Steady tick rates on high-clock dedicated servers

Most game servers run their simulation on a single main thread. Minecraft (Java Edition) processes each world tick there, and many other titles behave similarly: extra cores help with networking, chunk generation and plugins, but the tick loop is bound to one core. At 20 ticks per second, that loop has a 50 ms budget per tick, and when it overruns, players see rubber-banding.

That is why the Core series suits game hosting. The Core 16X boosts to 5.7 GHz and has 128 MB of L3 cache thanks to 3D V-Cache, so more of a large world's state stays on-chip instead of waiting on memory. The Core 16 reaches 5.4 GHz with 64 MB of L3 for $299/mo.

Practical tuning on top of the hardware:

• Pin each instance to its own cores with taskset or systemd's CPUAffinity, so busy servers don't compete for the same core.
• Use the performance CPU governor.
• Give Java servers a fixed heap (-Xms equal to -Xmx) sized to the instance, not to the machine.

Size by busy main threads first, then by memory. As an estimate:

The assumptions: one physical core per instance whose main thread runs near full load, two cores kept for the OS, backups and voice, and about 10% of RAM left to the OS. Lightly loaded servers, such as small private worlds, can share cores, so the real number is often higher; heavily modded servers may need two cores each. The Pro 32 fits more instances but boosts to 4.4 GHz rather than 5.7 GHz, so it suits lighter titles and supporting services best.

Measure before you commit: run your busiest map at peak player count, watch tick times (for example with the spark profiler on Minecraft, or the game's own server statistics), and keep at least 20% headroom on the main thread at peak.

Players feel latency before anything else, so host close to them. Core servers are available in all 10 locations: New York, Ashburn, Dallas and Los Angeles; Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London; Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney. As an estimate, every 1,000 km of fiber path adds about 10 ms of round-trip time, so picking the right region matters more than any tuning. Test from your players' networks with our looking glass.

Game traffic is mostly small UDP packets, and game servers are frequent DDoS targets. FlexDedi filters every IP at the network edge, always on and included, with nothing to configure. Keep your own firewall tight as well: open only the game and query ports you use, and restrict RCON and admin panels to your own addresses.

Traffic is unmetered on the 10 Gbps port, so serving maps, mods and updates to thousands of players costs nothing extra. Need several servers on default ports? Additional IPv4 addresses are available on request.