the quest for the perfect UT server..
you said server, right? there's no guarantee that this box will be one you want to run the client on.. this will be server oriented.
for UT servers, start with this page:
http://unreal.epicgames.com/
there's a link there about running UT servers.
ok, since UT runs on linux, mac os, and windows, all three will be considered. I know it also runs on consoles (ps2 and dreamcast), but we're talking about server hardware here.
let's start with the general, non OS specific stuff.
run a dedicated server. this is after all a server, and running a client on the same machine will only slow it down.
since it's a server, a big part will be its connection to the clients. if we're talking about a server on the internet, then its connection to the internet is very important. from what Epic is saying, a T1 or better is recommended. I'd say the next best thing would be running it in a LAN setup where all the clients are on the same network as the server.
about a server with multiple processors. Epic is saying that UT does not take advantage of the second processor, so having 2 or more processors in your machine will do no better than a system with one processor. if you have multiple processors in your server, the advantage is the ability to run multiple instances of the UT server. but still that multi-processor setup won't be as good as if you had distinct machines (1 UT server per machine). the reason is that in a multi-processor system, many other hardware resources (such as the connection to main memory and to the network card and hard drives) are shared. sharing resources is a bad thing if you want top performance. so it's better to get 1 fast processor than to have many slow processors. because of that, let's limit this system to up to 2 processors.
another thing to note is that since this is a server, it should run a server operating system. that means consumer-level OS like windows 9x is out of the running.
now for some OS specific stuff. let's start with Mac OS.
of the 3 operating systems mentioned above, Mac OS seems to be the least popular kind for servers as I don't see as much information about running UT servers on Mac OS than on the other two. nonetheless, here's what I think is the best UT server on Mac OS:
Mac OS X Server
go to
www.apple.com and max out the Power Mac G5 system. you can get dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 processors, loads of DDR RAM, 2 Serial ATA drives and other stuff all for about $15K.
linux and windows.
pick your favorite Linux distribution. for windows, if windows server 2003 is too new to you, then go with windows 2000 server. I suppose windows xp pro is also a possibility, though it's not really a server OS.
I'm more familiar with PC hardware, so I'll just talk about those. please add to it if you know Linux runs better on some other hardware. one of the top 5 fastest computer in the world runs some variant of Linux, so maybe somehow we can get UT running on there? that'd be something to see..
AMD -
Athlon XP is slower than a Pentium 4, so Athlon XP is out.
Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, and Opteron all just came out recently, so the hardware and software support is not quite there yet. they will become contenders come next year.
Intel -
Itanium / Itanium 2 requires a 64-bit OS. I'm thinking that UT doesn't run on a 64-bit OS.
Xeon (Pentium 4 variant) is for servers, but they don't have the fastest clock speeds. they do have much more cache on the processor than our regular Pentium 4s.
Pentium 4 (and also the new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, which is really a Xeon). these have the fastest clock speeds, though don't have as much cache as the Xeons.
so for the processor, it's either a Xeon (if you want more cache) or a Pentium 4 (if you want faster clock speed).
main memory. DDR RAM and lots of it (on the order of several GBs). put in as much as your motherboard can take.
this is getting long; I'll continue this another day.
- clemmentine ( ARWEN_EVENSTAR / [MoR]Eowyn / Trinity. / Maiden_Arashi )
