Server Multi-Core Support?

[Joker]

Maybe this is more of a Dev question but maybe Server owners can comment as well, if you don't mind.

I'm seeing now a "Number of cores" in the Server cmd window and not sure if I seen that before. Is ARK server going to support more than 1 core finally?

After watching the server the cores do seem a little more even but I've not had a huge stress test on the box yet. May turn up the Dino spawns to say 50x and see how things go. I do notice better peformance than a few weeks ago.

Just curious if anyone knew and wish we could get a little more info than "Server Perf 20%" Would be nice to know what's being changed to gain that performance.

Also if it's not using multiple cores then does the Dev team ever plan to move to a multi-core or multi-threaded model?

[agentexeider]

I was under the impression the server already uses multiple cores, the problem is the persistence model is messed up and the server doesn't utilize the RAM servers can have. For ex. my server has 32 GB of RAM and I would LOVE if the server would keep area persistent and actually use the ram. Hell MineCraft uses more RAM then ARK server does.

[back2basics]

Originally posted by agentexeider:

I was under the impression the server already uses multiple cores, the problem is the persistence model is messed up and the server doesn't utilize the RAM servers can have. For ex. my server has 32 GB of RAM and I would LOVE if the server would keep area persistent and actually use the ram. Hell MineCraft uses more RAM then ARK server does.

How much ram does it tend to use?

[Gran]

Originally posted by back2basics:

Originally posted by agentexeider:

I was under the impression the server already uses multiple cores, the problem is the persistence model is messed up and the server doesn't utilize the RAM servers can have. For ex. my server has 32 GB of RAM and I would LOVE if the server would keep area persistent and actually use the ram. Hell MineCraft uses more RAM then ARK server does.

How much ram does it tend to use?

depends on active players, with only a handful of them around 4gb.

[Joker]

From everything I've seen Ark favors only one core. I set the Dino spawns to 20x and let the server rip and it used a single for 80% and the others hovered around 20 ish. So doesn't seem to be using the cores very well. Better than before as they at least show some usage.

I don't have any issue with RAM on the box because it seems to use around 8 to 11 gig pretty consistently.

[margalus]

The dedicated server did just use a single core. I'm not sure anymore though since the last couple updates that mention how many cores.. My server never goes above about 6% cpu usage, so I can't really see what's happening..

As for ram, unless you suffer from one of the memory leaks, about 2-4GB is average usage. Devs have said about 3.5GB is used.

[Joker]

We have our settings pretty high for spawns and we run a much larger map mod so I am use to seeing higher core performance. It has gotten better and recently with it now showing the number of cores in the server window perhaps they are working towards utilizing the cores / threads the server has now.

I was hoping maybe someone knew or a Dev could clear this up.

[Flamboyant Douchebaggery]

Yeah, it's weird. I get 1 core as well:



[2017.02.06-15.05.08:583][ 0]Log file open, 02/06/17 23:05:08
[2017.02.06-15.05.08:583][ 0]ARK Version: 254.71
[2017.02.06-15.05.08:583][ 0]PID: 2125
[2017.02.06-15.05.22:599][ 0]Primal Game Data Took 13.65 seconds
[2017.02.06-15.05.24:111][ 0]*** Running raw sockets and new net code ***
[2017.02.06-15.05.36:920][ 0]Server Initializing with BattlEye Anti-Cheat Protection. If you do not wish to use BattlEye, please launch with -NoBattlEye
[2017.02.06-15.05.36:930][ 0]BattlEye successfully started.
[2017.02.06-15.06.00:810][ 0]Server: "[US] Udang x10" has successfully started!
[2017.02.06-15.06.09:589][ 0]Commandline: "TheIsland?SessionName=[US] Udang x10?listen?Port=7777?QueryPort=27015?MaxPlayers=120?bRawSockets?RCONEnabled=True?RCONPort=32330?ServerAdminPassword=XXXXXXX?AllowCrateSpawnsOnTopOfStructures=True" -ForceAllowCaveFlyers -AutoDestroyStructures -UseBattlEye -servergamelog -NotifyAdminCommandsInChat -useallavailablecores -usecache -nosteamclient -game -server -log
[2017.02.06-15.06.09:589][ 0]Full Startup: 62.71 seconds (BP compile: 0.00 seconds)
[2017.02.06-15.06.09:589][ 0]Number of cores 1

[[YT]TickleSlip]

Odd, when I start up my server, I've got Number of Cores: 4 showing. Has always shown 4, never less, even before using the "useallavailablecores" subline

[margalus]

Originally posted by Experienced_Ager:

Odd, when I start up my server, I've got Number of Cores: 4 showing. Has always shown 4, never less, even before using the "useallavailablecores" subline

Yup. Mine has always shown 4 also. But it has only ever really used 1. It doesn't need any more than that really though, since it doesn't hardly use any of that one either.

[[YT]TickleSlip]

That's true though. Though, I did an experiement on an AMD 8 core, and it showed 8 for the number of cores after loaded. The aforementioned 4 cores was/is an i7. There's a difference in how the server handles server-side FPS according to cores, or I would presume, since running on the i7 server-side FPS seems to be locked at around 29.5 to 31 FPS, whereas on the AMD 8 core, the server-side FPS was locked at 36.6~(infinite). Though the 8-core did utilize the primarily single core with small margins on the other 7 (less than 5%).

[Flamboyant Douchebaggery]

I should add, I'm running this on a server with dual 4-core cpu's, but under an OpenVZ container. The container has access to the 4 cores.

[Flamboyant Douchebaggery]

And this is on my home machine (AMD with 8 cores):

Setting breakpad minidump AppID = 346110
Steam_SetMinidumpSteamID:  Caching Steam ID:  76561197997716347 [API loaded no]
[2017.02.06-17.43.23:794][  0]LogMemory: Platform Memory Stats for WindowsNoEditor
[2017.02.06-17.43.23:795][  0]LogMemory: Process Physical Memory: 78.33 MB used, 78.34 MB peak
[2017.02.06-17.43.23:795][  0]LogMemory: Process Virtual Memory: 51.77 MB used, 51.90 MB peak
[2017.02.06-17.43.23:795][  0]LogMemory: Physical Memory: 9228.09 MB used, 32565.02 MB total
[2017.02.06-17.43.23:795][  0]LogMemory: Virtual Memory: 314.14 MB used, 134217728.00 MB total
[2017.02.06-17.43.26:469][  0]ARK Version: 254.72
[2017.02.06-17.43.26:469][  0]PID: 12752
[2017.02.06-17.43.26:691][  0]Commandline: -useallavailablecores -log
[2017.02.06-17.43.26:691][  0]Full Startup: 5.79 seconds (BP compile: 0.00 seconds)
[2017.02.06-17.43.26:691][  0]Number of cores 4

[☬ Crow ☬]

I have my server running on a corei5 and I get Number of cores 4 every time.

Just adding this comment to help you figure it out, because you should be detecting 4, not 1.

[Joker]

I'm wondering if AMD would be a better server for ARK vs an i7.

[Flamboyant Douchebaggery]

Seeing Single core with this:

processor       : 7
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 23
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5420  @ 2.50GHz
stepping        : 10
microcode       : 0xa0b
cpu MHz         : 2500.100
cache size      : 6144 KB
physical id     : 1
siblings        : 4
core id         : 3
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 7
initial apicid  : 7
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips        : 5000.01
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Not sure why. The guest is Debian 8, and the Hardware node is OpenVZ 7.1



Anyone run ARK on actual server hardware? I wonder if maybe it doesn't like Xeon's (which are really i7's (more or less)), or if it's some threading library that's missing...