Gaming

Game Server Performance Tuning on Linux

Author :Liam K.
Date :March 08, 2026
Time :16 minutes

Step 1: Baseline CPU, RAM, and Disk

bash

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y htop iotop sysstat
htop
iostat -xz 1 5

Step 2: Verify CPU Frequency Governor

bash

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor | sort | uniq
sudo apt install -y linux-tools-common linux-tools-generic
sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance

Step 3: Configure Swappiness and Dirty Ratios

bash

sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/99-game-tuning.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
vm.swappiness = 10
vm.dirty_ratio = 15
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5
EOF
sudo sysctl --system

Step 4: Network Stack Tuning

bash

sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.d/99-game-tuning.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 250000
net.ipv4.udp_rmem_min = 16384
net.ipv4.udp_wmem_min = 16384
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 15
EOF
[...]

Command truncated. Copy to view full command.

Step 5: Prioritize Process CPU Cores

Pin a game server process to dedicated cores for better scheduling consistency.

bash

taskset -c 2-5 ./start-server.sh

Step 6: Use Nice and Ionice

bash

nice -n -5 ionice -c2 -n0 ./start-server.sh

Step 7: Firewall and DDoS Surface Reduction

bash

sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw allow 25565/tcp
sudo ufw allow 25565/udp
sudo ufw status

Step 8: Continuous Monitoring

bash

sar -n DEV 1 20
sar -u 1 20
journalctl -u your-game-service -f

Step 9: Example Java Flags (Minecraft)

bash

java -Xms4G -Xmx6G -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=100 -XX:+AlwaysPreTouch -jar server.jar nogui

"Stable frame and tick pacing is usually won through consistency, not by chasing peak benchmark numbers."

Technical Author

Liam K.

System administrator and technical writer specializing in server infrastructure, security and deployment. Creating comprehensive guides to help you master server administration.