Win2K3 as a Dedicated game server

[Justice]

Has anyone already setup a 2K3 server for running games? I'm planning on doing this for my LAN parties, but I'm unsure if the games will run on the OS reliably. Games like BF1942, Farcry, Sacred, Dungeon Siege, Freelancer, etc..

[Owyn]

I think all your answers are in this guide :

http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/

After several configuration with Directx and your Display Setting, all your games will work perfectly !

Enjoy

[Justice]

Thanks. I forgot about that page, but I'm not actually PLAYING games on the server, I'm hosting dedicated servers of games (One at a time) on a system with multiple NICs and network load balancing enabled.

[prathapml]

@Justice-

What you describe should work fine, just enable the optimizations (DMA, fast graphics, etc.), and install the latest drivers that exist for your hardware. Those games will run pretty reliably for sure - unless your network switch chokes! Also, since you won't be _playing_ games on it (only hosting/co-ordinating between clients), the less-than-desirable graphics support on svr2k3 won't matter.

OK, now I know that this will only be a dedicated game server (you won't be playing games on it), but still, windows server 2003 doesn't look like the best of platforms to do it. Win2k AS should give you better performance, but then it's a fact that svr2k3 has lots of speed optimizations, and is more secure by default - so its your call!

XP will certainly be the worst choice for a *DEDICATED* game server because:

1. It has its own eye-candy crap to slow down everything.

2. Its not as 'new' as svr2k3.

3. Its not as optimized for performance as win2k/2k3.

4. It won't have the Network Load Balancing that you want.