Server Suitability ?

[Rinko]

I've been offered a Dual Xeon 550Mhz machine for not alot of money, and would like to know how suitable it would be for running source ds's on a non-gui linux installation.

Basically I run a small LAN party and have been running a CSS server from a Duron 1.4 previously. I am trying to find out if the Dual Xeon would cope with a 20-24 player srcds process (without bots).

Alternatively would it be capable of running 2 * 12 player servers (setting processor affinity for each srcds process) ?

Other than the machine speed I don't have any more details (but am assuming 512/1024 PC2700 DDR with gigabit ethernet).

Also - any specific recommendations of distro's would be appreciated (but I will be reading through the existing threads for more info on this).

Thanks in advance,

Rinko

[Goofy666]

I wouldn't know if the Source server itself benefits from the two CPU's, but maybe one can be used for Source and the other one for another Source server (like you said) or some other services?

Offtopic:
How many memory (and what type) was in that 1.4Ghz Duron, and how many slots could you serve with it (on a Source server)? Was the server also used for leeching etc. while the gameserver was being used? (I have a TBird 1.4Ghz myself, so some experiences about the performance of a somewhat equal PC are always welcome ).

[Ap0kalipSe]

I don't think you will see much of any performance increase in a dual 550mhz setup over 1.4ghz

they may be xeon's but i'd say just the raw mhz gives you the bigger advantage there.

[Rinko]

The Duron 1.4Ghz server was running with 512MB of PC2100 DDR (2*256) on Windows 2000. It is a dedicated server, so no leeching and map downloads were redirected to the file server.

At our last lan it was running with 19/20 players in game and it performed very well - latency was a little high but no warping or lag.

We are looking at having more people at our next lan and so we are evaluating the requirements for the server.

Having spoken to a friend from an establushed UK Lan party company (shameless plug -> http://www.gameon.co.uk), he thinks that a dual 500Mhz xeon box would probably run 2 * 16 player server (one on each processor) - but would struggle with many more players.

Thanks for you input and hopefully my bit of info will help you out.

[jamitupya]

Rinko Wrote:Having spoken to a friend from an establushed UK Lan party company (shameless plug -> http://www.gameon.co.uk), he thinks that a dual 500Mhz xeon box would probably run 2 * 16 player server (one on each processor) - but would struggle with many more players.

I'd like to find out mor eon this , because as i've noticed i cannot get source to bind to a specific CPU as i run dual opterons which is a shame :S
If you can point me in the right dirrection on binding to a cpu i would be most appreciative.