CPU specification

[mrdiablo]

Hello,

currently I am running an ark cluster with 4 maps on my dedicated server

• Intel Core i7-4790K 4 GHz
• 32 GB RAM

There are multiple things running on this server and I guess that affect the ark servers as well in case of performance. So I am planning to get a dedicated server for the ark cluster.

My hoster provides different types of machines. I am not sure which one would be the best for ark.

• AMD Ryzen Pro 1700x (8 cores - 16 vCores, 3.4 GHz)
• Intel i7-7700k (4 cores - 8 vCores, 4.2 GHz)

Both with 32 GB DDR4 RAM. Which one would be better? The lesser but faster cores? Or more cores even if they are slower? Can I assign 2 cores to one ark process? 

[mrdiablo]

No one knows what got more impact on the server performance? More cores or more GHz?

[Sphere]

So far I have my servers split on my TR4 1950X affinities to being on the chips alone that they are running on, to avoid infinity fabric. So 8 cores 16 threads given to a server, out of the total 16 cores 32 threads. I tried doing something like 2 cores 4 threads and 2 cores 3 threads using affinities, but they would start exhibiting problems that everybody could feel. I think GHz is lost after a certain point. 3.9 GHz from my experience seems to be the sweet spot between performance and power usage. You really do not want to be running a chip unnecessarily fast to use up power, when you don't need to do so. I would say that over time, step a CPU down, or up, slowly, and see how the response is. You need to be conservative on your power consumption. This is helped more by the way if you are offloading your CPU instructions somewhat over to a 10 GB Ethernet card, one of the ones with server grade features. It does help, especially for people across the other side of the world.

Ah just some more thoughts. When I tried splitting the servers up to spread them out over affinities, I was trying to make each server have dedicated threads and cores. Sadly it only hurt performance. But what did work was, just either letting Windows handle affinities or if possible, avoid infinity fabric and set the affinities to half and half of the total number of cores and threads. With a total of 16 cores and 32 threads, 3 servers of mine are on 8 cores and 16 threads, my most popular servers, and the rest are on the rest of the 8 cores and 16 threads, a total of 5 servers for the 2nd split up. I hope this information is useful somehow. But it does work, and it was my way to get around the fact that I was running my memory at 2400 MHz because of 128 GB of system memory, and no overclocking ram because I wanted stable, more so than out of the box, by loosening timings just a little. You really want your memory to be solid, especially if you start doing things like RAM drives for 6 GB/s read and 5 GB/s write to make the most demanding servers run at an even more insane speed. I mklink hard junctioned the save files onto ram for 2 of the servers. The rest were save mklink hard junctioned over to a NVMe SSD. It works out well actually.

Make sure use all available cores is active on your server. This actually does impact performance for players in a positive way. I recommend it. Use cache does help too, for people who need to reconnect if their client crashes.

I do wonder for your situation, if 4 cores and 8 threads will be enough. To be honest, I think going for 8 cores and 16 threads on a 2700X would make sense, with 32 GB ram. But it depends on how many servers you wish to host, and how many players you wish to have around. And the fact that the more buildings and dinosaurs are on the ark, will consume resources. I also need to ask you what medium the swap drive is being stored upon. As the server does actually use swap, even though I wish it did not, it is somewhat important that it actually be fast enough to respond to the demands of the server. Some people say fast drives are only important for start up. However I have found that for those who are most impacted by latency, it is important, to reach the European markets if say you are hosting from Australia. But if you are in EU where most people play from, you should be fine with less, as the latency will be less of a concern.