What kind of system is needed for an unreal tournament server?

[eyor]

I know that an ordinary router type thing need not be more than an old 486, but do you need dual 800 and 1 gig of memory for a UT server? What if you wanted 4 people on it? 10?
Thanks

 

[dszd0g]

Me and a group of friends use our Linux server while we are playing UT and it is just a K6-2 350 with 256MB of RAM. With 14 players it hits about 40-60% CPU utilization. I don't remeber how much RAM it was eating last time we had that many players, it was a good chunk of it but not all. I have no idea how much Windows requires for the same number of users, but I am sure it would require a more expensive set-up than that.

 

[skemlawn]

I would say that a 300 PII or equal would be sufficient for 4 peopel. With 128 megs.

10 people I would say something around 500 with 256 megs ram (you could probably get away with 192 megs).

Both on a W9x box, more if you are on 2k/NT, maybe a little less if you are on a *nix box.

 

[eyor]

oh, cool. I thought it would be more than that. can you play on the computer at the same time it is... um... serving?

 

[Rellik]

w2k would be a good choice for an OS. The CPU is important since UT is
quite CPU heavy, but take note that the dedicated server doesn´t render graphics, so anything like a P2 400/P3 500 will do fine. RAM
is more important as it is the factor that influences your map loading times most. 256 MB would be great. UT is not so RAM depended(128MB for one client is enough) but take note that w2k eats RAM for breakfast,lunch and dinner. So more then 256 is good, but not THAT important for a dedicated setup.

Put it on a fast HD!
EDIT: About your question: A dedicated server is, as described, a machine that runs UT maps and packet distribution in the background.
It will be a symbol in your tasktray. You CANNOT play on this machine.
To play on the machine, just setup a normal game(HOST).


Frag on!

 

[dszd0g]

If you want a good UT server I would recommend against hosting. Even on a really nice 1GHz system running 98 hosting, the performance of our K6-2 350 acting is server is much better. I know it sounds a little funny, but just having that little Linux box acting as server really makes the difference in performance. BTW, it does use modern IBM (i forget which model) 7200RPM disks. But its using an ancient CPU and an old Asus P5A mobo.

Watching other people's specs it really seems to matter what OS you want to run it on.

If you are going to host, I initially was going to suggest running at a low res, but when I thought about it I think you should run in as high a res as is playable and make your video card the bottleneck and leave as much as the CPU as possible towards serving. I have not tried it, but I would think that would provide better performance since running at 640x480 will eat up your CPU because the video card is not a bottleneck and it will generate a high fps using up the CPU.