Poor performance even with Headless Client.

[kuplion 1785]

I'm running 2 HC (A3XAI and FuMS) but as soon as I enable either one or both HC, my performance plummets into single digits.

I've just run the Novabench test (it looks quite similar to PassMark) whilst running the server and both HC, and scored 1206 whilst the server and HC were all running too. This is on my X5670 overclocked to 4.15GHz (this is tested to hell and back as stable, I'm an seasoned overclocker with a many many years experience).

System specs are:

Intel Xeon x5670 @ 4.15GHz (6 cores, 12 threads)
24GB DDR3 @ 2000MHz
128GB SSD @ 550MB/s Read / 550MB/s Write

I actually moved away from virtualising the server through ESXi as the performance hit was quite severe (about 30%), but it has been suggested to me that separating out the Server and HC might yield a performance boost, though I'm not sure because of the poor multi-threaded performance of Arma anyway.

These are my startup parameters for each part (each process is given 4 cores, 2 physical, 2 logical by the affinity flag and then set to 4 cores/threads with cpucount and exthreads):

Server:

start "Arma3" /AFFINITY 0xF /high /min arma3server.exe "-mod=@Exile;@Ryanzombies;Kart;Mark;Heli;" -servermod=@Exileserver;@FuMS;@A3XAI;@Enigma;@infiSTAR_Exile;@marma; -config=C:\Arma\Server\@ExileServer\config.cfg -port=2302 -profiles=FPS -cfg=C:\Arma\Server\@ExileServer\basic.cfg -name=FPS -autoinit -maxMem=8192 -malloc=tbb4malloc_bi_dw -loadmissiontomemory -cpuCount=4 -exThreads=7 

HC1:

start "Headless Client" /AFFINITY 0xF00 /high /min arma3.exe "-mod=@Exile;@Ryanzombies;Kart;Mark;Heli;" -noSound -noPause -client -connect=127.0.0.1 -port=2302 -maxMem=8192 -malloc=tbb4malloc_bi_dw -profiles=FuMSHCLogs -loadmissiontomemory -cpuCount=4 -exThreads=7

HC2:

start "Headless Client" /AFFINITY 0xF0 /high /min arma3.exe "-mod=@Exile;@A3XAI_HC;@Ryanzombies;Kart;Mark;Heli;" -noSound -noPause -client -connect=127.0.0.1 -port=2302 -maxMem=8192 -malloc=tbb4malloc_bi_dw -profiles=A3XAIHCLogs -loadmissiontomemory -cpuCount=4 -exThreads=7

I'm using the Performance executables from Dwarden (v2 currently) and the Malloc provided by Dwarden too. The thing that really baffles me is none of these processes use over 15-20% CPU time (but if I run them on my i7 4790K the server uses 50% CPU time alone).

EDIT: This is my server performance as monitored by Marma.io:

http://imgur.com/jIIoxkJ

Edited March 2, 2016 by kuplion

[second_coming 836]

Remove A3XAI, it kills your server.

[second_coming 836]

From testing on my own server you'd get much better performance just letting the server use all the cores and running DMS on the server offloading the AI to clients rather than dividing the CPU between server and 2 x HC.

There is also an upper memory limit on the amount of RAM you can allocate to the server/hc of:

-maxMem=3072

 

Edited March 2, 2016 by second_coming

[kuplion 1785]

7 minutes ago, second_coming said:

From testing on my own server you'd get much better performance just letting the server use all the cores and running DMS on the server offloading the AI to clients rather than dividing the CPU between server and 2 x HC.

There is also an upper memory limit on the amount of RAM you can allocate to the server/hc of:

-maxMem=3072

 

Thank you for the heads up regarding the maxMem flag, I'll change that (oh what I'd give for a 64bit exe!!) Would you remove the cpucount and exthreads flags when using all the cores?

Regarding DMS, I actually took that off and replaced it with FuMS as it was killing my performance when I went above 25 players. It was offloading correctly (I enabled the messages so that I could confirm).

[second_coming 836]

Yeah I don't think you need to specify the cpucount and exthreads unless you want to limit the server to allow for running a HC as well (or if your serevr runs other systems)

Have you tried removing RyansZombies and testing again?

start /min "arma3server" /realtime "arma3server.exe" -mod=@AllInArmaTerrainPack;@RHSAFRF;@RHSUSAF;@TRYK;@Exile; -serverMod=@ExileServer;@infiSTAR_servermod;  -nologs -bandwidthAlg=2 -bepath=F:\A3server\SC\BattlEye\ -port=2302 -maxMem=3072 -enableHT -loadmissiontomemory -noTexHeaders -profiles=SC -name=SC "-config=SC\config.cfg" "-cfg=SC\basic.cfg" -autoinit

That's my startup line for an i7 4970k

Edited March 2, 2016 by second_coming

[kuplion 1785]

5 minutes ago, second_coming said:

Yeah I don't think you need to specify the cpucount and exthreads unless you want to limit the server to allow for running a HC as well (or if your serevr runs other systems)

Have you tried removing RyansZombies and testing again?

start /min "arma3server" /realtime "arma3server.exe" -mod=@AllInArmaTerrainPack;@RHSAFRF;@RHSUSAF;@TRYK;@Exile; -serverMod=@ExileServer;@infiSTAR_servermod;  -nologs -bandwidthAlg=2 -bepath=F:\A3server\SC\BattlEye\ -port=2302 -maxMem=3072 -enableHT -loadmissiontomemory -noTexHeaders -profiles=SC -name=SC "-config=SC\config.cfg" "-cfg=SC\basic.cfg" -autoinit

That's my startup line for an i7 4970k

I've run tests without Zombies (currently using ExileZ 2 by Patrix87) and performance does go up a little bit but so far there are no other Zombie spawners that seem to work well (I just can't get on with TornZ, the zombie AI seems terrible from my testing, and there just aren't as many things available to configure).

Out of interest, how do you find the "-bandwidthAlg=2" flag? I used it on my old DayZ Mod server but I've never thought of adding it to this, does it still improve network performance? And what is "-noTexHeaders"? The BIS BIKI seems to suggest it's an unknown parameter except maybe on Linux?

[second_coming 836]

No idea I was recommended to use by @mgtdb

[MGTDB 956]

-noTexHeaders I found reduced the amount of texture pop-up errors on a previous Arma build, I don't use it anymore

[second_coming 836]

well there you go

[MGTDB 956]

@second_coming

hihi

second_coming