Poor server performance on dedicated box

[KarlHungus]

Poor server performance on dedicated box

Hi Guys,

Im looking for some advice on bettering my servers performance.  My servers seems to be performing poorly when we hit 25 plus players.  The ping seems to increase to over 100 for everyone and we receive complaints about lag.  We only host 3 servers on the box but we had the same issue when hosting just 1 server on its own.

The server host is ovh the specs are:

Intel Xeon 1245 v3 3.4ghz (4 cores 8 threads)

32gb DDR3 - 1600mhz

2x 480gb ssd's

500mb connection

Windows server 2012 r2

 

Im running the server config through ark server manager and its configured ok, we run several mods and we have configured most for best performance.  From what I can see and the cpu never seems go beyond 30% useage, memory use seems to hover at around 4gb-8gb at the most per server.  I assume the cpu is my weakness as i see the majority of people running i7's for hosting ark as i guess the single core performance would be superior.

Im open to all suggestions including upgrading my box for something better.

[Larkfields]

The best improvement I got was with changing the Engine.ini file, which reduced the RAM and CPU usage with no noticeable effect on players.

[/script/onlinesubsystemutils.ipnetdriver]
NetServerMaxTickRate=15

I have slightly different auto-save frequencies on my maps, to reduce the chance of them all saving at the same time.

I also stopped using the processor affinity flag, as this seemed to make performance worse.

You'll find that large bases will hit performance.  As will people going into boss fights.

[KarlHungus]

9 hours ago, Larkfields said:

The best improvement I got was with changing the Engine.ini file, which reduced the RAM and CPU usage with no noticeable effect on players.

[/script/onlinesubsystemutils.ipnetdriver]
NetServerMaxTickRate=15

I have slightly different auto-save frequencies on my maps, to reduce the chance of them all saving at the same time.

I also stopped using the processor affinity flag, as this seemed to make performance worse.

You'll find that large bases will hit performance.  As will people going into boss fights.

Thanks for the suggestion.  Ive tried it and still exactly the same performance.  It seems my server is hitting 2.5fps when i hit over 25 players

[Larkfields]

Take a look at Task Manager to see if you're limited by CPU, RAM, or Network.
I suspect the CPU core(s) with the busiest map(s) are hitting 100% use.

[KarlHungus]

They are hitting pretty high use at times, you can see them spike from 60% to 100% when i have 35 plus players on a server.  Would a new server with an i7 with 5ghz help or am i wasting money?

 

[Larkfields]

12 hours ago, KarlHungus said:

They are hitting pretty high use at times, you can see them spike from 60% to 100% when i have 35 plus players on a server.  Would a new server with an i7 with 5ghz help or am i wasting money?

 

Better core performance on the server will improve the player's experience, and allow more players - but I couldn't put any figures on players vs CPU performance.
You should have one core (2 threads) per map for best performance.

Don't spend more than you can reasonably afford - you're always going to hit some performance bottle neck.

[TheDonn]

I think @Sphere runs an ARK cluster on personal hardware (a big Tr4 Threadripper system if I remember right).  Hopefully this tag brings Sphere's experience into the thread for you.