Im putting together a really high spec machine to use to host our community game servers from and I was curious whats better 32bit os or 64bit os or does it really not matter?

thanks.

Well with a 64 bit o/s you can utilize over 4GB of memory successfully (3.25 to be exact).

Technically thats wrong, since you can simply install a PAE kernel and your 32Bit OS will be able to address more than 4GB total memory.

That said, 64Bit will offer better performance especially if you are using modern 64Bit hardware.

Try to use 64bit if you can.

I also recommend 64bit, which motherboard are you using?

Cheers

I also recommend 64bit, which motherboard are you using?

Cheers

nothing has been ordered yet.

any recommendations?

going to be using 16gb ram.

dual quad core. 8 cores.

Something like a Supermicro X7-DCL-i will do nicely. Unless you are looking to use Nehalem based Quadcore Xeon's?

If your budget allows it's going to be worthwhile for the additional memory bandwidth.

Well that depends on the games you want to put on the server's
We << snipped >> use Quad Core 9650 3Ghz Servers running linux, but it depends on what the coustomers want, and what they are prepaird to pay.

Its going to be for a very large gaming community. with games ranging from left 4 dead to call of duty 5 etc.

<< snipped >>

so 64bit is deffo the way to go then.

Considering your do run your own gaming company morticus, how much cpu roughly cause left 4 dead utilise? do you have many l4d customers?

No not really but i just pointing out i had to get more servers on-line ready. I love Arma2 best though still at the mo We dont support that, It will be intresting also to see what Dragon rising will be like as well.

<< snipped >>

so 64bit is deffo the way to go then.

Considering your do run your own gaming company morticus, how much cpu roughly cause left 4 dead utilise? do you have many l4d customers?

i run a private game server at home for people on my forum and one of them is a left 4 dead server - I found the game to be very resource consuming when it's full. I had to turn off Versus mode because when 8 people connected, the RAM would spike as well as bandwidth usage which crippled the rest of the computers. Of course, that's because I host at home - you most likely wouldn't worry about network issues if you are hosting at a datacenter - but you would need a good amount of ram for l4d. I haven't paid much attention to CPU usage - never really used that much for me to notice I guess. We have a scheduled game in a few weeks where we expect it to fill up, I'll keep my eye out for the CPU usage (doubt it's too much)

You should definitely go with 64 bit if you are looking to utilize your server efficiently.

16gb ram is probably going to be way overkill.

16gb ram is probably going to be way overkill.

Agree, i have recently build a Dual XEON X5450 server which has 8 physical cores. 8GB ECC RAM has been more than enough.

To give you guys a more spesific description about PAE kernels:

A 32bit Linux system with PAE enabled kernel can access up to 64GB of memory (assuming the mainboard is capable of having that amount).

Only limitation is 2GB per process allocation with a PAE kernel. Of course it´s better with a 64bit kernel because no tricks needs to be done to access full memory range.

Only those games which have native 64bit server binaries actually really benefit from a 64bit kernel. However according to my recent tests with multiple games, a 64bit kernel runs just fine 32bits games as well.

For years i used only 32bit support when ia32-libs were not that good, nowadays i havent experienced any issue so far. I speak with over five years experience, this is not any copy/paste from another page.

in addition, you'll likely have to use 4gb modules, which are quite expensive.

Correct me if I'm wrong, isnt there a performance penalty for using the PAE kernel?

Correct me if I'm wrong, isnt there a performance penalty for using the PAE kernel?

I haven`t noticed any issue nor received any negative feedback regarding my gameservers. Most of my servers are still using PAE enabled kernels.

Currently only that Dual X5450 server is using native 64bit kernel.

Machines i`m using are pretty much high-end hardware, small possibly existing overheat cannot be detected that easily.