Hardware info

[Binarybits]

<.< psst... >.> hey you wanted to ... <.< ... >.> know what new hardware they are upgrading to?

<.<

>.>

I got secret undercover footage of FC in the middle of testing some upgrades...

<.<

0_O Oh noes they found me!

*sounds of gunfire*



x_X

[onnichay]

THIS JUST IN!

Leaked shot of the new setup @ Funcom

lol grafter
can i buy that pls, it looks uber

[Kenlaar]

If you can't tell us what it is on now, can you at least tell us what we've been playing on all these years?

[Thecrow91]

I cant give the exact technical specifications on all the new hardware being used, but all the servers are being replaced with brand new dual and quad core machines and the new database solution is a significant improvement in terms of both performance server side and storage capacity. We are also upgrading the version of Oracle that the database servers run on so it is up to date with the latest and most efficient version.

This move literally includes everything being upgraded, the servers are in new racks, with brand new routers, power and redundancy infrastructure.

This will mean that AO is running in as good a production environment as is practically available at the current time. (i.e. not counting the theoretical and ridiculously expensive ) It is a significant investment, and one that we make happily to ensure that AO has a sound basis on which to continue for many years.

Servers wont keep AO running.

If you want more people to play AO improve the graphics.
All my friends wont touch the game because it looks 10 years old.

[Ekarona]

I cant give the exact technical specifications on all the new hardware being used, but all the servers are being replaced with brand new dual and quad core machines and the new database solution is a significant improvement in terms of both performance server side and storage capacity.

This move literally includes everything being upgraded, the servers are in new racks, with brand new routers, power and redundancy infrastructure.
.

So upgrading just to single-cpu systems? No multi-cpu, aren't those still the way for performance?

Hope this helps with pet lags on raids -APF 5s from /pet attack to Attacking
- Hmm, hope they get graph-engine done too improving memory and texture managment.

[Playerq]

I cant give the exact technical specifications on all the new hardware being used, but all the servers are being replaced with brand new dual and quad core machines and the new database solution is a significant improvement in terms of both performance server side and storage capacity. We are also upgrading the version of Oracle that the database servers run on so it is up to date with the latest and most efficient version.

This move literally includes everything being upgraded, the servers are in new racks, with brand new routers, power and redundancy infrastructure.

This will mean that AO is running in as good a production environment as is practically available at the current time. (i.e. not counting the theoretical and ridiculously expensive ) It is a significant investment, and one that we make happily to ensure that AO has a sound basis on which to continue for many years.

/me gives Sil a big troxy hug

[melbatoast]

So upgrading just to single-cpu systems? No multi-cpu, aren't those still the way for performance?

Actually he just said upgrading to dual and quad core CPU's. Most servers have the ability to accept 2, 4 or 8 physical CPU's.

For instance most blade servers only have 2 CPU's but you can have 10 servers in a 7U chassis. That is 20 physical CPU's and if they are quad core would be 80 CPU's in a 12 inch space.

I am doubting they are going to use blades though. Typically you see Blades used when all the servers are doing the same task... such as a Citrix farm.

Besides servers are cheap ! The real money comes upgrading the SAN.

[irmo]

They got a good deal on ODPR486DX-33`s and are currently upgrading their all their systems. The new server farm was used for conan chat instead.

[shadowgod]

Servers wont keep AO running.

If you want more people to play AO improve the graphics.
All my friends wont touch the game because it looks 10 years old.

tell your friends to go play wow then? or maybe eq2, i hear thats eye candy.


really.. if all they care about is graphics.... i dont want to see fc stopping their time working on performance and functionality just to add eye candy...



and you know.. they have over recent history already updated a ton of textures around rubika... made alot of places look almost brand new.

[Hitthis]

tell your friends to go play wow then? or maybe eq2, i hear thats eye candy.


really.. if all they care about is graphics.... i dont want to see fc stopping their time working on performance and functionality just to add eye candy...



and you know.. they have over recent history already updated a ton of textures around rubika... made alot of places look almost brand new.

I want old OA back!!!!! I miss sitting at the Duck SE of the grid exit!!!

[Cdogg421]

/me runs up to sil
/s dood!
Sillirrion: o.O peeky?
Cdogg421: Your getting a dell!
Sillirrion runs away

[egadsrk2]

So.

You can't/won't give us specific details on the servers. And I can understand why.

Some people have their fantasy visions of various laggy situations being improved. I don't. I know client lag when I sees it.

Now I'm certain all of this new hardware, all the jillions being spent to make it happen is all part of the long and arduous journey to having all the right stuff in place to allow for the engine updates in future, so that when that's all polished to a high shine, its left only to the players to have their AO experience held back - and their varying degrees of hardware. Taking all responsibility away from Funcom, through a year of bumper to bumper hard work.

Which makes me think come Thursday afternoon, there will be no living proof that anything has changed, except for one shaking knee on my left leg from severe AO Deprivation. And of course four corpses, after my kill crazy rampage.

So my question is, is there any aspects of the game, that will be noticable, by players, thats going to improve directly from this hardware? Small things, obviously.

Such as:

-Sync of where mobs are, and where they appear to be on a players screen.
-Sync of where you are, and there your screen says you are, for melee professions
-The speed of some tasks like dead mobs turning into lootable corpses, the opening of corpses.
-Zoning
-Logging in and out
-Opening Containers
-Other little niggly things?

I'm not expecting anything, because this is all behind-the-scenes stuff. Being done now, to allow for something new later.

What immediately comes to mind is 17.1 (I think) increasing our mission key limit, without explanation although plenty of people were glad. The key reason coming into play the next patch cycle - dreadloch missions without timers that could potentially take a long time for some people to do.. Thus filling up all of those 'new' mission slots.

It wasnt a fix, in 17.1 it was an improvement that needed to happen to make room for another improvement down the line.

So just curious if you can point out anything, while we (im)patiently wait for 17.5, that we're going to notice and just go 'wow, I can see the new servers in -that-'.

[Deepcuts79]

For all those who said that graphic lag isn't server side, cmon.
I started playing AO with a AMD 2.5 Barton, 512 MB RAM and a sloww azz HDD. LOT of laggin.
Now I have an Intel 6600 Dual Core with 2 GB RAM ,1.5 TB HDD ( 16 MB cache ) and 8600 GTS GPU. Almost the same performance. Cmon
Tried a few other MMOs, with amazing graphics and lots of ppl in one area. Surprize: NO GPU LAG.
I can play all the new games at max quality without any problems

And , btw, ppl that say they have no GPU lag....u running at lowest detail?
Well, I am running at highest and Xpect to run it like that.
Of course if I reduce my visibility at 50 % it will perform wayyy better. But cmon...

[egadsrk2]

It's not server side. It's not your computers fault either.

It stems from 7+ year old code that principally relies on your RAM, CPU, and other methods of displaying things that at the time was acceptable, and is now inefficient in every way conceivable.

Anarchy Online barely utilises the GPU at all, beyond putting pixels on a screen. All of the hard work is still managed by pieces of hardware that are no longer designed to take that kind of work load.

These are the kind of issues that will be addressed in the Engine complete reworking that was announced last month, and is planned for about this time next year.

Edit: In short, it doesnt matter how much hardware you throw at AO, from your desktop. Be it an ordinary computer, or a gamers rig designed to be the absolute best imaginable (for 3 months), AO until its engine is rebuilt line by line, is going to ignore your hardware. It does not discriminate. All video cards are created equal in the eyes of AO.

[Ramany]

For all those who said that graphic lag isn't server side, cmon.
I started playing AO with a AMD 2.5 Barton, 512 MB RAM and a sloww azz HDD. LOT of laggin.
Now I have an Intel 6600 Dual Core with 2 GB RAM ,1.5 TB HDD ( 16 MB cache ) and 8600 GTS GPU. Almost the same performance. Cmon

If you didn't see any performance improvement from your HW upgrade, you must have a serious setup/settings issue, or maybe your hamster is on strike...
I upgraded a while ago from AMD Athlon 1.2 /512MB / ATI9600XT to Core2Duo 6600/2GB/7600GT and it made a LOT of difference. Lag has been reduced to its bare minimum : zoning takes a couple of seconds vs 15 to 30 before, and I really only feel a little lag in Bor (while I could hardly move there before), even dual-logged, but it remains very playable.
I'm 100% sure GPU has nothing to do with it, but RAM, CPU and new SATA Disk all play their role : I guess the only residual lag I have now is server-bound...
And indeed, the game code needs some revamping as it gets no benefit at all from new technologies (DX10) and under-utilizes the capabilities of recent HW..

[windcaster]

hehe and i sure hope it never does use dx10.. seeing as it's vista only... at least for now..

btw while SATA does provide higher bandwidth the real bottle neck is actually reading the data off the harddrive rather then transmitting it, this has always been one of the biggest problems.. better heads / buffers, and of course faster and faster rotation speeds.

in a single drive system it's most obvious advantages are lower power requirements and much better cable management (longer, thiner).

dont get me wrong SATA is better, but in general RPM's will make more difference.

[Verta]

Servers wont keep AO running.

If you want more people to play AO improve the graphics.
All my friends wont touch the game because it looks 10 years old.

Same actually. Everyone I tried to lure into AO won't stick around past neubie island, because they don't like the graphics.

Really wish FC could make AO look even half as good as Dreamfall, the longest journey.

[mechanuf]

The memory leak problem on RK is very vissible, if you just blitz through a bunch of missions in different zones. After 9 missions or so, I lag so bad on zoning that AO got a very big chance of crashing on zone.

Everything gets slower, FPS drop over time, loading time on zone etc ... all go down the drain. Its even noticeable after a few SL missions and after about 3, I really could use a relog (preferably inside the mission, so I get at least one mission lag free/less)


Some time ago I read a post where I guy made a trace of what files AO was reading, when the doorlag/loadlag hit at full force ... and it seemed that the thousands of files in the prefs folder. This offcourse makes the entire system halt for a while at least under XP. Vista has some improved caching scheme and this could explain why people report of less doorlag under Vista than XP.

[Playerq]

Yep.

Also very bad when you run around hunting dyna's in Inferno without even zoning.

[JustAShadow]

Funny thing is that unlike most people here I am afraid of the future redo of the client. Most of the game time I have is on my old laptop. If it becomes unplayable on the laptop I don't see any point in paying for it every month if my game time gets limited to the time I use my desktop.