can this processor handle a 50 slot gungame server?

[gamemann]

Processor: intel i3 3.1 ghz with 2 cores
Ram: 8 gb
Internet speed: 100 mbps upload
Please tell me!

[BehaartesEtwas]

maybe, maybe not. srcds now supports multi-threading, so it might actually use both cores. but I am not sure how well this works.

[gamemann]

(11-12-2011, 07:55 PM)BehaartesEtwas Wrote:  maybe, maybe not. srcds now supports multi-threading, so it might actually use both cores. but I am not sure how well this works.

Okay, thanks

[Stinkyfax]

Short answer:
Sorry, it won't.

A bit longer:
First of all 'multicore' is very dodgy statement. I study parallel programming at university and SRCDS is definitely not parallel.
Hence can not benefit from multi cores.
SRCDS usually has 3 threads running: network thread which is around 5% of total, root thread which spawns other threads and watches whether srcds crashed etc (consumes around 0%) and logics thread - does all the logics and consumes around 95% of total.
Why the primary thread can not be parallel? Simply because:
1. reprogramming from sequential to parallel is like making new server - you should go from the beginning and change completely everything - very expensive, also is harder to make.
2. Is there a need?
3. Thousands of plugins/extensions/etc heavily rely on the fact that srcds is sequential.
List can go on and on.

running 50 slots on 3ghz cpu will make people have very huge choke (around 20-50) on full load.

If you are about to get maximum of your hardware make sure you don't have "slow" plugins, some gungame plugins can seriously reduce performance of your server.

[BehaartesEtwas]

(11-13-2011, 09:44 AM)Stinkyfax Wrote:  SRCDS usually has 3 threads running:

is this still true since the recent multicore update? there is now the CVAR host_thread_mode also for servers, but I am not entirely sure how much effect it has... before that update, it was true, srcds did all the time consuming calculations in one single thread, thus it couldn't really make use of a second core.

[Stinkyfax]

gdb tells server using pool of 4 threads, but they are still useless. Testing on practice: Create 32 slot server, fill it with 32 bots, open "top" and you will see cpu usage be around 80-101%. 101%. If it could get good use at least of 2 cores usage would be around 120-200%.
P.S. testing was with host_thread_mode 0/1/2 - no difference noticed, server even didn't create new threads on changing cvar from 0 to 2

[gamemann]

yeah i tried host_thread_mode 1 on my servers. Didn't make a difference

[BehaartesEtwas]

ok good to know :-)