Shockbyte Deploys AMD EPYC CPUs to Expand Game Servers to the US

The gaming industry has grown into one of the largest entertainment sectors, reportedly generating higher revenues than the film and music industries combined. With approximately two-thirds of gamers playing online, the need for fast, stable, and efficient server infrastructure has become increasingly crucial. Amid this demand, Shockbyte is strengthening its position as a server provider for Minecraft and various other popular games. The company relies on AMD Ryzen and AMD EPYC processors to increase server density, single-thread performance, and power efficiency, while supporting business expansion into the United States market. Its primary focus is delivering a seamless online game server experience with minimal disruption, capable of handling player surges during new game launches. Shockbyte was founded in 2013, when demand for Minecraft servers was extremely high. Mitch Smith, CEO and Founder of Shockbyte, stated that one of the company’s initial goals was to simplify game server management, even as the business tripled in size over several consecutive years. The business has since expanded beyond Minecraft. It now supports around 65 games focused on player-owned servers. Concurrently, Shockbyte is building a B2B line called Shockbyte for Game Studios, serving as a cloud infrastructure provider. Smith noted that Shockbyte partners with Facepunch as the official dedicated server partner for Rust, a popular survival game with a large community. The company also works with Discord. The game server business model presents unique challenges. When a new game launches, player numbers can surge dramatically in the first few weeks before the player base drops to about 10% of the initial peak. This forces infrastructure providers to scale up rapidly, then migrate and consolidate workloads onto fewer machines. For remaining active players, this process risks causing disruptions; even minor micro-stutter can generate customer complaints. Consequently, Shockbyte requires infrastructure that is not only robust during peak loads but also efficient when demand declines. Liam Charles, Director of IT at Shockbyte, explained that for most of its operational history, the company rented bare-metal servers from third parties. Around 2023, Shockbyte began considering operating servers in its own data centres. At that time, most infrastructure still used Intel. During the same period, AMD Ryzen processors based on the AM5 socket became available. Shockbyte already had systems based on Ryzen 3000 and 5000 Series, some of which had been running for over six years without a reboot and continued to operate well. Charles said switching to AMD EPYC Server Processors was a very easy decision. During the transition, hardware partner DiGiCOR helped Shockbyte find AMD configurations suited to game server workloads. Dez Nguyen, Lead Systems Engineer at DiGiCOR, said the collaboration began in early 2024. Nguyen noted that the gaming industry often relies on consumer-grade CPUs mounted in custom rackmount systems because few enterprise solutions are specifically designed for these needs. Supermicro subsequently introduced MicroCloud, a high-density solution for AMD Ryzen 7000 Series. This system allows eight nodes to be placed in a single 3U rackmount. MicroCloud became the foundation for Shockbyte’s first bare-metal implementation in Melbourne, Australia. In internal testing, the company reported that its old systems recorded an average score of around 2,750 on the PassMark single-thread benchmark. With the latest AMD systems, the global average score increased to around 4,200, a rise of approximately 53%. Single-thread performance is a critical indicator for game servers, especially for Minecraft. Shockbyte reported seeing at least a 40% improvement in single-thread performance since switching from previously used Intel Xeon processors to AMD. The hardware implementation was carried out in phases. Shockbyte began deployment with the Ryzen 7700. It then switched to the AMD EPYC 4464P when more cores were needed to run additional client servers. The EPYC 4464P features 24 threads and supports up to 192GB of RAM. The infrastructure subsequently evolved to include the AMD EPYC 4545P and AMD EPYC 9555P. The EPYC 9555P delivers 64 CPU cores with memory support up to 1.1TB per system in Shockbyte’s configuration. For game server providers, single-thread performance remains vital because many game workloads are not yet fully distributed across multiple cores. However, a high core count and large memory capacity are still necessary to run more customer server instances on a single physical system. Economic efficiency is a key factor for Shockbyte, as the company operates like a gaming-focused cloud provider. With the latest AMD CPUs, Shockbyte reports it has been able to reduce the number of machines from over 2,000 units to fewer than 1,000. Power consumption has also decreased. Old builds consumed an average of 0.93 watts per GB of memory, while the latest AMD systems consume around 0.65 watts per GB, equating to a power consumption reduction of approximately 30% for the same capacity. Charles said expansion in the United States is currently Shockbyte’s main growth area, with AMD EPYC 9555P processors almost entirely shipped to the US, including a recent deployment in Dallas, Texas.