Maximum Performance for Game Servers VS Core settings

[xP3000]

Hi,

 

I've just setup a few gaming servers and I notice these two settings

 

Priority: I always use High

Affinity: * Heres the question

 

Is it better for performance wise to set it the game servers to 1 core or is it better to have all the game servers ticked to use all 4 cores?

 

has anyone found any difference on these settings?

[studeggle]

It is best to let it use all cores if it ballances correctly. Some games on the other hand will not ballance and if you do not set a core will allways use the first core thereby pegging out core 0 while the others are idle. Soyou have to watch your setup and see what is happening, if ballancing is a problem then you will need to set core affinities.

 

Priority should generally be high, as you ussually want the game servers to have top priority. It ussually doesn't matter if something you are doing in the background takes a tad longer but a low priority on game server could easily result in lag from the game server being pushed to the side.

[dimitrifrom31]

if u set ALL the servers to high then i dont really see the point unless you have backgorund apps that are CPU hogs which is anyway a bad idea on a machine hosting game servers.

 

If you set all the servers at high they will all have same priority so basically no performance increase for any of them.

 

You can correct me if im wrong tho.

[trancemode]

Was just thinking about that...

 

Doesn't putting TONS OF servers on HIGH CPU Priority.. cause some issues of balance?

 

I usually put 2 1000fps server in 1 affinity (core)

but i haven't thought of.. if I put both on high.

isn't it the same?

and won't it cause some issues? That's what I read somewhere from ECF.

 

Also.. when you put high priority on a select server.. does it just put it high on a selective core (affinity) or the whole server?

[dimitrifrom31]

Was just thinking about that...

 

Doesn't putting TONS OF servers on HIGH CPU Priority.. cause some issues of balance?

 

I usually put 2 1000fps server in 1 affinity (core)

but i haven't thought of.. if I put both on high.

isn't it the same?

and won't it cause some issues? That's what I read somewhere from ECF.

 

Also.. when you put high priority on a select server.. does it just put it high on a selective core (affinity) or the whole server?

 

It not really about issues but about the fact it turns out to be useless.

Giving same priority level to tons of apps makes no sense as they will all ahve the same priority so basically none will get more CPU time than others.

 

For better performances disable useless windows services and background apps, leave monitor priority on low.

[trancemode]

It not really about issues but about the fact it turns out to be useless.

Giving same priority level to tons of apps makes no sense as they will all ahve the same priority so basically none will get more CPU time than others.

 

For better performances disable useless windows services and background apps, leave monitor priority on low.

 

Did you mean the TC monitor at "Low" ?

 

What have you disabled from windows service?

 

Want to check with mine, to make sure nothing I disable will cause an issue.

[dimitrifrom31]

Did you mean the TC monitor at "Low" ?

 

What have you disabled from windows service?

 

Want to check with mine, to make sure nothing I disable will cause an issue.

 

ye tc monitor as low unless u overload ur machines (bad idea )

 

As for windows services it will depend on ur needs just google windows services and u ll find infos about each of them and you can then decide whether to disable or not. If ur afraid to make a mistake stop it first to see if everything stays fine before disabling it.

[trancemode]

alright thanks for the advice

[Santino Cid]

Giving same priority level to tons of apps makes no sense as they will all ahve the same priority so basically none will get more CPU time than others.

 

Actually, giving all your servers high priority is not useless. Here's why. The game servers are not the only applications running on the machine. There are plenty of Windows services and requests from the OS that need processing. I want to say, I could be wrong, above normal will give the process higher priority against common applications and some Windows services. High will give the process higher priority over common applications, Windows services, and most OS request. Real time will put that single process above everything, causing your OS to hang in some cases.

 

You can read all about process priority on the Microsoft website.

 

 

As for affinity:

I would suggest you let the servers run across all cores. If the game is relatively new, it should be able to scale across them. If it does not scale, you may need to separate servers to not overload a single core. However, if you are selling on a "per core" basis, guaranteeing a client a core, you may want to set affinity.

[dimitrifrom31]

Actually, giving all your servers high priority is not useless. Here's why. The game servers are not the only applications running on the machine. There are plenty of Windows services and requests from the OS that need processing.

 

As I said its about assuming a maximum of useless services and background apps were disabled.

This is the best way to go as you then dont have to manually change the priority of your TCA services and anyway having background stuffs running on a machine that host game servers is a very poor idea.

 

Ive got all my machiens configured the same way : everything not necessary to game servers is disabled and game servers all running at normal (default) priority + TCA monitor running at lower (default) priority.

So they are all smooth.

[Santino Cid]

Sure thing, it's always a good idea to optimize your Windows for the services you provide to get rid of those unneeded services.

 

Truth be told, if your CPU is not ruining at a high load, it will have some extra cycles to go around and priority will give you very little, if any results.

 

When clients ask how they should setup the server, in terms of affinity and priority, I pretty much tell them the way that you stated. Everything on normal, and maybe high priority for those "extra special" servers.

[Steven Crothers]

Sure thing, it's always a good idea to optimize your Windows for the services you provide to get rid of those unneeded services.

 

Truth be told, if your CPU is not ruining at a high load, it will have some extra cycles to go around and priority will give you very little, if any results.

 

When clients ask how they should setup the server, in terms of affinity and priority, I pretty much tell them the way that you stated. Everything on normal, and maybe high priority for those "extra special" servers.

Disabling services is trivial at best imo, saving 20mb of ram really won't help you in the long run...

[Santino Cid]

Disabling services is trivial at best imo, saving 20mb of ram really won't help you in the long run...

 

It is not only RAM that is affected. You add up the CPU cycles going to waste, and unnecessary disk I/O. Most of the time RAM is actually of little concern these days because of the large amounts we can get into systems.

 

You will find that optimizing your OS will allow you to get a little more out of your system. It's done with Linux, it can be done with Windows. However, Windows is not open-source so you are limited to what you can do.

[Steven Crothers]

It is not only RAM that is affected. You add up the CPU cycles going to waste, and unnecessary disk I/O. Most of the time RAM is actually of little concern these days because of the large amounts we can get into systems.

 

You will find that optimizing your OS will allow you to get a little more out of your system. It's done with Linux, it can be done with Windows. However, Windows is not open-source so you are limited to what you can do.

This is true, however I guess my point is, in some hardware situations (Dual Quads + 12+ gigs of ram) the differences your making are so beyond minuscule that the time in manhours you spend on the improvements will never seen back as an ROI.

[dimitrifrom31]

This is true, however I guess my point is, in some hardware situations (Dual Quads + 12+ gigs of ram) the differences your making are so beyond minuscule that the time in manhours you spend on the improvements will never seen back as an ROI.

 

I got a checklist and some scripts like vba ones to configure a full machine within 10-15 minutes. Also includes security measures.

[xpservers]

leave all the services running default normal. Your windows server is built to run minimal background processes that would disturb normal operation of any sort of application. It would make sense of you are running multiple DB's or multitasking but you are not.

You will also save time on the administrative task of manual setting high priority after every server creation seeing that tcadmin does not have this built in automation capability.

[Derek]

leave all the services running default normal. Your windows server is built to run minimal background processes that would disturb normal operation of any sort of application. It would make sense of you are running multiple DB's or multitasking but you are not.

You will also save time on the administrative task of manual setting high priority after every server creation seeing that tcadmin does not have this built in automation capability.

 

We got a winner

[Steven Crothers]

leave all the services running default normal. Your windows server is built to run minimal background processes that would disturb normal operation of any sort of application. It would make sense of you are running multiple DB's or multitasking but you are not.

You will also save time on the administrative task of manual setting high priority after every server creation seeing that tcadmin does not have this built in automation capability.

Truth.