Discovery RP server upgrades

[majkp]

The case is shocking....If you got somthing a little bigger, then you may find the air will get around the components better and the server will run alot cooler.

They don't cost that much...But honestly...LOL, not that looks are important or anything...but it looks like a POS.

Cheers

Who cares about the look? :D

But seriously, man, CPU temperature rarely goes over 40C under full load. Do you really think we need the server to 'run alot cooler'?

[majkp]

I am bumping this thread a bit.

Maybe a better CPU now, we don't need a quad core one, FL can't use it anyway, but we could use a better dual core CPU, but honestly I don't know...

Any ideas for further upgrades?

[vpdm]

How about some RAM?
I read you brought recently new RAM but i think it should be at least 2GB.

[McNeo]

CPU should be bought in the spring of next year, Intel and AMD are releasing a whole new raft of chips, which should mean that the already cheap quad core Q6600 (my E6600 but with 2 more cores slapped on the die) will become even cheaper. And we can see how the benchmarks go on those Intel Nahalem and Penryn cores.

[majkp]

How about some RAM?
I read you brought recently new RAM but i think it should be at least 2GB.

There is no need for extra RAM. I rarely see more than 500-600MB allocated.

[McNeo]

There may well be a need for extra RAM, not because of FL itself, but because of other subsidiary programs and background tasks such as antivirus, anti-hack systems etc. Also, the more slots are filled, the more memory bandwidth your computer has to allocate to programs requesting some. Even if all the memory is not allocated, the programs may be hitting the bandwidth limit of that particular stick, limiting it to processing below its maximum capacity.

Hope that made sense, but:

More RAM sticks = More RAM bandwidth for faster storage and access of memory. You may well find that you see a responsiveness increase (ie, decrease in response times) with more RAM bandwidth. Also, fast CPUs can be stifled by a lack of memory bandwidth, as the core does not cache the data it processes fast enough, because there is a queue.

For gaming, 2 GB is required for any higher end game. For a server, the benefits are mostly to do with bandwidth, and the amount of data being cached before being sent to their destinations (mostly in other countries).

Im not saying that you should purchase either a new CPU or more RAM, because the server is pretty good right now. Im just pointing out that there's more to RAM than temporary storage.;).

[majkp]

I agree that for gaming you need 2GBs to minimize the need of using slow harddisc. But remember, playing a game is basically about graphics and sounds, your PC has to deal with a lot of details to be displayed and played for you as a player. Those details are stored on your harddrive and they have to be uncompressed (sometimes) and loaded into memory. But a FLserver does something totally different. No graphics, no sounds. Our server currently runs with some 10 years old PCI graphic card I found in garbage and the onboard soundcard is disabled in BIOS (at least I think). The server application just keeps ID's for every objects (player ships, shots, missiles, planets, tradelanes, etc.) and deals with their interactions (missile hits a ship, ship docks a planet, NPC drops loot...) and sends all the data to all connected players. So a server doesn't need as much memory as the client. Well, I mean a Freelancer server which serves max 128 players. An EVE server (or a server farm) is something different as it serves thousands of players...:P

FLserver itself only uses 300-400MB, even with more than 100 players. And those additional background programs take 200MB more. But I'll be watching it more frequently now. It's just I never saw memory usage go over 700MB.

Yeah, the server is doing fine now, I am just searching for further possible ways to improve it. It doesn't need a major upgrade right now, so waiting for introducing new chips in spring sounds reasonable to me.

EDIT:

More RAM sticks = More RAM bandwidth for faster storage and access of memory.

Yes, we already use the dual-channel architecture, we have 2x 512MB modules...

[tfmachad]

Does it access the disk a lot? If it does, maybe another matching HD for a raid 0 setup to speed up the process. Though it may be more troublesome than advantageous since it may decrease the reliability of the whole system. Maybe a raid 0+1 set would be better. But I don't know the cost of all that. I presume the server doesn't take a lot of HD space, does it?

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Meet the Kriegers - The story of a family and of two men that shared more than just a name
Fantasmas de la Nube Siniestra
I Mon'Star: The Strange Case of Elizabeth Wallace

[majkp]

I think it reads from HDD on startup (server loads the whole FL universe, which takes like half a minute) and then loads the player data each time a new player connects. But this shouldn't cause lag because the player data files aren't huge. However I'll have a closer look, as the current motherboard has a RAID controller...

[Hyperion]

I think the best and cheapest way to upgrade a pc is to overclock it extremly. Only one thing is needed: realy good coolers.

Here is a link for a site in Hungary.

CPU tuning

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lurking in the darkness...