It's been a while since I last updated this thread, and we've been through several servers in that time, so let me fill everyone in on what's been happening on the server front.
First of all, take a look at the site I use to gauge server performance and make rental decisions:
PassMark Software - CPU Benchmark Charts
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/mikey uses it, so I use it too. And in the few years I've been using it, I've seen that it appears to be the dominant CPU benchmarking site, so I trust it.
They offer a load of charts, but the only one we're interested in is the "Single Thread Performance" chart. That's the most important metric for games, since games are generally not very well multi-threaded. As long as you have a decent number of cores (i.e. not dual-core or some shit) the limiting factor for CPU performance tends to be the single-thread performance. In the case of PA that's without a doubt the most important number, because the sim runs on one thread.
Single Thread Performance
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.htmlNow the site offers three categories in the single-thread section: Desktop, Laptop, and Server. Obviously we're not interested in the Laptop category. For the time being, assume we're not interested in the Desktop either. So we're only interested in the Server chart, which is here:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThre ... ver-threadThe server we had for the past few months was the Xeon E-2278G which is currently at 4th place (it was 2nd when we rented it iirc), and the one we got just now is the Xeon W-1290P which is currently at 1st place. So we definitely have the fastest gaming server processor in the world right now. For comparison, take a look further down the chart:
The processor at the top is what we have now. The one at the bottom, the E3-1285 v6, is what we had right before mikey shut down the old Clan Wars. At the time, this was at the top of the chart, or maybe number two or three, I can't remember exactly. Either way, you can see the jump we've made in performance since then. It's pretty considerable (the public PA servers are WAY down the list, by the way, and moreover each of them hosts MULTIPLE games simultaneously; it's night and day to the performance we're getting). And even beyond sheer single-thread speed, consider that the old Clan Wars processor had 8 threads, and the one we have now has 20 (the one we had for the past couple of months had 16). So theoretically we should be able to run 18- or 19-planet systems with no problems, assuming mikey's claims that PA is now multi-threaded per planet are true... Definitely need to check that out.
Getting back for a second to our most recent server upgrade, here is the server we had before, in detail:
And here is what we just got:
As you can see, the new one is almost half the price, and it's a faster processor (plus a little faster RAM), so it was a great deal. It's a new hosting company that offers these systems, gaming-specific hosting company unlike several others we've used, so I guess they are trying to make a splash with good deals. It seems that often, once these companies get established and noticed, they are bought out by larger outfits and absorbed, at which point the good deals disappear. This happened to Incero which had given us the last server we used for Clan Wars before it got shut down, and then it was bought by Hivelocity, which we migrated to, but whose deals just weren't that good, and that's why we jumped ship. We even had some recent trouble with their performance, if some of you guys remember that. It took us several days to get them to fix their shit. So I am glad we left them behind, and I hope the new company's performance is on point. We'll see.
Aside from the faster processor (and faster RAM) and cheaper cost, which are the pros, the new server has some cons compared to the last one, at least on paper. It has 64 RAM instead of 128, and one hard drive instead of two. Also the data center is in Chicago instead of LA, which is a little less centrally located than before. So let's take each of these cons one by one:
-The downgrade to 64 RAM will certainly not be noticed at all. mikey still uses 64 for his "community" dedicated servers. The only reason you need a lot of RAM is if you're running giant wars that last for hours, at which point the history/Chrono Cam file keeps growing, but I doubt that even the old Clan Wars would have needed more than 64, let alone the smaller ones we'll be running now, since we have fewer players. To be sure, I am 100% planning to upgrade to 128 when the occasion permits, but currently the only configuration with that much RAM that the new hosting provider offers costs almost twice as much, at which point we could get two servers instead. So I ruled this out for now.
-The only functionality offered by the two hard drives we had was the convenience of not having to partition the hard drive, in order to install both Linux and Windows. It was just simpler for dan to administer that system, and switch between OSes. Now he will just have to partition. We lose no perfomance at all, and in fact the new hard drive is exactly the capacity of the older two combined, so we lose no capacity either.
-The shift from LA to Chicago would be perceptible for Australasians if we were playing a first-person game like
Rust, but for PA I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference. And even for
Rust, we're just talking a few ms, and
Rust isn't about the shooting. For sure though if we were running an FPS it would be an issue, but we're not, and we won't be running an FPS anytime soon. So it's not an issue.
So in exchange for the above slight cons and non-cons, we get a faster processor with more threads and faster RAM, and nearly half the price, to the point where we could get a second server soonish via these savings, if we actually needed it for something (perhaps once The Best Videogame Player In The World contest begins in January, we'll see). So I think we got a good deal.
But the story doesn't end there. I am always on the lookout for an upgrade, so let me sketch for you what lies ahead.
It is at this point that we must look into the Desktop category of the single-thread charts. After all, as far as the Server category goes, there's nowhere to go from where we are, we're at the top. But if you look in the Desktop category, things change:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.htmlIgnore the rest of the chart and focus on the top 5 entries.
The top 4 entries are the new AMD processors released just a few days ago. Before that, the top entry was the current 5th: the i9-10900K. This had been the reigning desktop chip for months, and in fact our server processor is the server version of this chip. Take a look at our hosting company's promotion page:
https://ready2frag.com/You can see that they don't differentiate between the two chips. You place your order, and they give you whatever they have/want. However, because the Xeon version is a little faster (3,305 vs. 3,175), and because server chips tend to be tougher and more reliable due to superior binning etc., I emailed them before placing an order to ensure we'd get a Xeon, and we got one.
All this to say that our only options for improving speed further is four new AMD desktop processors that were just released and that I can't even find to buy, let alone rent from data centers. It will be at least a month or two before there is stock to buy, and it could be up to half a year before any data center begins offering these new chips for rental. So we won't be upgrading again anytime soon. However, when we do upgrade again it will be glorious, as the single-thread performance increase is considerable, and what's more the 5905X chip has 32 threads lol, compared to the 20 we have now. That's almost DOUBLE the planets to what we can do now, which is almost TRIPLE the planets we could do in the old Clan Wars. So I am most certainly looking forward to that.
Of course the question still remains of whether we should be moving to a desktop processor at all. There has to be a reason people differentiate between desktop and server processors, though I was chatting about that with dan recently and he said that in recent years the two categories have been converging, and their differences diminishing. And considering that we don't play so much as to super-stress these chips, perhaps we can move to desktop with no issues. mikey is certainly running desktop chips for his "high-end" dedicated servers (the old 3800X chip that's no. 44 down the desktop chart with a mere 2,745 score), and he's using them 24/7, and his regulars have the passwords and are playing several games a day, so reliability doesn't seem to be an issue.
This is what mikey is running, for reference:
https://planetaryannihilation.com/dedic ... uidelines/That's 39 places down from our server (and without counting the extra Xeon performance over the i9). In short, no one has played PA in a server as fast as ours, so I can't wait to test it this Saturday on a new Clan War. I'll have details soon. In the meantime, if any of you know anything about servers that I don't, and you can offer advice and suggestions, by all means do so. I knew nothing back in 2017 when I got into running PA events, and I've learned a decent deal since then, but I could always learn more.