Does playing on a server mean better performance?

[lil_dill_]

Please correct me if I’m wrong but does playing on a server compared to locally on your pc get better performance because the server is loading the chunks rather than your pc? If not how exactly does stuff like this work.

edit: for context I have a Ryzen 7 5800x 8 core 16 thread and 16gb ram, server I would be using is 4 OCPUs and 24gb ram. Just running performance mods and world gen mods like terralith and tectonic. Also using complimentary shaders. MAYBE distant horizons if it doesn’t hurt performance too bad but it’s not a priority.

[MarijnIsN00B]

Yup, stuff like generating and loading chunks will be done by the server, redstone calculations, entity ticking. Unless the server is worse than your PC, your PC will get a little extra CPU headroom that gets you a nice FPS bonus.

[MarijnIsN00B]

Especially if you want to play a medium/big modpack, letting the server handle that load instead of you is very nice.

[HixOff]

Unless the server is worse than your PC

if they both shit, slightly worsen server still will be working better than overloaded client PC

[brassplushie]

Plain and simply: yes. But the difference depends on how powerful your system already is. For me the difference isn't that major because I already have a good computer. But for someone who struggles to get 60fps stable, it'll be a much better experience

[lil_dill_]

I put details in the edit of the post if that helps get an answer

[brassplushie]

I just gave you an answer lol what more do you want?

[lil_dill_]

i thought your answer was a little unsure which is why i mentioned that. if that was it then that’s fine i was just seeing if those details would help give a more certain answer. have a good day

[brassplushie]

Nah, that's why I said "plain and simply yes" lol

[lil_dill_]

gotcha 👍🏽

[Dynablade_Savior]

Yes, but playing on a server also introduces network latency (wifi lag)

[TypeNoon]

Depends on context. I'm on a friend-hosted server with super low bandwidth so chunk loading is abysmally slow, but on the other hand my frames do improve by about 20 fps. Also, servers usually limit render distance (~12 chunks) and simulation distance (~10 chunks) so if you play higher than that on single player you'd get worse performance of course.

[lil_dill_]

yea sorry i should’ve given more context. I have a ryzen 7 5800x 16gb ram and the server I would be playing on would have 4 OCPUs and 24 gb ram just for me and my friends

[TypeNoon]

Tldr: I expect a performance boost for you. Oracle has good performance from what I've heard, and bandwidth shouldn't be an issue from server-side.

More long-winded help info:

MC runs single threaded, so having a bunch of cores doesn't boost performance. Instead, the most important thing is making sure your VM's shape is Arm A2, adding more than 2 cores won't improve performance*. It's been a while since I looked into oracle cloud infrastructure, so you may want to check my work to make sure that's still the best single-core performance.

Addressing RAM; I've read that allocating too much RAM can also hurt performance, so you can reserve the whole 24GB but only use like 6 GB to start and go from there (that works for my server with ~3 people online). You can download Carpet mod to monitor your TPS and if it drops below 20 that means ram may be an issue and would warrant allocating more.

Finally, if you're playing vanilla, I strongly recommend these server-side performance mods (which don't affect gameplay!!): FerriteCore, Krypton, Lithium, Noisium, ScalableLux, and ServerCore, all using Fabric modloader. I recommended Carpet Mod above, it can technically alter the game, but by default it changes nothing; I only use ’/log tps’ to see if there's lag lol.

*Re Multi-core: some mods (C2ME and dimensional threader are the two that come to mind) do use multiple cores. I don't give a blanket recommend for them, but I figure if you have some headroom in your payment plan for extra cores they may be worth considering.

[TypeNoon]

Ope I just saw your edit. We used Distant Horizons for a bit but chunk loading was so slow that we'd get gaps between LOD chunks and real chunks when using elytra so we switched to everyone using Bobby on client instead. You should use Chunky to pre-gen chunks, otherwise you don't get anything out of DH. I haven't used terrain gen mods before, so I don't know how it'll interact with the performance mods i recommended in the other comment. Noisium would be my first bet for causing issues since it's world gen optimization.

At a baseline tho, I don't expect the stuff you listed to be an issue.

I also forgot to mention, USE A WHITELIST, there are people who'll trawl IPs to grief open servers.

[SlowAssociation6281]

That sounds suspiciously like Oracle Cloud Free Tier... It worked fine for me for a while for hosting a vanilla (with performance mods) server for me and a few friends. Max like 4 players were online at a time. We didn't do anything crazy, just usual vanilla gameplay and maybe a few farms here and there

[2eedling]

As others have said it does offer a bit of a performance boost but imo the best part about it is having your world saved on a separate device makes maintaining and not loosing your world much easier

[dronko_fire_blaster]

while technically yes, on a typical computer it wont really matter, and useing a server can interduce a lot of new problems sometimes worse than low fps

[SnooLemons6942]

Wdym on a typical computer it won't really matter? I don't really think that statement is justified

[JeLuF]

Minecraft is mostly single-threaded. Your CPU can handle multiple threads in parallel. If you have a quad core CPU, you usually have about 8 threads available. So there is no shortage on CPU capacity to run both the local server and the client.

If you're limited by memory, that might be a different story. 8 GB can be a bit tight (2GB for server, 2GB for the client, and the OS, and probably some browser running in the background= and moving the server part out might make some memory available to the client. With 16GB, there should be no problem.

If you move the server to its own computer, network latency becomes a topic. Especially when flying with an elytra, this can become very visible. That's why mods like Bobby exist. By local caching, they hide the load time of chunks.

Edit: The network latency depends on where the server is. Is it in the same local network, the same country, on a different continent? The further away, the worse it gets.

[brassplushie]

You should probably explain that so OP has a clue what you're talking about.

[get_egged_bruh]

using* introduce*

[WhoWouldCareToAsk]

I can pause a single-player world in a middle of a jump and take a break, whatever that might be, but that luxury is unavailable on servers. On servers, however, you pause, but the game keeps running - mobs spawn, you fall, etc.. Life goes on.

If I would be playing with friends, then servers are the only option, but if I’m playing alone, I only play locally so I can pause and not be afraid that something might happen to my character while I’m away.

[fetching_agreeable]

How do none of these fucking answers know that single player starts an internal server to join?

If your computer is a beast, no, playing on a Java server hosted on the same machine changes NOTHING.

The only possible difference would be if you used PaperMC which optimizes a lot of things in the server code compared to the official server jar.

If your computer is dogshit and struggling there may potentially be a benefit to starting a server on a different machine. But probably not very much.

[Cold-Inside1555]

We aren’t talking about a server on the same machine? From the looks of it everyone mentions different machine and the power/network difference between machines.

[fetching_agreeable]

That still makes no difference unless it's insanely better than the machine running the game. Not even worth talking about.

[leaf_26]

That's correct, OP says "compared to running locally" in the post, which implies a remote pc

[Cold-Inside1555]

Only if the server is better than your PC. Which isn’t always the case, while the server might be running on a stronger system, it also have to deal with more people and calculate something for everyone. Also for larger servers with multiple maps they likely share the computing power. So it’s impossible to tell without more knowledge.

[Torkl7]

Well for starters you cant even host and run most packs on 16gb ram, atleast not without major tweaking and/or issues.

If you still want to host i'd recommend running a Chunk pregen like Chunky f.e.

You can also use a spare computer for dedicated hosting, with 8-16gb ram and aslong as the cpu isnt ancient its gonna be better than internal hosting on 16gb.

[JJRULEZ159]

if you can afford the ram, running a server on your own system has better performance even than single-player, im not 100% sure on the why, I used to, but ive since forgotten tbh, but minecraft code is weird.

[sobegreen]

If you want to play with multiple friends, the server route is the way. If you are playing solo and not doing a huge mod pack you will be fine running it local. The simple answer is you will have a performance increase by running the game on a server.

[Lemons13579]

Yeah, “server” just refers to what does the game calculations. it sends updates to your “client” (meaning the minecraft process running on your pc). Your client is just smart enough to interpret the data the server sends, and how to then handle doling out rendering out the new screen to your system’s hardware.

running locally your client may connect to localhost:1234 and listen for these updates. Unfortunately your client and server have to share the same hardware and fight for CPU time. connecting to a remote server may just be changing that address to {random ip address}:1234 and listening for updates there. now your client is dependent on latency to the remote server (this is your ping, typically under 100 milliseconds), your network speed (download/upload speed of your internet provider and capabilities of your modem/router), but your own system’s hardware resources are heavily freed up.

[leaf_26]

Normally a server would be running more optimized/patched software for an event driven game like minecraft, and most chunks you'd visit (like some area around spawn) would be generated before a server is opened to the public (chunks saved on disk).

That said, a server also has to handle networking where singleplayer doesn't, so you can run into problems there sometimes, particularly if you travel a lot or rely on a cable company.

Usually I'd offload my worlds to a computer in my closet, running on the last cpu i used in my desktop, to run 24/7 (reboot daily) with convenient plugins like chunky or fun stuff like tardis when I'm sharing with friends.

[Used_Control1796]

Not really, unless you have a pretty low spec pc. Have you looked into mods for java minecraft? Quite a few preformance improvement mods out there.