SRCDS and CPU Affinity w/TCAdmin

[Reinvented]

Hey guys,

I run a pretty large server, and use TCAdmin on my box. It's a very nice box, and can hold quite a bit. However, i looked around here for answers on CPU Affinity and what would be appropriate.

The box consists of Dual Quad-Core CPU's @ 2.5 GHz (Harpertowns), 4GB's of memory.

I use TCAdmin as I mentioned above, and I was always curious about how the load should be distributed.

I run the following off of the machine:

Counter-Strike: Source 32 player 100 tick x3
Team Fortress 2: 32 player 66 tick x3
Call of Duty 4

I know that SRCDS can only utilize one core, but what ill effects are there if I don't have the affinity boxes checked through TCAdmin?

What would be the best way to balance this load out for such a large amount of players at that tickrate?

My only fear is that it will lag somehow by fully loading one core instead of an entire cpu to distribute it over.. so I'm just trying to figure out the best performance.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

[Reinvented]

I've been testing it on one CPU, and it raises the CPU usage pretty high with Bots in there. I'm not sure how it'll do with players, but sometimes the server-side FPS drops really badly. Is there anyway to get this to run smoothly with no problems or negative effects?

I also tried without any affinity, and it dropped the tickrate to 8 sometimes.

So, how would it be if i set it to 1 whole CPU? 4 cores for all the CS servers?

[Drocona]

1, you can't run 100 tick on a gameserver with more than 18 players.
2. Normally (since SRCDS uses 1 core) binding/setting affinity to one core increases performance, when you don't set affinity windows will start switching it from one core to another to balance the load (which is not necessary cause you have a full core available, windows knows nothing really...) which results in bad performance.

Best thing would be:
TF2 server1: Core 1
TF2 server2: Core 2
TF2 server3, Core 3
COD4 server: Core 4
CSS: spread over the other cores

Keep Core 0 clean for the system, or run a small server from it, since you have 8 cores there shouldn't be any problem overloading a core since you can assign one server per core.

[DHJ]

Ehm, how do i bind a srcds to drive on e.g. core1 .

[Drocona]

task manager => affinity, select 1 core from that list.

[DHJ]

yeah i've see now, but when the server crash/restart it sets to all 4 cores again =/

[Drocona]

yup, you need a script or (in windows server) an additional startup command to set the affinity automatically.

[DHJ]

how do i make that `?

[Drocona]

You need some side program that can set affinities and works through commandline, however I didn't succeed when I tried (I only took 2,5 hours time to write something and then I got bored and never looked at it again since I don't need it anyways)

[aleggs]

I use a simple "start /affinity 1 srcds.exe blabla ..." to do that job.

[Drocona]

Yes, but that's only possible on Windows Server versions, not on other windows.
Don't know what OS the OP has.

[aleggs]

Uhh right, works on W2K3 but not on XP. But apparently it exists in Vista in the meantime. From a bit googling there is a command "taskset" under Linux, that should do the same thing (although I just see that this post is in the Windows forum, so it is not relevant).

But i guess "psexec -a x" should do the trick (http://www.sysinternals.com) for all Windows OSes. Havent tried it myself though, just checked the readme for psexec.

[chris999989]

You can go to the length of setting up firedaemon. It gives you the ability to make any program run as a service +++ many different settings along with it. I use it on my servers. If the server crash it starts it back up and through it i have core affinity automatically set up. You also get the ability to set priority.

[lol554]

(12-14-2010, 08:18 AM)chris999989 Wrote:  You can go to the length of setting up firedaemon. It gives you the ability to make any program run as a service +++ many different settings along with it. I use it on my servers. If the server crash it starts it back up and through it i have core affinity automatically set up. You also get the ability to set priority.

Don't raise an old thread for god sake..

[trewq]

Please do not raise old, dead threads from the dead. If you need similar help, please feel free to post your own thread with your question. Remember to read the required READ ME FIRST thread for the area in which you are posting.

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