Gaming Servers!!!

[richman]

hey guys,

What is the best soloution for gaming servers? iam looking to build some local servers for around 35 - 40 players each server will be able to host one game what soloutions would be the best and operating systems and things??

Richard

[dave87]

I would have thought something like a 64bit Athlon 3200 with a gig of ram should run game servers no problems, though that does depend on the games being played.

[Darth_Spud]

Aren’t gaming servers reliant on the contingency of your broadband? Most broadband packages come with only a 256k upload; this may affect the performance from the point of view of players connecting to your server. Also I would run the server off windows 2000 (because it’s less memory hungry than Windows XP) or Linux. I would say 2 Gig of RAM because 35 - 40 players is quite a lot even for a normal server that’s why most servers have a max of around 16 - 24 players. What game/s are you looking to put on this server?

[Drobbins]

These servers are for lan partys we are looking at some of these games so far,

Unreal Tournament 2004
Counter Strike

- Drobbins

[richman]

Drobbins is my partner in crime for all of you who dont know.....we are not having a intenet connection on site for the first LAN and we are getting a gigabit network set up to make the best use of the speed available to us.

Rich

[aidanjt]

1Gb of ram would be enough with Linux since it has superiour memory management, my Linux box at home has 512Mb of RAM and it easily handles 3-4 players + up to 16 extra bots on massive maps. Fast disks (like raptors) would serve best to cut down on map rotation time.

Now, I know Athlon 64's (or better yet, an opteron) would be better for processing game engines, but with nVidia being the only realistic chipset provider for AMD cpu's, you're a bit screwed since nVidia refuses to release chipset spec documentation to the opensource community, so drivers are being hacked together using reverse engineering methods, which means they are quite unstable (basically considered experimental) compaired to Intel's chipset drivers which are extremely stable. Working with 3rd party developers is one thing Intel does do right. Although Conroe isn't publically available yet to beat AMD in FPU performance, it would probibly be better to use an Intel CPU for that reason alone. (Even a BGA P4 Prescott would do the job).

[nvening]

Why can you not use a motherboard for A64 which is not an Nvidia chipset?

[MantisCSS]

40 players would be laggy for a high percentage of players, when it comes to counterstrike and most probably unreal. Maybe look at 24 man max imo

[aidanjt]

Why can you not use a motherboard for A64 which is not an Nvidia chipset?

And what alternitive? VIA?.. their chipsets have had more flakes produced the last few years than kellogs.

[aidanjt]

40 players would be laggy for a high percentage of players, when it comes to counterstrike and most probably unreal. Maybe look at 24 man max imo

Not on GIGABIT LAN (or even 10Base-T for that matter).. they aren't talking about Internet at all.

The only player limit on modern hardware for game servers is map size when you're hosting a LAN party.

[ifyouknowme]

dual xeon with 2gb of ram running debain sata raid array should be able to run 40 or ebay a server i think azio has one for sale atm about about 400 quid and its very nice with a spare cpu the bidding might have ended though

[aidanjt]

a dual xeon with 2gb of ram would be able to run 40 freaking UT2004 servers nevermind hosting players..

Games servers are cut down versions of the game engines, Battlefield 2 on a players computer needs significantly more horsepower than a Battlefield 2 server..

Honestly, the best way to ensure performance is to make sure everyone has at least a 10Base-T NIC (everyone having a 100Base-TX NIC is nearly a certianty these days), and have decent disks in the server.

[richman]

would a AMD 3000 64 bit with 1GB ram be good enough??

Iam not sure which motherboard tho, i see many reviews but most are for desktop machines.

Richman

[ifyouknowme]

more ram but yeah would work
dfi boards are the best imo mines solid as a rock

[richman]

Would them motherbords not be a slightly bit over the top for server ussage??

Rich

[moose82]

As you say you are wanting to run each game on a seperate server box for a LAN.

Alot of professional outfits (GSP's) use one high spec box to run several games at the same time. Depending alot on the game being played. CS and UT are pretty easy going on resources so I should think you'd get both 40slot games running off of one box. BF2 especially a 40-64man server will demand it's own box in resources...

I would suggest a Single Core Opteron system with 2GB RAM and 10K/15k RPM HDD's.
I suggest a SATA controller card and splitting the games across two HDD's to spread the load. Also consider a dedicated OS HDD to remove the OS processes from the Game HDD's.
They are going to be going like a bat out of hell to keep up with the users let alone OS processes aswell.

Without doubt you will want to run a form of Linux. (Debian coming out on top of my list)
Linux will give you the stability and control you will want. (Okay you might need a few helping hands to get the game servers installed, stable, and optimised if you have never used Linux before. There are loads of helpful guides and tutorials online. I got CS configged on RedHat 9 in no time using an online guide. This was way back when HL was new. (note HL not HL2)

Ahh the good old days of University. Whoever said students have too much time on their hands? Well they were right ;-)

Anyway carrying on...

Most GSP's cram all that into expensive 1u boxes for CO-LO in DataCentres but if it's a local machine nothing stops you chucking the kit into a well ventilated Tower box.

Also look at your network, I would say run GBit LAN from server to switch and then 10/100 to the rest of the systems. THE REASON If you look at your network data load when you are playing a LAN game typically it sits around 2% on a 100M. If you have 40machines all using 2% capacity the poor server is trying to deal with 80M at the same time, times that by two and 160M is going in and coming out at the same time.

If your budget stretches to it put a dedicated server Gbit NIC into the box to give you better data throughput and reduce packet loss.

I've not even attempted to go hunting around for prices for you just in case this is way over the top for what you are after.