PC Doub in performance on the dedicated server!

[Sarakatunga]

Hello, I have a long-standing doubt with the dedicated server. I have a pc (Phenom 2 x 4 3.2 ghz, Mother M5A97 LE R2.0, 16 gb ram Kingston 1866 mhz, Windows 10 64bits) I am hosting a server with 16 players max, 40 Zombies max spawn, 8 Zombies blood moon (Map 6k ). when the 16 players are there the processor reaches 90%. (gives lag). Now install an Amd Fx 8350 8 Core 4.0 ghz processor a little better but I see that each core is using within a range of 45%, 55% on the server (on blood moon). the problem is that it does not improve much as expected and I do not understand why the processor does not extract juice from the server. I understand that the pc is old, is that why? I would like to have at least a maximum of 22 players. What do you recommend for a 4K map? or switch to another operating system to make it work better? or practically nothing can be done because of how old the pc is. With win 7 ultimate 64 bits it is the same does not change in performance. or bring the processor to 4.7 ghz with an overclok ?. I really don't want to invest in a new pc.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

I'm not sure here but the Bulldozer CPUs where heavily discussed back then if they are even "really" 8-core. What i remember the cpu has 8 integer cores, but each 2 of them share one FPU, so there are in total only 4 FPUs. Also the instruction decoder was called as a bottleneck. Both of them depend on what exactly the workloads needs to calculate. So e.g. the cpu can't fully perform if heavy FPU calculation is required and i can't fully use his cores if integer and FPU is required in parallel.

So maybe the 7d2d server workload can't use the full potential of these cpu architekture and therefore only shows ~50% cpu usage.

However...

How much is a "little bit" faster?

Did you check your energy settings are set to "max cpu power" and check the temperatures so that you are sure that the cpu doesn't do thermal throttling?

Is that load of 50% (or 90% with your phenom) during a normal day, or is that during bloodmoon? If that is already during a normal day, performance during a bloodmoon should even be far worse....

I'm running a dedicated server on a Xeon E3-1225v3 which in theory is comparable to your FX-8350, even if it is just 4 core. I only had a maximum of ~10 players and with that the cpu usage during a regular day was only 30-40%. During bloodmoon it reached 100% easily and caused drops down to 25-30fps for every player.

So i guess if you want 16-22 players with no performance drops the only way is to get a more powerfull computer. Also note that the official supported playercount is only 8.

Would be really nice if the dedicated server could (optionally) drop some performance info like fps and zombie count into the logs, so it would be possible to compare especially the server perfomance on different cpus.

 

[Sarakatunga]

The charge between 45%, 55% is during the blood moon, with 16 players maximum. normal is working at 30%, 40% (16 players) The server manager shows how many fps the server is working and the amount of z, as you will see in this image, bottom right It is at 6 players and worked at 29.21 fps the server (it is very little). I remember that in alpha 17 it gave more FPS, I think it had between 80 fps at 120 (With a Phenom 2 x4 processor) but I did not do many tests, also not many players entered. what I don't remember if this performance problem is from alpha 18. In the blood moon the server manager shows that the server drops to 8 fps with 16 players and 50 zombies. (gives lag). Not much was solved by switching to a 3850 fx.

PD: the cpu temperature on the blood moon reaches about 60 degrees maximum.

 

[SylenThunder]

Server FPS is listed regularly in the logs. IIRC, you want it to be around 20-30.

 

[Fox]

5+ years ago, there was a topic that discussed the calculation for running a server and was something around: minimum 1 modern CPU thread per 2 players. So 16 players would be minimum 8 modern CPU threads (Ryzen 5 1400 or better). 22-24 Players would basically be minimum 12 modern threads (Ryzen 5 1600 or better). I have no clue if this theory still applies.

I also remember the Ram calculations which was similar too. Roughly 1GB of ram per 2 players. Again, don't know if that still applies.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

I also remember the Ram calculations which was similar too. Roughly 1GB of ram per 2 players. Again, don't know if that still applies.

At least this seems not valid (anymore) from what i observed.

RAM usage seems to mostly depend on the mapsize. With a 4K map my server used ~3GB of RAM without any player online. With an 8k Map it used ~12GB right away.

The RAM usage did not nearly change at all wheater there was one player online or 4, especially in relation to how many RAM the server needs anyway.

 

[Sarakatunga]

Sure, he suspected. what consumes a lot is the AI of the zombies but it would be sad the server if I limit it to 25 zombies for more capacity. Now I am going to test if I slow down the z so that it does not consume as much but I doubt. I have it on (jog), let's give it (walk) to see what happens haha.

and I suspect you are not using all 8 cores as mr said. Nomad in the second post.  hope madmole fix this problem in alpha 19

 

[SylenThunder]

and I suspect you are not using all 8 cores as mr said. Nomad in the second post.  hope madmole fix this problem in alpha 19

If the OS is configured properly, the dedi will use all the cores in a18.

a19 seems to be using less RAM so far, but I haven't had a chance to do any real load testing.

 

[Sarakatunga]

The map also depends on consuming RAM, but I was finding out with the issue of the fx 8350 that it does not have 8 physical cores, I think it has 4 physical and the other 4 would be virtual. I am lost in this. I see several 32 slot and 250 zombie max servers. but no one is online. someone plays on a server like this, with many people ?? mmm

 

[SylenThunder]

The map also depends on consuming RAM, but I was finding out with the issue of the fx 8350 that it does not have 8 physical cores, I think it has 4 physical and the other 4 would be virtual. I am lost in this. I see several 32 slot and 250 zombie max servers. but no one is online. someone plays on a server like this, with many people ?? mmm

If you go over 90 for max zeds, BloodMoons will be a slideshow. If you go over 30 players, map data gets corrupted, and you have to restart and wipe frequently.