I play an online Flight Simulator game (rise of flight).
Have hosted as many as 30 people on at one time, and game played reasonably well, but our numbers are growing, and I want to be able to keep up with them.
My philosophy has always leaned towards "overkill", meaning make sure you have enough of what you need, and them some, but I dont want to go too far overboard on this.
My current connection is 25/25, and I can upgrade to 35/35. Next bundles are 50/20 and 100/20, but the servers upload for this game is more important than his download, so the 35/35 would be best for me.
I have looked into several alternatives for what I might use for a server, and need some insight as to what system would be better over another, and more important, WHY it would be better. And if possible, need to know where I should draw the line, ie, for what I am doing, there is no advantage of getting anything better, cause you wont see any difference.
About the only thing I can tell you about the game that might be a factor is that the game only uses one core for computing "AI" moves. That would be the situation where you are fighting against the computer, and the computer is controlling the plane you are fighting. The system I am building would be for people vs people only.
I have considered 3 alternatives. Note that video is not a factor, as the computer hosting the game doesn't even need a video card. The host computer doesn't show a game window when its hosting the game, all you get is a dialogue window showing the fact that the game is up and running, and number of people online etc etc.
i7 930 with 12GB triple channel, RAID 0
Server board with Xeon 5520 (2.6Ghz) 12GB triple channel RAID 0
Server board with dual 5520 (2.6) 12 GB triple channel RAID 0
I'm pretty much up to snuff with computers, but am in the dark when it comes to Servers. To be honest, really don't know what makes a server a server. From what I understand, a server doesn't so much process a lot of information, but what it does process it does really fast.
Obviously, the dual processor setup is going to be faster than the others, but is it way overkill for a system that is just going to be hosting one game.
And finally, server software over traditional OS? Not sure if this game runs under Linux or not.