Gamingdeluxe.co.uk, poor performance?
Neil79
Join Date: 2012-07-06 Member: 153950Members
Join Date: 2012-07-06 Member: 153950Members
I was playing on a french server (FR) which gave me smooth an amazing gameplay yet right after i played on gamingdeluxe.co.uk and it was bloody awful, stuttering and jerky, bad frame rates e.t.c.. Yet both servers gave me a ping of 23ms+ in the server browser, i'm sure i've had problems on this server before.
Next time it happens i'll do a video.
Next time it happens i'll do a video.
Comments
There are only about 5 public European servers that have good enough CPU to run the game without rate drops.
GamingDeluxe.co.uk: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/cNcpQ.png" target="_blank">http://i.imgur.com/cNcpQ.png</a>
Thirsty Onos: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Sp7dO.png" target="_blank">http://i.imgur.com/Sp7dO.png</a> (Note, those two sharp dips [at 8pm and 11pm] are polling errors and not reflective of actual performance, however I'm still planning on upgrading because we were sat at 28-29 for most of the late night which i'm not happy about. The quick fix being to drop to 16 slots but I'd rather just upgrade and maintain 18 slots, whereas he's running 20 slots on a server instance much more thinly allocated.)
What I do notice is a lot of people with high pings (100 or more) connect to the server, and they appear very choppy. As skulks, they are very hard to hit.
But regardless, I hope UWE makes some significant improvements to server performance before release, otherwise it will be hard for start-up servers to succeed, unless they have their own overclocked hardware or a GSP package that's tailored for cpu-intense single-threaded applications.
What I do notice is a lot of people with high pings (100 or more) connect to the server, and they appear very choppy. As skulks, they are very hard to hit.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Typically, I find >20 ticks to be generally 'lag-free' and playable. Its when you drop into the sub-20 tick range that gameplay becomes noticeably laggy, with lots of rubberbanding/micro-stuttering. Its worse for people with higher ping because their computer need to do more prediction, hence more and worse rubberbanding when the server updates them.
This is anecdotal and based on no data at all; but I tend to notice anything <25 and likewise find <20 completely unplayable in the average game because hit detection really seems to take a big hit sub the 20 mark.
Im antsy about holding as close to 30 as possible simply because although we might not be able to percieve it past a certain point (for me its somewhere around 25 [+/- 2]); it could certainlly still have an effect on the outcome of competitive games.
It disappoints me to see server Op's that clearly know what they're doing when they add those extra few slots, dragging their fantastic rock solid 30tick server down into the muddy low 20 ticks. (Not to speak of what it does to gameplay pacing to have slots in the 20's).
It should be noted that the two NS2 servers are not the only ones running on the box and as I type this our Empires Mod server has around 30-40 people on it, which I think is interfering although there is nothing to suggest so in the server's resource usage.
I don't know if this is an issue with our dedi or there is some hidden config I have to change, but this is making the game unplayable and I'd love to know how to fix it.
<a href="http://imgur.com/Eq2mN" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/Eq2mNl.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Unfourtunately, I wouldn't expect great performance from an E3-1270 right now, but its powerful enough that the tickrate should mostly stay above 10. For example, this is <a href="http://ns2servers.devicenull.org/detail.php?id=390" target="_blank">another server</a> running on <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=121581&st=0#entry1985960" target="_blank">pretty similar hardware</a>:
<a href="http://imgur.com/9hoXf" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/9hoXfl.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Are you running any other programs in the background (e.g. Vent/TS3/Mumble server, etc)? The things you might want to try are:
- Turning off the Empires server temporarily
- Locking the NS2 and Empires servers to different cores manually (via setting their core affinity)
- Turning off the Empires server temporarily
- Locking the NS2 and Empires servers to different cores manually (via setting their core affinity)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The dedi does have a few other servers running on it - TS3 and Empires being the other main servers. I disabled all of the servers except TS3 and Empires when I wrote that post. I had already tried setting the affinities of both Empires and NS2, but to no avail.
UKGamer: Basically, if your server isn't clocked at 4GHz+, you're never going to get a stable tickrate. That's just how how bad the server performance is at the moment, unfortunately. It doesn't really matter what other servers you have running on the box at the same time, NS2 only needs two cores -- it does need a lot of juice from those two cores however.
It's strange how on the previous dedi we had the same amount of servers running on an i5-2400 and there were no issues. I hope these server performance issues get resolved soon.
You can't do direct tickrate comparison with other games though because of the architecture of the server side code. I understood that in ns2 the player moves are not calculated in ticks which makes high server tickrate less of a requirement and high tickrate giving less advantage compared to other games.
If that's true then I would have hoped this upgrade would solve those problems. I guess I'll have to wait and see if future patches increase performance, otherwise I guess I won't be hosting any NS2 servers. :(
Obviously, a solid 30 tickrate is the best you can have. However, the game is playable on anything above 20 decently, and just-about-playable on ticks of 15+. Anything less than 15 and you will start to notice bad Framerate and stuttering.
You and I apparently have very different definitions of "playable". I notice things not registering accurately even when it's fluctuating between 25-30.
That may simply be a bug. I was in a game where aliens built whips everywhere, which caused tickrate to drop. The server never recovered after the match. Its tickrate would fluctuate between about 25 and 30, even in the ready room between matches, and even after a map change. I had to restart the server to fix it.
I still think something funny is going on with your server. It should be performing better than it is now, but I'm not sure what else to try.
I will say that i did have issues getting the chips to run always at 3.7, it would always downclock even with heavy load/all powersaving features turned off. I ended up running an application called Throttlestop, and unchecking the box for the C1E state, which resolved the downclocking.
This might be worth trying, or, even better, getting into the bios and disabling the C1E state/downclocking features. If the CPU is trying to throttle under load, that would be consistent with your poorer performance that other comparable servers.
I'll see what I can do. Thanks for your help!
I run one of our PT servers on a 1270, and it did not perform well while power saving was on. Once I figured out how to disable it, things got much smoother. I can't recall what bios option it was, but using CPU-z was very helpful as it displayed the actual clockrate.
Good to know. Anecdotally, people have seen increased client-side performance from disabling them so something similar may occur server-side.
Also, found this <a href="http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/611" target="_blank">nifty little explanation</a> of what the C-stats do.
I'm renting from gaming deluxe - but on a E3-1280 Chip which holds at 4Ghz constantly, I'm holding out until release to see if there's any magical drop in server resource req's but it looks like i'll be shelling out for the E3-1290v2 as I mentioned in earlier comments. Xeons below 1280v1 are going to see problems at 18 slots when games cross the 40 minute mark, 16 slots on a 1270v1 is reasonable under all circumstances however, once we find out what's causing your problems it's up to you to decide what to settle on.
I find that interesting, do you have any more information about this? Has anyone else come to the same conclusion?
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/189394/ShareX/2012-08/NS2_Servers_-_Google_Chrome_2012-10-12_20-24-29.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Maybe too early yet, but this is looking promising.
Just had a full round played on #2 that lasted well into the 40 minute mark (while #1 was full). Everything seems fine!
I'm curious, because this is a thread about gamingdeluxe.co.uk and it's worth commenting on considering you're renting a dedi from them (as am I); how did you go about this? Was it an email to the company, do you have KVM over IP with your package? Or was it done from the windows environment?
Well it wasn't actually me who disabled it as I don't have access to that (our dedi is run by a few clan members and me (I'm not really "in" the clan)), but I'm told that you have to email them and they set up the KVM over IP temporarily. In my case it was "Dell Power Management" or some such setting that had to be disabled. I will ask tomorrow and give the response here.