Server influence on amount of player fps

(frompoland) #1

Hi, I have a little question. Can server has any influence on amount of player fps?

(Paul) #2

I think not, but if there are many people and many particles to draw that can influence fps :slight_smile:

(-SSF-Sage) #3

Well if the server computer has low specs. Also the amount of players, mod and cfg (the worst setting I can recall is players dropping tons of health/ammopacks when dead) can have a huge impact on the fps.

edit. And ofcourse tons of heavy weapons and artillery. Arty/Airsupport gives usually a noticeable fps drop.

(Cambodunum) #4

Well if the server computer has low specs. Also the amount of players, mod and cfg (the worst setting I can recall is players dropping tons of health/ammopacks when dead) can have a huge impact on the fps.

edit. And ofcourse tons of heavy weapons and artillery. Arty/Airsupport gives usually a noticeable fps drop.

nothing more to add xD
maybe punkbuster (a real bitch since the last update, many players complaining about fps-dropping since months)

greetz Cambo

(IndyJones) #5

i didn’t notice any fps drop due to punkbuster.

(shagileo) #6

I can, for myself, confirm PB issues like huge lagspikes and FPS drops (one goes with the other) at certain periods (like every 1 minute 30 ).

I know a lot of people having the same troubles and mostly on the same server, so my guess is that indeed PB can have some influence on a server.
Though, a server without PB isn’t good

(Cambodunum) #7

i didn’t notice any fps drop due to punkbuster.

neither me … but punkbuster is a pain in the ***

(IndyJones) #8

it never was pain for me. just manually add punkbuster executables to ur firewall, and type /pb_security 0.

i rarely get any kick, and when it happens, it’s usually after warmup (but then it’s like half of server is being kicked for something, so this may me noquarter/server fault)

(stealth6) #9

I’ve never had any problems at all with pb, only just after I installed windows vista cause of UAC (whatever it’s called)
After I turned that off no more problems.

(ailmanki) #10

my 2 cents
pb does add up to the server traffic, so it ‘can’ cause lag, but it can be configured…
I think most pb guides are not intended for 32 player server, rather for a small etpro server… like max 16…
Just recently thought about this to improve a server I manage, but had not time yet to test…

(Blowfish) #11

[quote=IndyJones;208541]i didn’t notice any fps drop due to punkbuster.[/quote]I did, mmm :frowning: Had to set my fps back to 90 to be more stable…

(Psygnosis) #12

Sorry, I know that this is an old post but I thought that you would like to know this information…

PunkBuster server side -
Auto Screenshot Capturing - Very bad if you have Dial up Internet.

In general, no. Unless you have a very low bandwidth connection, you should not experience any lag. If you are on a slow connection, PB may influence your game play, especially if your PB software is being updated or a screenshot is being requested. Auto Screenshots can be set server side to take a snapshot every 20 seconds by default so every 20 seconds you may get a lag spike or experience a freeze if you have a low bandwidth ISP. One way you can test this is to open the Task Manager ( ctrl + alt + del ) while in game and look under processors. Once in here check out your PnkBstrA or PnkBstr B and see how much CPU usage it is using? It should be only using around 8 - 10% ( It used to use 15% of the CPU.)
The admins on the server can change this value to 5 minutes if they want but this may mean that they miss out on a cheater or hacker…

Point number 2:

  • When a player connects, normally depending upon the servers config settings, the server goes through lots of things to get you cleared to play. The server could have CVAR and MD5Tool settings with too many checks could lag out the client while it is checking for the those cvars/files.

Here is a link for some issues and fixes, no guarantee if they work though because everyone seems to be different in some way… Take a look anyway…

http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsvcfaq.php

Number 3 :
PunkBuster is extremely sensitive to any changes. Even packet flow. Any lag on your net connection can cause PB to to kick you. Best advice is to stay updated, even if you have to do it manual each time. Clear any background programs running. Make sure your firewall accepts ET and PB through the ports. It takes a lot of tweaking, but it will ease your problems. The majority of problems seems to be that players PB does not, for some reason, auto update at times. This error will allow you in game and then suddenly fail on you during play. Usually with a hand shake error. This leads back to packet loss or a string of many other problems.
Could even be your graphics card drivers update or settings for the card. Keeping in mind that this is an old game with new technology.

Also another thing that may help you is Windows Defender. If you have this running in the background you may have to set the priority to Low. This can be done from the Task Manager by going to Processors and then finding Windows Defender then right click and change the priority to low from the drop down menu. Now try the game…

In conclusion PB does conflict with some programs that run in the background but it’s all trial and error. Also from the recent PB update some servers may not have updated properly and that is why we, the players, are having so many problems? So if you have a server just take some time and check your PB server files out because they may be the problem?
I know it took me a long time to fix some issues but in the end it now works just fine and I hope that it does for you.

Psy.
p.s. These are just some of the problems out there but if we work together and help each other we can overcome them one step at a time! Sorry for the long post.:eek:

(reaply) #13

I never even experienced any lag difference (except ubuntu) I mean if you are FPS lagging you must not have a decent computer to be honest. you only need like 500mb to run ET with an 2.0 ghz duo cpu. And a stock graphics card. :mad:

(Paul) #14

When in some large maps, when there air airstrikes and many other particles, even I sometimes drop to 40FPS, while I have quadcore & GT9600. So it also depends very much on how many particles there are extra to draw :slight_smile:

(Cambodunum) #15

… thats normal if youre using this kind of videocard with a (22" +) widescreen-monitor

(valkyr) #16

Interesting. I didn’t know Punkbuster took up quite so much CPU. So I did some performance analysis and discovered that on an empty server (well… 1 person on it… i.e. me)

PnkBstrA.exe

[ul]
[li]CPU : Nothing
[/li][li]Disk : Nothing
[/li][li]Memory : 6MB
[/li][li]Network : Nothing
[/li][/ul]

PnkBstrB.exe

[ul]
[li]CPU: Max : 21% Avg : 5-16%.
[/li][li]Disk: Nothing
[/li][li]Memory : 6MB
[/li][li]Network : Nothing worth mentioning apart from when capturing screen-shots (which are only ~82kB)
[/li][/ul]

This was on a server with all Punkbuster features enabled (Screenshots, CVAR logging, MD5 checks, Web-server, UCON)

So I suppose if you have a single core CPU, 21% of it being taken by Punkbuster might make a noticeable difference to frame-rate… A multi-core processor will of course put an end to that though, with ET on one core leaving another free for Punkbuster.

(valkyr) #17

Oh yeah, and if anyone needs a configuration to squeeze the most FPS out of their system, look no further.

(dutchmeat) #18

To the question ‘Can the server influence the ammount of fps’, I say Yes.
But that depends on the map and mod that it’s running.

If the mod adds too many entities in one place(like an overdone explosion) then the client won’t be able coop with the ammount of entities, and thus causing fps drops. Another bottleneck is sending too many commands to the client, this will increase lag, but also fps drops(as far as I know).
However, most mods do not have this behavior.

Punkbuster should not mess with your fps or connection.
However, like others stated it will do so, when the security on your pc is too tight or hasn’t ‘accepted’ punkbuster as a valid executable.
There are tons of solutions for this behavior, you just a to search.