CPU Choice

[essohdee]

Hello all,

As this is my first post I would like to introduce myself, My name is Chris and I'm a 20yr old college student majoring in CS.

Ok on to my topic, basicaly atm i have a dedicated server, it has a 10mbps uplink Core i5 750 Quad Core 2gb ddr2 1 250gb hdd and centos 5.5 32 bit. I have the option to get a xeon x3210 quad core with 2gb ddr2 and any linux os (going ubuntu this time i think for the 1000fps out of the box) the core i5 is at 2.5ghz and the xeon is at 2.1 ghz i believe. right now when my server hits 20 people the cpu usage is at close to 80% running sourcemod and 500 fps with pingboost 3... my main question is if i get the xeon will the server use less CPU and run more stable than a i5 would?

Thanks in advance,
Chris

[BehaartesEtwas]

CPU usage for game servers is more or less a random number, just don't look at it:
http://wiki.fragaholics.de/index.php/EN:Server_FAQ#My_CPU_usage_is_too_high.2C_what_can_I_do_about_it.3F

instead you should look at the server fps and make them stable (but not constant at 1000.0, that's fake and not stability).

[essohdee]

(09-18-2010, 07:17 PM)BehaartesEtwas Wrote:  CPU usage for game servers is more or less a random number, just don't look at it:
http://wiki.fragaholics.de/index.php/EN:Server_FAQ#My_CPU_usage_is_too_high.2C_what_can_I_do_about_it.3F

instead you should look at the server fps and make them stable (but not constant at 1000.0, that's fake and not stability).

What i'm mainly asking would a xeon running at 2.1 ghz make the server run more stable or even me getting core 2 quad running 2.8ghz with 12mb cache and 1333fsb

[BehaartesEtwas]

probably not. the i5 750 is a pretty good cpu. the difference between xeons and the "normal" cpus are mainly their support for multiple cpus and ECC ram etc.

I guess you can much easier (and cheaper) improve performance if you do not rely on ubuntu being good "out of the box". instead install a very recent kernel (usually means that you have to compile it by yourself) maybe with some patch like ZEN and (more important) set the right scheduling for the game server processes. see my howto how to do that...