Help, Want to run a dedicated server... RTCW

[Deak]

Hi,
I would like to build/buy a dedicated server to run the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
I am really new to this so please bear with me.

What would be minmal Cpu speed and ram that would be required?

What would perform best without overkill?

I have a cable connection that tests anywhere from 280 to 320 kbs.
What would be the highest number of people could play on this amount of bandwidth without lag? 20?

Thanks
Deak

 

[Vegito]

Hmm, depending on how many people you want but i run a dedicated cs server and with cable you can only support 5-6 user w/o lagging. You need dedicated connection and prob a dual 1500+ machine with at least 1 gb for 15-20 user. Thats what i'm running and it's a bit slow when a lot of user are on..

 

[dexter333]

At a LAN party yesterday, I ran a 10 person UT server on a 100mbit switched network on a 1ghz/512mb p3. When the people would join the server, their pings would spike to >4000ms for about 30 seconds and then drop down to around 13-30ms. I'm guessing a larger server is going to require a pretty powerful server.

 

[drag]

I don't know....

But traditionally with Quake stuff I know that it generally takes less hardware to run a server than it takes to play the game with nice graphics.
Most people that brag about their massive powerfull servers, are either full of it or play the games on the "dedicated" servers....

My suggestion would be:

for maximum performance: run Linux... do a minimal installation with no gui and no bells or whistles, configure a custom kernel that has just your hardware support built in.
and get the server files.

However more than likely you are a windows user, so do a clean minimal install of w2k.

For the hardware:

Find your buget. The more money you have the better the system you can afford, but it's pointless to talk about getting the new 2.8 gig processor if you can't pay for it...

The most important thing is you connection to the internet. this is were the big bucks get spent! I trust you mean kb with a little "b" (for bits) and not "kB" (for kiloBYTES). 320 kb spread among 20 users is only 16 bits between them, thats less than a third of the bandwidth available from a 56k modem (56k modem is advertised to provide 56kb's of bandwidth or 8 kB), If you'd be sure to limit bandwidth to 32kbs for each user I'd gues you would get about 8 users before you would start getting some major lag....

find a happy balance between proccessor speed and memory. I am guessing, but any thing over 1.5 gigs would be overkill. I'd rather have a 1000 megs of ddr sdram... If you spend all your money on processor and have little ram, then your server will have to use swap files on the hardrive and you can kiss your performance goodbye.

a decent motherboard is important, but buy one that is lean on features and high on performance. No point to having a high-end top of the line motherboard unless you are overclocking...

Forget wasting your money on a nice video card. Just use a generic one, or a old used one lying around. No point in buying a geforce4 for a computer you will never use it on.

Forget nice harddrive, a 1 or 2 gig is enough. A faster hardrive may increase read write performance, but you want your OS and Server programs to stay up in RAM were they are 100X faster than any hardrive....

soundcard?!? what soundcard!


However if I am right about your bandwidth, I'd say you could go with a on 400 pentium system with a memory upgrade to about 516 megs and run win98 (and reboot every once and awile to recover memory leaks!) and be fine and dandy for only 8 clients. It would be good for a clan meeting place or a small public server that you could invite freinds to. go to a nice wolfenstein fan site to find the facts though...

just my 2 cents.

 

[fastman]

Very good reply drag, you're right on the money on all accounts. The biggest factor in lag I've found will be your ISP in playing over the Net. Anything over 8 people on cable and you're going to have lag issues. In running LAN parties you dont need much in hardware I've had LAN parties with old Quad P2 200 which run great. My current Server (Dual P3 1GHz w/ 1Gig of DDR) runs with out a hic-up and the Dual NIC helps too in LAN parties. Put it all behind a simple Router/Switch and your set. Low end I would think a P3 800 with 512 mem would do fine for a dedicated server. Set all the settings for the game to there lowest levels to free up the CPU and once again no sound. Good luck and enjoy.