Dedicated Server performance

[PogMoThoin 10]

We're running Evolution and Domination missions on a 3.2Ghz Quad Xeon dedi box and not getting great performance. I can monitor the server with the #monitor command and see that the server itself can drop to as low as 15fps with as few as 5 people playing. I tested i earlier and it even dropped to 22fps with myself alone playing, just walking round the base, not even shooting.

Any tips or tricks for better performance? What improves performance? Is it the missions themselves?

Any help would be great.

Pog

[LondonLad 13]

Hmm - Not sure what to suggest.

I am running 2 Test Servers for the Gaming Group I'm involved within (www.volcbat.com - cheap advertisement ;)) with the following specs

1 * Xeon 3.06GHz, 2GB RAM, XP Professional SP3 (100MB Internet connection) - Dell Precision 650

I believe this ran at around a constant server fps of 18

1 * Dual Xeon 2.80GHz, 2GB RAM, XP Professional SP3 (100MB Internet connection) - Dell Precision 650

I believe this started out at around 30 server fps, but dropped and remained approx. constant at 17 server fps.

The configs used are a variation of using the [KH] Kellys Heroes Dedicated Server information (run a Google on that) and our own tweaks. Although the main performance tweaks will probably have come from [KH]'s information.

[Added after posting]

The machines we reinstalled from scratch, updated (all MS patches & drivers updates), with only ARMA II and any modifications required.

I semi-regularly defrag the machines as-well

Edited August 30, 2009 by LondonLad

[PogMoThoin 10]

Server is a Dell PowerEdge 3.2Ghz quad Xeon, 2GB ram running Windows Server 2003 (installed from scratch), nothing else running on the box. Its sitting on a rack with pretty much unlimited bandwidth

I've used the Kellys Heroes Dedicated Server default scripts from here (they're prob what u mean):

http://www.kellys-heroes.eu/files/tutorials/dedicated/

In the guide it says anything under 15 is laggy, quoted here:

The server never runs at more than 50 fps. When running slower, it always uses all available CPU processing power to maintain the smoothest possible gameplay. When running at less than 15 fps, you can consider the server overloaded – the mission currently played is probably too complex for given server.

But I'm seeing 15fps with just 5 people?

You say You're averaging 18 fps, how low have you seen it go and do you ever find Your test servers laggy?

[LondonLad 13]

I was indeed referring to the [KH] scripts :)

Last night we were running Evo with at least 8 of us on at any one time.

I can't tell you what the server fps was, as no one was monitoring it.

The server seemed to hold up very well mind you (didn't notice anything untoward, and definately didn't experience any lag what so ever).

Just to note - Our Internet connection is a pure 1-to-1 100MB Leased Line (we get the full 100MB to/from the Internet - It's not shared with anyone else).

[PogMoThoin 10]

Just to note - Our Internet connection is a pure 1-to-1 100MB Leased Line (we get the full 100MB to/from the Internet - It's not shared with anyone else).

:rolleyes: So is this one, the server is a freebie sponsored by an ISP, its on their rack somewhere so bw or contention is not the issue.

I'll report back later when I get a few to join, its Sunday there should be loads online. I'll also defrag the server once again

[LondonLad 13]

The only other thing I can think of (which isn't much right now) is the OS

No idea how ARMA II (Dedicated Server) performs with Windows Server 2003 in comparision to other OS's. (I should have added that I've not touched any 'services' - It's all running in the default manner)

[PogMoThoin 10]

The only other thing I can think of (which isn't much right now) is the OS

Thats kinda what I'm thinking, I'm gonna start by updating and defragging. Server 2003 is XP so should handle the game the same

[Pathy 0]

Just to weigh in alongside LL. We've 3 servers atm, the two test servers LL is running for us, plus a rented one we use as our main:

AMD X2 4600+ (2 x 2.4GHz), 2GB RAM, Server 2003 ,100MB net connection.

We did some testing last night with the #monitor command. The two test servers that LL linked ran at almost identical FPS (it wasn't actually Evo we ran to test). The main server gets about 3-4 FPS more in the same situation. I think Server 2003 will likely only begin to come into play when you breech around 12 players (I believe thats when you begin hitting connection limits on default XP).

Anyway, on all servers, Evo runs at between 6FPS and 18FPS (with around 5 guys), depending what the server is doing (It varies with the cycles run in the mission), but it's my experience, and we play regularly with just under 30 guys, that unlike OFP or even ArmA, you can actually play comfortably at FPS as low as 6 without any lag. It -seems- that the FPS bottoms out fairly quickly, and then holds steady despite increasing load. We've had 4 or 5 guys on Evo with the FPS at 6. We've also had 20+ guys on Evo without much in the way of lag.

I believe LondonLad is now determined to beat our rented servers performance :P, so if we end up testing out a more powerful server it'll be interesting to see if the results vary.

Edited August 30, 2009 by Pathy

[PogMoThoin 10]

Just to update, gave the server a defrag (needed it) and it seems a little smoother, I'm getting 18-22fps with just me online, dropped to around 15fps with 6 or 7 running EVO BLUE NoAddons V3.6. It doesn't feel choppy but I just expected more fps.

I'd like to know how others servers perform on Evo and Domination, is this about right?

[bushlurker 45]

I can contribute a little info for Domination on a small dedi server...

AMD X2 6000+, 4Gb RAM - measly 10Mbit cable connection...

With Domination - even with one or two players, the server quickly drops from 40-50FPS on "fly-in", to about 24 on the tarmac... once all the scripts kick in and the action starts it'll drop to around 18 or so, with the occasional dip to around 15.

With 7 or 8 players (my usual maximum), its much the same story, except it'll go down as low as about 12FPS and sort of "bottom out" - it never really goes any lower than that...

Memory usage seems to go up to around 4-500mb or so, never really higher...

Server performance settings and files are largely derived from the KH stuff...

B

[PogMoThoin 10]

Thanks for that, guess our server isn't performing that badly after all.

Anybody else? This thread could be a good place for everyone to post their specs and dedi server performance, just to compare.

[Pathy 0]

Yeah, i'd say your servers performing just fine!

[Auss 208]

We run 2xdual core 275 series Opterons and we find were getting the same performance as you describe.

[169th_Rabbit 0]

I currently host the XF Arma II server on a Q9550 with 8 gigs of ram and win 7 ultimate RTM (MSDN). With 10 players in a domination style map I have never seen the server drop below 40fps. Please remeber most dedicated servers with onboard video dont have the best of video cards. We run a 7600 in our box and it seems fine. Also I have not tested on a server grade OS. The server uses about 500+ megs of ram in big towns.

[whisper 0]

What has video card to do with dedicated server performance? oO It should be totally unrelated

[169th_Rabbit 0]

What has video card to do with dedicated server performance? oO It should be totally unrelated

you are right it should be but in my testing I have found that it does matter. Using an onboard video card we seen a performance drop using the same settings as we are with the 7600. You would think since it's in a command line the cpu would do all the work but we seen about a 10% decrease in performance overall with onboard video. Again it may also be related to OS.

[kdjac 19]

pog whats it like with sahrani running on it?

[TheBigOne_014 16]

I'm noob but, what matters the dedicated server FPS!? What impact has in the client side gameplay!? Shouldn't the server only be working the AI and connetions between players!?

[PogMoThoin 10]

pog whats it like with sahrani running on it?

Same, ~16fps with 4 playing. Client side the Sahrani map is lots easier, can turn the viewdistance up to 6000. Looks great

I'm noob but, what matters the dedicated server FPS!? What impact has in the client side gameplay!? Shouldn't the server only be working the AI and connetions between players!?

The server sends the info to all players, its fps is very important otherwise all players get lag and warping as they don't get the info quick enough

[Auss 208]

Gfx card has no bearing on the server FPS at all.

[greenpsycho 10]

well, I'll weigh in with my experiences. All of this is based on my core i7 920 running 3.6ghz and 6gb of ram

I normally play on the same server I host on (dedi running in background, gaming in foreground). With warfare, and dependent on the mod/scripts I'm running, it will normally start off around 40fps and stay above 30fps for the first hour or so. However, once the AI starts spreading out on both sides and as both sides swell in size, the number starts dropping considerably.

Once I reach 12fps or so, I start seeing in game errors and glitches (delays in radio chat, notifications, etc).

The biggest problem I've noticed is that the server never seems to use enough memory (even though its available to it, it never uses more than ~500mb). Also, with HT enabled, the server never uses the processing power available to it (up to 15 percent or so with HT, maybe 25 without HT). All of this makes me think the server isn't multithreaded (or at least doesn't take advantage of it).

This may be fixed with one of the upcoming patches that finally fixes the "cpucount" parameter, but who knows.

Final note: don't underestimate a speedy hard drive for your server, the maps and everything are quite large and since it doesn't take advantage of the memory, its reading from the drive alot I've noticed

[Tankbuster 1733]

With Domination - even with one or two players, the server quickly drops from 40-50FPS on "fly-in", to about 24 on the tarmac... once all the scripts kick in and the action starts it'll drop to around 18 or so,

Exactly the same for my server. Drops to 19 as the main mission is created.

I'm admin of a new server that is more powerful. It'd be interesting to see how that performs.

I've left a persistent Domination running for days on end, and the server FPS seems to run around 15. The issue with that - probably not related to hardware performance, is that an impenetrable fog seems to set in and VD goes down to 300m. On the upside, clients get 60 FPS.:)

---------- Post added at 06:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:09 PM ----------

Final note: don't underestimate a speedy hard drive for your server, the maps and everything are quite large and since it doesn't take advantage of the memory, its reading from the drive alot I've noticed

Irrelevant. We only talk about hard disk performance here for the client. A server never has to load up a vehicle texture, it's IO is nothing compared to that of a client.

[Tankbuster 1733]

Exactly the same for my server. Drops to 19 as the main mission is created.

I'm admin of a new server that is more powerful. It'd be interesting to see how that performs.

.

And it's exactly the same. Both servers have been running an identical mission. On a persistent server, they are both down to 13 FPS after 3 or 4 days, but still perfectly playable.

[Cowboy Pilot 10]

Most everything is based upon the missions and scripts from all the test I have done between having 50 players on a custom missions with about 200 AI vs running domination with about 20 players. We got around 20FPS with those 50 players and at times as low as 2FPS during domination with a average of about 4-5 with that many in our server. Lately after the first main objective regardless of people it goes to about 2FPS for some reason.

[Rommel 2]

The server begins to experience bottlenecks around 20fps, any lower than that and you will experience all kinds of issues.