Company Experience, Processor Comparions, and Tools!

[TheFragFactory]

I am starting a large source based community, doing sponsorships and what not for various clans, and hosting a large number of servers for both TF2 and CSS. I have some questions that I am hoping you guys can help with.

I have basically narrowed the hosting for my dedicated boxes down to either Ubiquity Hosting, Voxel, or Softlayer. The first two seem to be more expensive than Softlayer, but all 3 seem to be good companies. I currently use Ubiquity for my clans private and public servers, so I am more curious as to the other two and how they compare. My source community will not be associated with my clan, so really whatever company will work the best for my project I am interested in.

As far as processors go, I know I want a quad core, but I am not sure as to which one. I am looking at the Xeon 3000 series, Xeon 5000 series, Q6600 and Phenom. I am mostly interested in what the differences are. Whats the most powerful, what will run SRCDS the best, and so on. Any information to assist me in choosing a processor will be greatly appreciated.

Also, on the topic of hardware, would I be better off using a SATA, Raptor, or SCSI hard drive for these boxes. I am not sure how much of an increase players would notice from one to the other.

Lastly, I do not have a lot of experience with the different tools that I think I need. I am wondering if anyone knows of any good tools that will monitor the exact core usage % of each core, and the bandwidth that each srcds instance is using up. If anyone knows of any good tools (or even something that might come with with Windows 2003) I would appreciate it greatly.

[navarra]

go there, i dont know where, do something, i dont know what....

[TheFragFactory]

Thanks Troll.

[adamscybot]

Hello. I can help you on part of your topic.

Firstly, I have a Q6600 in my box with 4GB of ram and it runs like an absolute dream. I have about 70 slots of CSS total on it at the moment and when no one is on them CPU usage is 2%. When busy that rises to about 10% or something like that.

Also, to monitor each core you could use speedfan (free). This also allows you to monitor temps. You can find this at: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php.

As far as the difference between SATA, SCSI and raptors - theres little. Well, it depends. I have a SATA and there is no problem with it. If you have the money for a Raptor or SCSI then get one.

As for monitoring bandwith - Im not sure. If you want to go more advance you should strongly consider the TCADMIN game panel at http://www.tcadmin.com. TCADMIN also makes it easy to specify what core you want a server to run on.

Hope thats of some use,

Adam

[TheFragFactory]

Yeah, I am not sure I need a game server panel as I just use firedaemon and thats enough for my needs. However, possibly one of the cheaper game control panels wouldn't hurt.

Well thank you for the response. I just measured my box (Q6600 as well), and although its eating bandwidth like crazy, the CPU usage is nothing. I have about 100 TF2 slots full right now, give or take, and im between 40-50% total CPU usage. Not bad at all

Unfortunately the bandwidth is absolutely killing me. I have used about 800GB of bandwidth this week. I am probably going to have to shut all but one of my pubs down until I find a better deal somewhere on bandwidth.

[Mooga]

Moved to correct area.
Forwarded for 3 days.

[Drocona]

Stick with the core 2 quad, the xeons seem to give problems sometimes, the AMD phenoms are much slower

And, welcome to the new source engine bandwidth usage!

[skeletor]

thats correct, xeons we are actually starting to move away from with darkstar. the core2quads are pretty beautiful though.

Also I would suggest Ubiquity Thats just me though.

[Derek]

Ubiquity Hosting is Great! Corey and Mike are great guys.