some motherboards floating around. Just wondering if there is some trick, or if the mobo I have just won't cut it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monk Posted August 15, 2008 Share Posted August 15, 2008 That is not true With the right hardware and server settings, 1000 FPS can be very stable I run windows 2008 on a dual intel xeon e5405 (octi-core), i can run 8 1000fps servers on it with players and they are all stable at 1000fps, and they NEVER hit 100% cpu --- And Monk, I tested CentOS 5 with a custom kernel - never got over 950fps. Then tried win2008 and I get 1000 solid... it is 1000 3/4 times and the other times it is 980 or 970. I think you're underestimating Windows 2008 I have a various amount of machines that I've tested, I was able to crank up to about 1kfps stable on both FreeBSD and Linux (2.6.23). I also got creative and was able to crank up the FPS to about 3000 or so. http://www.summit-servers.com/gary/summit.jpg Of course, it's all about timing. The diff I used for the kernel is about 12k in size, which I modified to use the TSC instead of HPET for timing. Only problem is that the TSC skews on AMD stuff but doesn't appear to skew on Intel gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monk Posted August 16, 2008 Share Posted August 16, 2008 XPServers & GameGuy: Is there anything special you had to do to get things working at 1000 fps? I have servers running Windows 2008 at 1333 FSB with 2x E5410 Xeon 2.33GHz on a SuperMicro board and am not able to get 1000 fps at all. Looking in device manager the HPET hardware says there is no driver installed, though it is working normally. Is there a driver that needs to be manually added? Googling around it appears there are drivers for HPET for some motherboards floating around. Just wondering if there is some trick, or if the mobo I have just won't cut it. HPET has to be enabled in the BIOS. You don't need drivers for it, as it's included in mmtimer.inf (IIRC) It's located under System Devices in Device Manager. It will usually show up as "High Precision Event Timer" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 16, 2008 Author Share Posted August 16, 2008 HPET has to be enabled in the BIOS. You don't need drivers for it, as it's included in mmtimer.inf (IIRC) It's located under System Devices in Device Manager. It will usually show up as "High Precision Event Timer" Right. That's what I thought, so I'm wondering why it seems to have no effect when turned on. I've tested it on 4 different systems all of which are top end hardware, 2 servers and 2 enthusiast setups. None of them will do 1000 fps with HPET on under 2008/Vista. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 16, 2008 Author Share Posted August 16, 2008 Of course, it's all about timing. The diff I used for the kernel is about 12k in size, which I modified to use the TSC instead of HPET for timing. Only problem is that the TSC skews on AMD stuff but doesn't appear to skew on Intel gear. Wasn't the timer skew fixed by a multicore CPU fixer from AMD? http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_9706,00.html AMD Dual-Core Optimizer Version 1.1.4 - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monk Posted August 16, 2008 Share Posted August 16, 2008 Right. That's what I thought, so I'm wondering why it seems to have no effect when turned on. I've tested it on 4 different systems all of which are top end hardware, 2 servers and 2 enthusiast setups. None of them will do 1000 fps with HPET on under 2008/Vista. You need to have something call timeBeginPeriod(), like winamp, media player, or that source application. You could also have a busted HPET timer, which I've seen on nvidia boards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nhouck Posted August 17, 2008 Author Share Posted August 17, 2008 You need to have something call timeBeginPeriod(), like winamp, media player, or that source application. You could also have a busted HPET timer, which I've seen on nvidia boards. We have 3 versions of FPSBooster / MultimediaTimer I have tried with no luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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