Building a Game Sever

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I have long been thinking about setting up a game server so i can play diffrent games with my friends.. Wel i got DC hub running on my computer now and i want to move that one over to a server and allso add a few 250Gb harddrives to use as a file server.. I will be hosting, War3, Ut2004, Hl2, anything that comes to my mind on my server. Not all at the same time. Well the problem is that all server building articals are from 2 years back and dosent cover the dilema of choseing high end Processors of today.
Well as i see it i got two choises..
One normal AMD XP 2800+ At least or....
One Normal P4 3.0Ghz at least or.... Dual systems
Two AMD MP ???(I dont know.. need help here)
Two P4 Xeon ???( I dont know.. need help here)

The main think im curius about is.. What is the performance diffrece when driving a single processor server compared to a dual processor system? And is it nessesary at my scale?
What do i need to run a Well prepared Game server and a file sharing server for DC HUB with 250+ User right now.. And me and my friends browsing the file folders inside from inside the network and at the same time maybe running a HL2 Server..
Plz give me some tips.. im on a budget of 900dollars for the processor/ram and motherbord... If u guys got any ideas... please pass em by
 
Well for one if you want to come out cheap you don't need dual processors. You don't need them anyway. For what you want a decent XP or P4 will be just fine.

As far as a DC hub, even a 1GHz processor would be fine, so buy what you can afford. DC Hub's don't work your computer that hard. Your internet connections upload speed is the largest factor you need to worry about there.

As far as a game server for the games you mentioned well. For one, I assume you won't be PLAYING these games on the server since it's a server it will most likely be dedicated and won't be pushing pixels around on the screen so your major concerns are: Processor and RAM. Hard Drive details come into play depending on how much space you want, but that you can figure out on your own. Don't worry too much about the video card in your server, it's not a major player in how well your server performs. Processor/RAM is what matters most.

If your going to be hosting any sort of files then your talking about hard drive speed. A 7200rpm drive will be just fine though. No need to go out and get a 10,000rpm drive (those are very expensive and still pretty pointless for the types of things that you want to do). I would suggest trying to host a file server on a 300mhz PC, it will work sure, but yes a better processor will help. A simple 1GHz processor would be just fine. Though I would go for something like a 1800+ because they are easier to find and better priced in the long run and obviously an 1800+ would be usefull further into the future than a 1GHz.

If I was going to build a server such as what you want, my personal preference would be something like the following: (but this is just what *I* would do).

Athlon XP 2600+

512MB or 1GB of RAM (PC2700 or higher and I would try and go for Corsair RAM)

A7N8X or A7N8X-X motherboard (very reliable, this is my personal preference in motherboards, also has great onboard sound which doesn't tax your motherboard. I've recommended these to several people online and they thanked me later.)
The A7N8X goes for about $110, then A7N8X-X goes for about $75. A7N8X-X just has a little less features which don't make much of a difference.

120GB (or higher) 7200RPM Western Digital or Maxtor hard drive
(how many I used would depend on the space I needed)

Geforce2 or Radeon 9200 (or higher if I planned on actually playing games on the system at some point)
 
thx

Well ok then i know that i dont need to go buzzing out with dual processors..... Wel i have allso heard that the P4 is alot better at server functione like stability and so on.. is this true? I have never owned a P4 so i dont know. If thier is no major diffrence then i will go with AMD because i know them and they are cheeper.
Thx
 
P4 better as a server, no not really. Just go with what your comfortable with. Mainly which processor you can get for the better price. You will be lucky to find a P4 processor that is cheaper than an AMD though. P4's are usually significantly higher priced.

Your talking about stability, well my opinion there is going to be that stability is going to depend more on the rest of your components. Mainly the quality of the motherboard and RAM.
As I mentioned before, it depends on what kind of features you need in a server, but for what your talking about doing I think you would do fine with a A7N8X-X motherboard which is highly stabile. Then Corsair RAM. Look around at www.newegg.com and write down some prices and figure out what will come out better for you.
 
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