SRCDS Steam group


Server Upgrade Advice
#1
Question 
Hey guys,

I have about $1000 to spend.

Currently we have:

ASUS P4C800-D
Intel P4 2.6c
Antec 350W PSU
80GB WD IDE
2GB RAM

This is what I'm thinking of:

ASUS K8N-DRE
2x AMD Opteron 265 CPU
maybe WD 37GB 10000rpm SATA

Right now we are running:

20 slot 100tick public server 500fps
15 slot 100tick private server 500fps
12 slot 100tick private server 500fps
Ventrilo Server
TeamSpeak Server
SRCDS FPS Booster
HLstatsX on public server
Apache

Everything is running fine now but I'm thinking that we want to add 2 more 20 slot 100tick public servers.

Any advice here would be greatly appreciated guys!

Thanks!
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#2
I know asus tends to be good in some areas, but you might wanna do some reviews on other motherboards, in my opion while they are costly, tyan or supermicro boards tend to be a bit more stable how much more memory to you plan on adding? I know those boards can support up to 16GB i think (I had a server with dual physical opteron 265's and that box had 16GB) for 2 more servers on there, i think maybe 2GB of ram should do nicely.
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#3
I shurely would separate the Apace and HLstatsX from the gameserver.

Furtheron I have to agree with cryotek: buy a decent serverboard and case (pref a barebone). 2 GB will do just fine.

Also a raptor isn't that usefull for a gameserver. I currently run 8 CSS servers. 2 x 1.6, 1 x 32 slots BF2142 and 2 x NFS on a dual 275 and that on a raid1 sata setup (7200 rpm). I think it's better to invest in uptime than disk speed. Disk hardly do anything at all.

You can also think about using your P4 as a separate web (HLstatsX + Apache) and voiceserver (my option).
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#4
cryotek Wrote:I know asus tends to be good in some areas, but you might wanna do some reviews on other motherboards, in my opion while they are costly, tyan or supermicro boards tend to be a bit more stable how much more memory to you plan on adding? I know those boards can support up to 16GB i think (I had a server with dual physical opteron 265's and that box had 16GB) for 2 more servers on there, i think maybe 2GB of ram should do nicely.

Personally I have a lot of faith in ASUS so I'm thinking that I'll probably stay with them. I'll look into Tyan though. I've heard good things about them too. Thanks for your information!

Hollanda Wrote:I shurely would separate the Apace and HLstatsX from the gameserver.

You can also think about using your P4 as a separate web (HLstatsX + Apache) and voiceserver (my option).

That's a good idea. I won't be able to do that at my current ISP because it's simply too expensive to add additional servers. I'll research some options for me here.

Hollanda Wrote:Furtheron I have to agree with cryotek: buy a decent serverboard and case (pref a barebone). 2 GB will do just fine.

Also a raptor isn't that usefull for a gameserver. I currently run 8 CSS servers. 2 x 1.6, 1 x 32 slots BF2142 and 2 x NFS on a dual 275 and that on a raid1 sata setup (7200 rpm). I think it's better to invest in uptime than disk speed. Disk hardly do anything at all.

Alright cool. I'll take the money I would of spent on a Raptor and put them into just plain old SATA drives instead. I really appreciate your information!

Hollanda, what CPU are you running right now?
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#5
Hollanda Wrote:I shurely would separate the Apace and HLstatsX from the gameserver.

Furtheron I have to agree with cryotek: buy a decent serverboard and case (pref a barebone). 2 GB will do just fine.

Also a raptor isn't that usefull for a gameserver. I currently run 8 CSS servers. 2 x 1.6, 1 x 32 slots BF2142 and 2 x NFS on a dual 275 and that on a raid1 sata setup (7200 rpm). I think it's better to invest in uptime than disk speed. Disk hardly do anything at all.

You can also think about using your P4 as a separate web (HLstatsX + Apache) and voiceserver (my option).

i completly agree on the hard drive comment, if you consider a map is usually a max of 5MB, an hard drive can easily tripple that. and it takes clients much longer to connect then it does for a server to load a map.

also, starting the servers at different times helps, because if there is no one playing in your servers the rounds will always end at the same time if its on a timer.

EDIT: hollanda said he is using a dual opteron 248, im not sure if he means dual as in 2 seperate CPU's or a dualcore in a single cpu.

i would definitly reccomend an AMd. i have not tested the new intel conroes though. but my 3.4Ghz pentium D doesnt run css as good as my AMD 3800+ X2
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#6
Wicked. Thanks for the comments USB. I'm going to go with the 265's for sure now.
I looked into the other motherboards that you guys mentioned and they were a little out of my price range or didn't have what I was looking for.

Thanks again guys! I'll let you know when I have everything up and running!

Quick question though, I'll be having 4 cores and I'll want to set the servers to different cores, how can I do this automatically when they start up? Thanks!
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#7
I currently run with a dual 275 setup (4 x 2,2 Ghz).
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#8
Hollanda Wrote:I currently run with a dual 275 setup (4 x 2,2 Ghz).

thats a damn lot of process power.

you got one of those 32GB motherboards?
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#9
yep but only 4 gb ram installed (more than enough), mostly using 2-2,5 GB of ram.
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#10
I found out how to do the start-up programs on the different cores thing.
I'll be using this: http://forums.bots-united.com/showpost.php?p=47619&postcount=5
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#11
Why would you wanna use this? At least on windows cpu load is spreaded over the various cpu's. So on a dual machine 50% load roughly means 25% load on each CPU/core.
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#12
So I wouldn't get better performance by setting one pub on one core, and then another pub on another core and so on?
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#13
Then you loose the big + with dual cpu/core setup: the gameserver can't swap from the one to the other cpu when load is high. 4 cores give like the same perfomance  than 5 single cpu machine (on the same speed).

For e.a. running 2 x 48 slots BF2142 servers on a dual xeon 3.2 2mb machine. If 1 server is full (around 50% load average), load on both cpu's is only 50% and not 100% on 1 cpu...
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#14
Excellent! Thanks for the help Hollanda! I'm going to hop on your CS pub!
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#15
Wicked! AMD price drop on October 30th! Here are the projected prices: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/2702_large_opty_1.png
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