Various SRCDS server questions (Hardware/Software)

[Brutal]

Ive had some questions come up recently and I felt you guys were the best suited to answer them.

I built a xeon nehalem dual quad e5520 (8 cores) box with 12GB DDR3 Ram, 2 320gb HDDs (Raid 1) 1U colocation box running Windows 2008 Server 64bit. I have not put much stress on it, but I read something from dracona saying you cannot run 32 slot servers on less than 2.4ghz CPUs. This brought about a few questions.

1) Does srcds work better assigned to one core or is it better to let it float? Right now they are all floating, but if assigning it to a core would work better I will do that. Also, why wouldnt a 32 slot server run on one core of this machine?

2) With 16 virtual cores, I am wondering if I can utilize them at all. I was told I can assign srcds processes to use 1 core and 1 virtual core, but I dont really know how accurate this information is.

3) A friend is getting a i7 box to colocate, and told me that he can run 8 32 slot tf2 servers on it. Im wondering how this is possible considering its only 4 cores, are the i7's really that much more powerful than the nehalem's for game servers? (If I cant even run a 32 slot tf2 server on one core of this machine im worried as I could have built an i7 box for much cheaper)

4) Ive read multiple times on these forums that srcds does not like windows 64bit. Since I have to run it since I have 12gb of ram im wondering exactly what this entails (as far as what it doesnt like about it)

[Beaverbeliever]

(10-18-2009, 09:49 PM)Brutal Wrote:  Ive had some questions come up recently and I felt you guys were the best suited to answer them.

I built a xeon nehalem dual quad e5520 (8 cores) box with 12GB DDR3 Ram, 2 320gb HDDs (Raid 1) 1U colocation box running Windows 2008 Server 64bit. I have not put much stress on it, but I read something from dracona saying you cannot run 32 slot servers on less than 2.4ghz CPUs. This brought about a few questions.

1) Does srcds work better assigned to one core or is it better to let it float? Right now they are all floating, but if assigning it to a core would work better I will do that. Also, why wouldnt a 32 slot server run on one core of this machine?

2) With 16 virtual cores, I am wondering if I can utilize them at all. I was told I can assign srcds processes to use 1 core and 1 virtual core, but I dont really know how accurate this information is.

3) A friend is getting a i7 box to colocate, and told me that he can run 8 32 slot tf2 servers on it. Im wondering how this is possible considering its only 4 cores, are the i7's really that much more powerful than the nehalem's for game servers? (If I cant even run a 32 slot tf2 server on one core of this machine im worried as I could have built an i7 box for much cheaper)

4) Ive read multiple times on these forums that srcds does not like windows 64bit. Since I have to run it since I have 12gb of ram im wondering exactly what this entails (as far as what it doesnt like about it)

1) This is totally up to you. Windows IMO does a great job load balancing, and you can see the results from your task manager. However, if only running a certain amount per core, then you might as well assign it.

2) I'm not an expert, but virtual cores will run SRCDS fine, as long as the box isn't overloaded.

3) He might be saying running empty servers. We set quotas for when they are full. Any i7 can't run 8 32slot servers full...safely...

4) With over 4gb ram, you are forced to use 64bit to achieve best results. I've used 64bit Windows and 32bit Windows for SRCDS, and have never seen much of an issue.

[BloodAngel]

Nehalems is the CPU serries that covers Bloodfields(1366 i7's)/gainstown(1366 xeons)/lynfields(1156 fakei7's).

If your friend is on a bloomfield i7, then clock for clock they are identical to their gainstown counterparts. Were as lynfields are slower.

As for assigning to virtual cores, windows recognises the two HT virtual cores as real CPU cores, allowing you to use them as real cores. So it's just like setting affinity. I don't know what TF2 will react like, but my i7 920 can handle a 20slot 100tick css server on one virtual core easily.

Christy