PA Demo and 100% CPU

[LeifStyle]

Hi...

humm... dunno what it is... I downloaded the demo of PA MP... installed it and checked some servers... worked good... 30ms ping no lag... everythings fine.

So I installed it on my root server... (AMD 2600+ with a Gig of RAM). First I tried this Server Start Utitily... did the settings... kicked the server into gear and bang 100% CPU. A bit too much :eek: :)

Well... the readme said u need much power for 16 slot server... so I tried 2 slots :p - same thing... 100%.

So I took my own machine... (AMD 64 3800+ with 2 gigs of RAM)... 2 slots... 100% CPU. :eek: :confused:


I thought it might be the this server tool.

So I started of with:

"D:\Games\PA Demo\mohpa_mpdemo_server.exe" +set dedicated 2 +exec server.cfg

Started... but still 100%!

Tried: +set dm_effectscontroller 0

No go!

Damn... 3800+ should be fairly enough I think :confused:

Any hints for me?

thanks guys.

greets
Leif

[rudedog]

This seems to be common problem. I will pass this info on to EA.

PS we will have our test server up by Monday because I have plans this weekend away from my computer :( (hope my wife does not see this post)

[helltamer]

same issue with our server as well has to be a trick we missed

[kevn357]

Major resource hog. Hope the release is better or we ain't runnin it.
50% CPU with dual 3.02 xeons and 2 gig of ram.

[BoSBrian]

Running Dual Xeon 2.8 w/ 2GB ram and 10,000RPM SCSI

Very low ram usage 800k

CPU totally usage running at 23% with a full demo server
However, one cpu monitor in task mgr running at 85% or higher, then switches to a different processor and does the same thing.

Game server is actually running smooth, BUT I'm concerned because this is the only game on this box at the moment.

I'm going to set this up as a service and try that out.................

[EvilBart]

it's killing my machines also :mad:

anyone found a bypass yet?
http://www.belgianclan.be/uploads/serverscreen.jpg

[rudedog]

I have seen this with our test server located in West Virgina at ServerBeach.

EA is aware and are looking into this problem.

I'm getting 98% CPU util, with a dedicated Win2K3 server running only an FTP program in the background. All services including web, smtp are shut down.

[rudedog]

Man, what a time to have to leave for the weekend.

If someone could try this.

start a server with the dslauncher.exe and one with mohpa_server.exe

See if there is any difference.

Will run tests when I get back late Sunday/Monday I need to get this info to EA

[EvilBart]

Rudedog: i tried both - no succes :(

[rudedog]

Thanks, will pass that along.

[LeifStyle]

japp - tried that ways too...

-launcher or directly via shortcut and cmdline

all ways lead to 100% cpu.

so bug in the demo i guess?!

What kinda CPU and systems does EA take to test this things? :D I mean, 100%, everybody should recognize this as a major problem :confused: :rolleyes:

[BoSBrian]

http://70.84.30.196/downloads/cpu.jpg

Dual 2.8Xeon Windows 2003 server with 2GB Ram

EMPTY MOHPA demo server only game server running on the box..... :confused:

Game server setup as a windows service

[EvilBart]

single 2.5 Ghz proc system, 1 GB mem, the memory usage in my screenshot above is because there's also a cod:uo server and a spearhead server running.

PA doesn't need that much memory (but it eats processing power :D )

[aLLpLaY]

Dual Xeon 2.4ghz - 25% cpu usage idle.

[UnDead]

Well our Dual Xeon 2.8's with 2 gigs Ram and T3+ bandwidth kept our server showing up as 25 to 28% CPU usuage. IT seemed it didn't matter how many players were in it either. 6 or 16 it was 25 percent....

Also it was lagging the crap out of our CoD United Offensive server. Pings of players on our MohPA Demo server were good around 40 to 100 and on our CoD UO server they were 125 to 350. We have shut down our Demo server since and our awaiting a solution. Its almost like it is using 100% CPU but not showing it and just showing 25% instead. CoDUO runs 25 percent constant full with 32 players.

[CoZ]

I have also found the demo server very resource hungry, whether full (16player) or empty its constantly sitting at around the 50% + processor usage mark, thats running on a P4 3Ghz HT with 2GB Ram running Win 2003 Server. I have naturally as per the readme made changes that they suggest may reduce load, but with little effect.

This is obviously having an impact on our mohaa servers that we run on the same box. I really think EA need to look into this ASAP.

[Hambrgr_Helpr]

I guess it doesn't need repeating....but WTH; we too have experienced the same drastic CPU usage...and I guess it also goes without saying that EA must be aware of the issue by now. I am truly hoping that they don't release the game with this problem...with as much emphasis as they seem to be placing on the success of the PA MP, they would be foolish to do so. (Anyone reading this who is in contact with the EA team (Jim Landi?), please express that almost every admin I've seen in forums or spoken to personally about this agrees that PA will not be up on their servers until it draws a normal amount of machine resources.)

Another bad thing of note is that there seems to be a ton of console errors. Perhaps this is because it's a demo and much of the full game's file structure is missing...am I remembering correctly, were there lots of errors in the BT demo too??

The main admin question I have is what kind of file archive codec tool do we use to get at the configs? Assuming that they are in the MPDemo\mpdemo\pk0.rez file...right? I tried to open it with WinRez, but that didn't work...WinRAR doesn't open it up either. What gives? Every admin likes to have full CVAR control...thanks EA, the change from .pk3 is very annoying thus far.



General Comments (COD meets BF1942?):

Weps:
The weps need a little tweaking for my taste. I find that EA always makes MG/SMG recoil so extreme that firing an MG/SMG at a single target is totally useless - even in close combat. That will be the first thing to change for us.

UI & Controls:
The interface seems to be robust and is easy to use...although there are a few things that need ironing-out. One thing of note is that changing the mouse speed in the UI doesn't affect the actual speed of the mouse while IN the UI itself. hmm...slower is not always better.

Environment:
The environments are great! The misty fog, the bird sounds...all are cool. Even the river water looks good. Some may say that having less ground foliage makes MPFPS better because the gameflow isn't interrupted...I think the level of jungle detail makes gameplay more life-like. In fact, I think the more environmental realism, the better. The rag-doll bodies are also a nice touch...although with rag-doll turned off, bodies lay in weird positions.

Server Memory Usage:
As far as I can tell, it uses roughly the same amount as BT.

Playing it:
Maybe those used to playing the existing MOH series on older machines will have to upgrade their systems to run it at high res, but according to our testing, the game runs fine and looks ok with machines having the minimum system requirements. I've heard rumor that DX8.1 vid cards are "useable" also (not that anyone would WANT to use one...but hey, some folks have no choice).



-I could go on, but my overall opinion is that EA has made giant strides from the aging Quake-based engine seen in AA, SH and BT. Everything looks good, the game-play is fun and it seems most players’ opinions are positive. Now the only thing to do is pressure EA to fix the freakin' resource-hog issue as fast as they possibly can.

- jmtc

[rudedog]

Very good comments, Hambrgr_Helpr

Late on Friday before heading for home, EA stated they are looking into this. We the MOHTeam have been discussing this all weekend and hopefully will have some answers replies on Monday.

I don't want this to turn into a CoD-UO resource issue.

[rudedog]

Here's something weird.

in the command box window (dedicated server) try the "serverinfo" command and watch your cpu usage.... goes all the way down in the teens. weird.

I have a video if anyone wants to see this in action.

[LeifStyle]

Interesting...

I tried "cvarlist" - goes down to 0 - 2 % as long as the server box lists up the cvars (20 secs or s.th like that)

After finishing the list - cpu goes back to 100%

Even if I try other cvars... like exec server.cfg the cpu usage goes down...!

Strange :confused:

[EvilBart]

hehehehe lolz :eek: , that's funny.

typed that command allready sometimes, but i never watched the cpu-usage with that... :D

[rudedog]

on an intel box goes down to mid teens
on an AMD box goes all the way down to 7

I have not been able to try this on a full server.

Don't know if this is anything but have passed this on to EA.

[SNYPE]

Keep in mind that this is a Demo and as with the BT Demo the pk3 was protected.
The cfg files are easy to create, the game doesnt come with them. Make a subfolder in the Mpdemo folder and name it "configs". Now open the Readme file that comes with the MP Demo and you will see a very complete section of all cvars at the bottom, copy that into Notepad and give it a name (server.cfg) and then copy this cfg file into the configs folder you created. Farther up in the Readme are examples of Command lines to use to start the Dedicated server.
Use the mapname: "dm/mp_gifu_inv" for the maplist and start map in your cfg.

[rudedog]

If you use the dslauncher_mpdemo.exe file it will create an cfg file for you.

Look in my documents for this file after you save it.

EA had done a great job at providing most of if not all cvars for a cfg file.

[SNYPE]

Thats right Rude, same place the Single Player stored it, good one.
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\My Documents\EA Games\Medal of Honor Pacific Assault(tm) Multiplayer Demo

The DSLauncher_mpdemo.exe is a good tool.

If you use the dslauncher_mpdemo.exe file it will create an cfg file for you.

Look in my documents for this file after you save it.

EA had done a great job at providing most of if not all cvars for a cfg file.

[rudedog]

I must say they did one hell of a job on the dedicated launcher and the readme has tons of info.

Now if they could only fix the cpu usage problem we should be all set.

[Hambrgr_Helpr]

Thanks, SNYPE - I should have figured that out myself (*doh*) ...guess brain-farts aren't just for kids these days :D

RudeDog - here are some other things I noticed:

1). With respect to Mem Usage: At idle, the BT server uses around 800k, while the PA server uses roughly 20,000k. Peak Memory Usage is also way higher for PA...like 15x higher.

2). There are a significant amount of Page Faults on both our AMD and Intel machines...although not as many on our Intel server as on our AMD box.

3). The page faults may have something to do with the HUGE amount of virtual memory being used by the demo...on both our AMD & Intel machine we see roughly 10-times the amount of VM use compared to any other normal service or program (I thought at first this could possibly be the result of the AMD's on-die memory controller using system mem as virtual mem...but it's true on both platforms).

4). In looking for any anomalies in resource use, I used our Intel server as a guinea pig...and found something kinda strange. -Don't know what it means, but I noticed that when running just the BT server, the resources used by McAfee's McSheild.exe is normal, around 0-7%. See below:

http://bxdclan.boxlightdesign.com/just_BT.jpg

BUT, when running both the BT and PA servers simultaneously, the McSheild.exe use suddenly bounces around between 65% - 80% and the PA demo drops to around 20%.

http://bxdclan.boxlightdesign.com/with_both.jpg

This is completely reproducible every time on our Intel box....and like I said, McSheild.exe never uses anything above 7% under normal circumstances.


5). I also tried this on our AMD machine and got these results:

http://bxdclan.boxlightdesign.com/AMD_with_both.jpg

-This could have everything to do with CPU architecture, there are significant differences between the two. It just seems very weird to me that the virus protection would have such an abnormal resource draw once the PA demo is running. hmmmm.

Don't know if this data is of any help, but I thought I'd toss it out there.

:cool:

[rudedog]

Good info.

I will pass this along on Monday.

[rudedog]

Found some info on McAfee's McSheild.exe

It may be spiking because MOHPA is looking or phoning home.

I found this with regards to quickbook

It turns out that Quickbooks installs an updater file in the startup folder. I guess periodically the updater starts to poll for updates from the website. I believe this raises flags on McAfee's end to make it think that adaware or some type of virus polling software is on the machine. The resolution to this problem was to take out the updater out of the startup location. Once that was done the machine behaved normally. Looking at this scenario its possible that some programs out of the box that install polling or updating features may cause issues with antivirus software. Not knowing what to do to fix the problem McAfee just spins its wheel trying to clean something that otherwise does not need to be cleaned.

It almost seems that when something loads or interacts with the game, the load decreases???

Will still pass this on to EA

[Hambrgr_Helpr]

RudeDog: It almost seems that when something loads or interacts with the game, the load decreases???
Yes, as if it's set to use all available resources unless internal program commands or exterior program interfacing occurs.

-weird, but not totally unheard-of.

[D_Town]

The reason it's 100% for some, 50% for some, and 25% is because of the machines they are running on. It has nothing to do with speed. It's all about poor resource utilization.

The Dual Xeon boxes are CPUs with Hyperthreading. This makes windows think there's actually four processors, instead of two. What this means is that the server application isn't built to support more than one CPU, and it's going to use 100% of it since the app is single threaded (25% of the "total CPU power" for the server, in reality it's 50% total)

It's 50% for XP users that have a Pentium 4 Hyperthreading CPU. Again, hyperthreading makes windows think there's two processors in the PC instead of one, and the program uses 100% of the "single CPU." While it displays as 50%, in reality, it's actually using 100% of your CPU.

AMD doesn't have Hyperthreading, so it'll be 100%. Older P4's will be 100% too.

Some of you may have noticed that CPU utilization actually goes down when the program is put under any kind of stress. The reason for this is simple. For anybody who has programmed before, applications like these usually use "while(true)" to make a program run forever. If you use this concept without any kind of prioritization and/or built in "we're doing nothing, let's settle down" code, it'll appear like the CPU is working it's ass off, when it's actually running "nothing" really, really fast. So why does the CPU utilization go down when it's actually got something to do? Because the "while(true)" loop has to wait until the command it's processing is done before it can do anything else. So, it stops running "nothing" a billion times a second to do something that utilizies the CPU in a smarter fashion.

What really needs to happen here is better programming on the dedicated server application. A large portion of people using that application will have multiple processors, and it would be nice if that application supported them.

Despite all of this, I think that the reason the MP Demo Dedicated server sucks is because it was thrown together. They needed to release something, fast. It's also likely the reason behind the random 10 second lag thing.

Methinks the retail version of this server will probably be just fine.

[Hambrgr_Helpr]

What can I say....D_Town has his programmer's thinking-cap on.

Good assessment, D_Town, thank you.

[Hecktic]

First off Very interesting thread with a lot of usefull information but hold on a second...

where are the servers with the dual amd opteron cpus??? has anyone tried them with mohpa demo mp? or mohpa mp retail?

But I will have to definitly agree to where it was said that the server program is not making use of the dual cpu function..... any way to force it? (other than to ask EA lol....maybe there is a 3rd party app that will do this in win 2k3 running them as services?) If not then EA needs to jump the ball on this and release a patch for the server side program?

Other than those questions I came up with... I cant think of anything else to say about flaws in the server side stuff in mohpa....

Thanks in advance,

-{DwR}-GoA.|Hecktic|~C~
www.clan-dwr.com