Question About Framerates & Dedicated Server Hardware

Conan Exiles General Discussion Players Helping Players
1

So our server is pretty new and we have been growing, which is a great thing. I truly enjoy being able to create a server that people enjoy and make friends and want to stick around. I’m running into a problem now, though and I am completely stumped on how to fix it.

Server performance is great until we hit 10+ online players and then the server fps becomes unstable and drops down to 8fps-15fps and I can’t figure out why. I pay a lot of money for the bare metal dedicated server that I rent out of a data center, but it’s unmanaged and they only provide support when hardware is faulty.

Here is our rig setup:

Dual Intel Xeon E5-2630L v3 CPU
64 GB RAM
1.6TB NVMe Storage
10TB Monthly Transfer Bandwidth on a 10Gbps Port
Windows 10 OS

I have the Power Usage Settings for Windows 10 set to “Performance”
I tried just using the OS as is, and have tried using a reputable Windows OS Debloater for Essential OS tweaks, and disabled some of the basic unnecessary background processes, and disabled programs like OneDrive and Cortana. Server performance remained unchanged between the out-of-the-box OS settings and the “Debloated” tweaks.

I pay a lot of money for this dedicated server rental, and was happy to spend what we pay for it because majority of the time, you get what you pay for. I’m very grateful that the players in my server are kind and understanding while I figure this out, but surely with a bare metal dedicated server I should be getting better performance than a $30/month virtual dedicated server from a host like Nitrado or GPortal.

We use the Funcom Dedicated Server Launcher to run the server. The settings are set to “High Priority” and “Use all available resources” is checked, and I have all but one of the 32 cores checked as per the recommendation so that one of the cores can be utilized for the base OS of the server.

I have the max FPS set to 30 FPS per the recommendation on the Funcom Dedicated Server Launcher for stability and we still drop down to these low framerates when 10+ people are connected.

We do have a lot of mods on the server, but I’ve played on servers with even more mods than we have that had a lot of players on at the same time with no framerate issues. Can anyone give me advice on what I could be doing wrong, or how I could fix this problem?

I’ve been trying really hard to research this for myself and try to troubleshoot the issue, but I haven’t found much information available. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!

4

Thank you so much! That’s so helpful! Do you have any recommendations for a good CPU to run a server with a lot of mods that could handle a lot of players with Windows 10?

I’m not a super tech-savvy person, but I did find this list of single-core benchmarks, is this what you are talking about? Would a dedicated server running one of these be good options?

6

As in finding a new dedicated server setup that would be the most beneficial for running my game server on. Since you said the Conan Exiles server that is generated by the Funcom Dedicated Server Launcher is a single threaded application I assume the link I shared would be a good starting point for trying to find a dedicated server that has a good single-thread benchmark score. I don’t want to keep wasting my money since my current host is just rented and I can easily move to a new host that would be better suited towards my needs since it sounds like I have the antithesis of an ideal setup lol. In my naivite, I just figured having a lot of cores, good ram, and good network connection/stability would be suffice. Now, thanks to your help, I know that there’s more to it than that.

So, what I am looking for: recommendation for ideal CPUs that can handle CE with a lot of mods and that won’t crap out when a lot of players are online, and recommended amount of RAM (and some hosts even allow overclocking of RAM - don’t even know if that’s worth it or necessary lol).

If I can find a way to get a setup that would allow me to set the server to run at 60fps and still be stable that would be amazing so if people want to stream their gameplay it would be good quality. I just don’t know what kind of processor I would need to have in order to be able to run a 60 sFPS server that doesn’t tank when 30, or 40 people are online for future-proofing. And how much RAM would be great, but not overkill, how much bandwidth would be necessary, etc.

And if I want to run multiple game servers in a cluster like an Exiled Lands, and a Siptah map, since it’s single thread, can I run multiple instances on the same dedicated server if it’s on separate hard drives if I select different cores without frying the hardware? lol

8

Take what I have with a grain of salt, as my feedback is based on what I hear as a mod developer, and not personal experience.

Without diving into hardware specifics and all those things, I’ll just gently direct you towards ServerBlend as a host. Lots of people use my mods, across all sorts of server rental places. And ServerBlend has been easily the number 1 good feedback I’ve “heard” for probably the past 1-2 years. On the flipside, Gportal is by far the worse in both complaints and headaches I have to deal with as a mod developer.

You can see their hardware specs on their FAQ page. Perhaps @drachenfeles can provide additional info with regards to the hardware they are using.

2 Likes
9

Thank you so much! And I rent our current dedicated server from a datacenter as I’m likely not equipped to build and run my own, unfortunately don’t have good enough internet options available from ISPs in my area, unfortunately. They keep saying we should be getting fiber optic “soon”… so maybe one day I will be able to lol. So it will probably come down to the best CPU that I can afford atm based on my financial means, and the lovely players who help support the server.

You have seriously helped me out so much, I have been so frustrated trying to figure this out. You made such a difference for me, and I truly appreciate your willingness to take the time in helping me.

11

Thank you, I will definitely check out this host and see what they offer! And we have some of your mods in our server and we love them! Thank you for your help also! I appreciate it! :smiley:

12

I will second Multigun’s recommendation on Serverblend.

I’ve had stupidly good service with them. With both Conan Exiles and Valheim (in the past). Their response times on issues or even requests is extremely fast.

1 Like
13

If you still have a baremetal rental fee you’ve paid, you could redeem it for another month on a stronger unit. Usually they’ll simply spec you an Application Server as the “grade” of machine.

IF you’re still stuck with this one for a while, will you try a couple changes?

First, change the server’s prioritization to Background. Last, please adjust the Virtual Memory. (Highlighted in bold.)

Right-click Windows Charm, click System.
On the right column, click Advanced system settings.
Click Advanced tab → Performance Settings
Advanced tab.
Select "Background services."
Under Virtual Memory click Change…
Set a Custom Size. (For a guide, look at Recommended. Multiply that number by 4 and enter it into Minimum and Maximum.)
Reboot the Server.

14

Thanks for the suggestion!

I want to make sure I do this correctly. For “Set a Custom Size” in Virtual Memory, there are two text boxes there: Initial Size (MB), and Maximum Size (MB).

In the “Total Paging Size for all drives” section it shows:

Minimum Allowed: 16MB
Recommended: 9072MB
Currently Allocated: 9728MB

From what you wrote, this is what I understood that you wanted me to do:

9072 * 4 = 36288

Then in the “Initial Size (MB)” type 36288
And in “Maximum Size (MB)” type 36288
Click Set
Click Apply
Reboot Dedicated Server
Launch CE Game Server

Is that correct?

15

Thanks for asking. The 4X was a guide (due to the enormous amount of physical RAM you have), because most setups have a low allocation. I would double it for this test.

18,144 for MIN and MAX. You’ve got the rest correct.

17

Not necessarily true. In some Xeons there is a floating point error, and if the page file is not scrubbed and set to the appropriate density, it will fill and be unuseable. This then requires a hard reset.

If this machine is doing cron or other background processes, setting the prio and purging the pagefile is on the Windows Admin checklist.

19

Depending on the bareness of the bare metal, a great many setups can be “legacy,” in my opinion. Couple Windows 8 with a Xeon and you can grind to a blue screen halt. From a very respectable bare provider like Intel, you might not even get a wipe from the last operation.

If my test shows any kind of performance change, it’s a fair bet the machine is not suitable for the intended purpose.

In that case I would ask the provider to comp a month on an App Server machine with specs similar to @drachenfeles recommendations. Windows 10 Pro so that you can (easily) switch off as many background services as you like.

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21

The test made a HUGE difference. NPCs in the world had better performance such as pathing problems, and even some npcs that would aggro and never actually attack, like silverbacks near the Black Garden, started attacking again, followers started to attack more consistently, and farming resources became less buggy.

1 Like
22

That’s awesome! Do you think it’s playable in this condition? I was hoping to get you some credits, but I’m delighted it’s on the right track. :+1:t4:

23

It’s definitely playable, but I can’t say as to how much of a load it can handle now without more testing, and with me being actively in-game at the time the most players are on and I had to work yesterday so I didn’t get a chance to see what was going on in the resource management department. However, in Discord players were telling me it was like night and day. I’m sure I could expand the changes we made further if need be (i.e. going from 2x to 3x in our calculation for example).

I did find a new host to use that offers the 12900K to rent a new rig to use and it would only be like $10-$20 more than what I currently pay so I feel like it would be stupid for me to not make that big of a jump for such a nominal amount - relatively speaking - and have a setup that is more suited towards what I’m using it for, and that will definitely be more future-proof.

*Edit: As a follow-up, after being online with 12 players on earlier today, the framerate still dropped down from 30 sFPS down to 14, but previously it was dropping from 30 sFPS down to 8, and even 4sFPS so it did make a difference.

1 Like
24

The number we’re talking about is the system’s virtual memory, a physical file that acts as a memory “buffer,” a feature Windows leverages to its benefit in many instances. This is also called a page file or swap file. Since it relies on a physical resource on the computer’s media – rather than RAM – in many cases a large swap file is a bad idea. Since you have a very fast NVMe hard disk, making a large swap file is a good idea because considering the Xeon’s bus, it’s almost (practically) as fast as the system RAM.

You can try 3X the size, but please keep an eye on the system’s recommended size as it can change over time. Windows will re-rate, based on disk limitations, bus problems and even defrag flags, from time to time.

That’s good stuff. I like where your head is, especially with your playerbase. Please keep us updated!

1 Like
25

Sorry, one last question. I checked the Wiki files that @drachenfeles shared with me for the Dedicated Server System Requirements. It doesn’t list it on there, but it hasn’t been updated since the September 2020 - is the FDSL compatible with Windows 11?

27

A lot of hosts are transitioning to Alder Lake (the codename of the CPU) because there is a performance benefit over Linux Hosting, specifically with Windows 11. In other words, they may not offer an alternative, which would be Win 10.

With Windows 11, you will in my experience need to change disk caching, hyperthreading and if you’ve been given access to an Optane-based unit, you will need to access your Intel Rapid Storage subsystem in order to “deoptimize” the system to accommodate a possible bottleneck. It’s ahead of its time, and I would err on the side of 10 Pro if you can get it.

28

Ok, got the new rig set up with Windows 11.

I don’t know what else I should do as far as caching goes, but I cleared all of the caches listed in this video.

With hyperthreading, I am assuming I need to enable hyperthreading?

I checked about Optane, and I don’t have Optane.

30

Perfect.

The caching is actually enabled/disabled using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) App. First you must select the volume, then click Manage. Under Advanced, set write-cache buffer flushing to Disabled and Cache Mode as “Write back.”

If it’s possible, can you post the specs? I hope your playerbase grows STRONG like i9 CPU!