Open the drop down menu under "Custom Filter" (@cursor position)
Select "FHSW"
Click "Update"
Wait a couple of seconds and voila, here's the new server
Old OP:
Hi guys,
with all the problems lately I've been thinking about hosting a new server. I spoke back with Stefan and he's okay with it, he would shut the current one down. I pay all the expenses but I need people who help maintaining the server, especially with uploading big files.
I’m not sure about the hardware, what would be the most important to keep the loading times short? There are a couple of server hosts left which have BF1942 pre-installed but these are too slow and old for us I think (correct me if I’m wrong).
Location: Frankfurt (imo we should stay in Central Europe, so ppl from East Europe and America can play with us) 3,4 GHz Quad 16 GB RAM 120 GB SSD 55€/month
i like your idea! i will donate 20€ per month if the server runs bettter.
i also send our current server hoster a email... maby he could optimice something... what also could help is to restart the server machine via remotemanager (Start/Stop Button). i cant connect at the moment, becouse i am on my laptop online.
Dont have any idea about specs but maybe consider a look on Prince Umeboshi's specs could be helpful. Their server runs very fine! It can load a map in less than a minute.
The CPU is the most important part for loading times and the server there for 55€/month (Premium XL-3) has an Intel i5 3570S which runs at 3.1GHz or up to 3.8GHz Turbo. Since the Battlefield 1942 server places full load on one thread when loading a map I suppose that the server thread will run at the max turbo frequency, right? Maybe someone with a CPU with turbo can confirm this. If that is so, then there wouldn't be much of a difference between that CPU and the better choices there - i7-3770 (3.4 GHz/3.9GHz max turbo) and i7-3770K (3.5 GHz/3.9GHz max turbo) so it would probably not be worth it to pay that much more. Then the i7's have 8MB cache instead of 6MB, so I don't really know exactly how much better they would be in practice. If we wanted the best possible speed for a reasonable price we would want to take some machine with a i5 or i3 and then overclock it to something like 4.5GHz or more (this is reasonably achievable technically, especially if we disable a few cores that aren't needed anyway), but I think there aren't many server providers that offer this, so I guess this is only an option if we had our own dedicated server machine sitting in someone's home like Prince Umeboshi do.
16 GB RAM + a SSD is more than enough. 2GB RAM should be enough for the game server + operating system; for short loading times we could use either a SSD or a RAMdisk (with a copy of the RAMdisk contents being stored on a regular hard disk). In 16GB of RAM you could fit a RAMdisk with the whole Battlefield 1942 server directory with all mods (<10GB or so).
I don't know how the OS affects loading times, but as you've mentioned before, this could be a big factor if compatibility mode is needed. I wonder if there is a difference between Windows with no compatibility mode and Linux.
I can help uploading big files (my connection is 45 Mbps downstream/15 Mbps upstream). Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
Message edited by starking018 - Sunday, 2014-12-21, 4:35 PM
Dont have any idea about specs but maybe consider a look on Prince Umeboshi's specs could be helpful.Their server runs very fine! It can load a map in less than a minute.
I will continue donating on some occasions of course ^^
Quotestarking018 ()
16 GB RAM + a SSD is more than enough. 2GB RAM should be enough for the game server + operating system; for short loading times we could use either a SSD or a RAMdisk (with a copy of the RAMdisk contents being stored on a regular hard disk).
Yeah, PrinceUmeboshi's server configuration proves this:
CPU INTEL Core i5 2550K (LGA 1155) Memory SanMax DDR3-1333 2GB(1GB*2) HDD Seagate Seagate Barracuda ES 250GB Motherboard ASRock H67M CPU cooler Scythe Katana 4 Power Supply Nipron PCSE-370P-X2S NIC INTEL PRO/1000 PT Server Adapter OS Microsoft Windows XP Professional Case SOLDAM ALTIUM FC 500
Quotestarking018 ()
I don't know how the OS affects loading times, but as you've mentioned before, this could be a big factor if compatibility mode is needed. I wonder if there is a difference between Windows with no compatibility mode and Linux.
Why do we need compatibility mode (I assume you mean Wine)? There are native dedicated server binaries for Linux. From my experience, there is no much difference between Linux and Windows in terms of perfomance, but with Linux you can't Remote Desktop into server (as I suppose they have Debian installed without graphic shell) as you have to do all thing through the terminal and must be prepared to do a lot of bash scripting. On the other hand, it is easier to setup stats tool on Linux, as you can setup Apache and MySQL with just one command (if we're going to do it, of course).
Message edited by RADIOSMERSH - Sunday, 2014-12-21, 5:18 PM
Netgamezone has worked for Forgotten Honor for quite some time, though this year they had some problems with a DDoS attack, moving databases, etc, so the quality has declined somewhat. We're setting up an additional server at this moment, not sure if from same provider but they should be more than good enough for a BF1942 server, as well as TS3 and whatever else you want on it.
@RADIOSMERSH: I meant the Windows XP, 2000 or 98/ME compatibility modes that are sometimes needed on versions newer than Windows Server 2003/Windows XP. We better make sure the server doesn't need such compatibility modes before it is ordered. BTW, what OS does the current server run on? The question about difference between Linux and Windows was a separate one.
@Korsakov829: Root Server Special (Core i7-2600k) and Root Server Medium (Core i7 3770k) look good - a bit faster CPUs and a bit cheaper than the other provider.
About RAM drive: I am talking about a software that creates a virtual disk in RAM. On a root server we can install our software so we can do that easily. It's even faster than a SSD but probably not very noticeably faster for FHSW loading times.
About my server: I think it ran well too. That one time my game crashed but the screen froze and I couldn't see what I was doing while trying to close bf1942.exe and this was the reason I accidentally stopped the server (I later saw in the logs that the server was running after my game had crashed). Today I found a solution so that it doesn't happen again in the future. Air Troll a.k.a. starking018
Interesting, I'll keep it in mind but is that a fast CPU? 2,3 GHz seems a bit low but I have no idea of these things honestly. I could proably also just ask one of the server hosts if they would customize a server for me. Is there a specific fast CPU you can suggest?
CPU i5/i7 (2,3,4 Generations) (faster instructions/architectures) they have good performance per core and high Frequence more than 3.0GHz and i think better CPU without Hyper Threading
Message edited by ArmyDivision - Tuesday, 2014-12-23, 0:28 AM
If by customize server you mean hardware, that usually involves a setup fee and different rates, sometimes less customer support too. Otherwise you basically run the server like you would a desktop PC. I highly recommend you guys get Windows Server 2008 for the OS, any time you need Linux just run a VM.
I was looking at these guys a few weeks ago: http://www.1and1.co.uk/ Not too good customer reviews across the net, plus you'll need to pay in British pounds no doubt so you may lose some money when converting.
@Endless: I will put in 7,50 € each month so with the 20 € of Stefan you got half of the server costs paid. This is a gaming community. People come here to relax. If you start an argument you will get kicked.
I was looking at these guys a few weeks ago: http://www.1and1.co.uk/ Not too good customer reviews across the net, plus you'll need to pay in British pounds no doubt so you may lose some money when converting.
And Windows costs additional 19£, while minimal configuration with SSD availible costs 89£ + 49£ setup fee, so it's not a variant I suppose. The same problem applies to the https://www.ngz-server.de/rootserver/overview/. Windows Server 2008 R2 in minimal configuration adds additional 66€. However, they allow to use own Windows license. I have one from Dreamspark, but I doubt whether it is legal to use it for such purposes.
Message edited by RADIOSMERSH - Tuesday, 2014-12-23, 6:06 PM
gibt es hier ne info auf deutsch? Mut bedeutet zu kämpfen auch wenn der Feind übermächtig ist! Courage meant to fight even if the enemy is over powerful!
Ich bin auf der Suche nach einem neuen Server, alles weitere steht noch in den Sternen.
@all: I've contaced a couple of Server hosts and asked them about customisation, of course over Christmas I don't get answers immediately. Big Thanks to those who want to donate already. My Youtube Channel aka eYe.ris
CPU: The CPU frequency is the issue that affects the loading speed the most. I'm not really convinced that up-to-date CPUs with modern architecture do play an important role here, as the BF1942 executable is really old, so that it can't make use of built-in decent CPU instruction set, (like SSE3, SSE4 and similiar).
More than 2 cores would be needed if you were going to run additional services like a dedicated Game Statistics process and / or more than one BF server instances simultaneously.
Memory and Storage: Once again the HDD vs RamDisk FHSW comparison. Keep in mind that a RamDisk is faster than any SSD available. The video bellow proves there is "only" 14 seconds of difference in loading speed. So I think that SSD is not really a "must have" unless it's affordable.
tl;dr:The more MHz, the better IMO. A minimum of 3Ghz ?
14 seconds isn't bad, that's 15% faster when you have about 1:30 minutes loading time. If you play 12 maps every week that's almost 2,5 hours in a year.
I got some answers from several server hosts, sadly it's not really possible to downgrade servers and save some money. So we have to take 16 or 32 GB anyway. Also for CPU we probably have to use a Quad at least.
One problem is that almost everyone wants additional 15 to 20€ per month just for Windows! We can't use Radio's license and buying one myself is out of question (costs at least 400€).
