Is There Any Chance for 64bit Dedicates Server sofware ?

[pawelkpl 29]

Altis is out and it clearly shows 2GB is not enough especially for dedicated servers and mission designers (empty map takes about 1GB of memory).

I wonder if is there any chance for dedicated server file only to be running in 64bits mode so it can address more than 2GB of memory.

cheers. pawel

[Ezcoo 47]

Isn't the dedicated server able to use LAA on 64-bit operating systems? It could use about 3,5 GB with it.

[windies 11]

Isn't the dedicated server able to use LAA on 64-bit operating systems? It could use about 3,5 GB with it.

I think it can but the engine limits itself to 2gb. That is why you can't set -maxmem over 2047 or rather setting it higher does nothing because it's a hard limitation. I think one of the developers mentioned wanting to increase this limit.

If anything though, at least I would love to see a 64bit DS binary.

[lordprimate 159]

they said they increased the limit.. but its not enough ....

[NeoArmageddon 957]

Have you monitored your dedicated servers memory? It's hardly using above 1GB with 100 AI units.

[galzohar 31]

Yes, dedicated servers don't need a lot of RAM anyway without the graphics. Most of the time it seems to be less than 500mb, and as NeoArmageddon said even with 100 AI it didn't get even close to the 2GB limit.

However, we do know that the game reads from the HDD repeatedly regardless of how much RAM you got, and if the game was 64bit and could use more RAM, then maybe some of those HDD reads could be avoided... But in any case it doesn't seem to be anywhere on the priority list of BIS...

[Blue1 10]

Hi,

i do run a few server instances on, of course, a 64bit machine, a rather big one. So the Servers (hardware)performance isn't (was never^) the problem.

As said above - as soon as the arma3server.exe exceeds the memory-usage, the server-FPS drops to nowhere... i can proof that, as i am always running ASM and i do monitor everything.

However, we do know that the game reads from the HDD repeatedly regardless of how much RAM you got, and if the game was 64bit and could use more RAM, then maybe some of those HDD reads could be avoided... But in any case it doesn't seem to be anywhere on the priority list of BIS...

i ran some tests, lately, with a complete installation of everything needed to run my 80player pvp cti mission..on RAMDISK.

So HDD wouldn't nearly even notice whats going on. Only WinServer had some operations once in a while...but nothing remarkable/relevant to this epic issue.

Guess what - nearly no difference. Same problems occur.

So conclusion is - the ENGINE itself (as told & proven a fact a million times before) has problems to manage stuff if we reach around 2-2,3GB memory usage.

Then we add some Battleye verification which seems to suck up unbelievable freaking much capacitys of everything to do his work,...multiply it with arounn 2-4 player that join or leave in the same minute and cause additional "join in progress"-lag .... TADAAA - this is another crash, proudly presented by BIS.

And ALL THIS - WHILE THE COMPLETE SERVER-CPU-USAGE NEVER EXCEEDS MORE THAN F*CKING 25-30%!!

So,.. if it wasn't so damn sad,...i'd laugh and ask if you want to kidding me....

*sigh* will this ever be a working engine? :(

Good idea - bad realisation. thx

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

With all that ranting (here and elsewhere) - I assume you did create a bug report then ?

[pawelkpl 29]

Hi,

i do run a few server instances on, of course, a 64bit machine, a rather big one. So the Servers (hardware)performance isn't (was never^) the problem.

As said above - as soon as the arma3server.exe exceeds the memory-usage, the server-FPS drops to nowhere... i can proof that, as i am always running ASM and i do monitor everything.

i ran some tests, lately, with a complete installation of everything needed to run my 80player pvp cti mission..on RAMDISK.

So HDD wouldn't nearly even notice whats going on. Only WinServer had some operations once in a while...but nothing remarkable/relevant to this epic issue.

Guess what - nearly no difference. Same problems occur.

So conclusion is - the ENGINE itself (as told & proven a fact a million times before) has problems to manage stuff if we reach around 2-2,3GB memory usage.

Then we add some Battleye verification which seems to suck up unbelievable freaking much capacitys of everything to do his work,...multiply it with arounn 2-4 player that join or leave in the same minute and cause additional "join in progress"-lag .... TADAAA - this is another crash, proudly presented by BIS.

And ALL THIS - WHILE THE COMPLETE SERVER-CPU-USAGE NEVER EXCEEDS MORE THAN F*CKING 25-30%!!

So,.. if it wasn't so damn sad,...i'd laugh and ask if you want to kidding me....

*sigh* will this ever be a working engine? :(

Good idea - bad realisation. thx

That is what I mean, simply 2GB cap is completely crazy for Island like Altis. Add units, scripts and you are nearly 1.5GB. 4GB is what is meant to be played...

[Blue1 10]

With all that ranting (here and elsewhere) - I assume you did create a bug report then ?

Without the intention to offend you...but have you ever visited the Feedbacktracker?!

Looks like you recognized my / our legit "ranting", here and elsewhere - but missed to check and vote at least for one of the dozens or maybe hundreds of server-/memory-/cpu-related "rants" (or bugreports) there?!

I repeat, this issue is known - from the start - and a proven fact since ages. thats why i, and some others that know a little about "whats going on", "rant like this.

[galzohar 31]

If you are so good at monitoring your performance and resource usage, you should have known that "25-30% CPU usage" means absolutely nothing. You could use only 25% CPU and actually be CPU-limited. To give a simple example:

Single threaded application runs an infinite loop and no more, on a CPU with 4 cores. CPU usage will be 25%. If you get a CPU twice as fast, CPU usage will still be 25%, but the loop will execute twice as fast. If you get 8 cores instead of 4, loop will execute at same speed as before, but CPU usage will be 12.5%.

Now, ArmA server is not really single threaded, but based on the reports I see on these forums and my own experience, it seems like that when we have problems it's mostly when 1 of the game's threads is slowed down by the CPU, and there is no point running the other ones (no reason and no capability to start the calculations of the next frame before all parallel tasks finish calculating the current frame, or at least it seems like this is the case with the current way the engine works). Usually, it would be the AI calculations that slow everything down. Of course, if your CPU can calculate 20 frames of AI per second normally, and then you double the amount of AI, so it can only calculate 10 frames of AI. Therefore, all other calculations "only work half as hard" and thus total CPU usage goes down along with your FPS. So again not surprising you get 25-30% CPU usage on a quad core in an AI-heavy mission (or maybe even a mission with no AI).

Bottom line is, before you start judging the situation of the game based on your server's/game's CPU usage, you really should learn and understand how multi-threaded applications work. If CPU usage is more than 1/N (where N is the number of cores), there is no way of knowing if you are CPU-limited or not without knowing how the game's multi-threaded system works.