Standard or Premium: which game server is right for you?

Every game server at CakeHosting comes in two lines. Standard gives you a fair price on solid hardware. Premium gives you our fastest processors at a sharp price. The features are exactly the same: the same game panel, the same backups and the same support. The differences are the processor, the location, how much room each plan gets and the price. This article explains what that means in practice, so you neither overpay nor end up short of power.

What’s the same?

• You manage your server in the same Pterodactyl game panel, with console, file manager, SFTP, schedules and backups.
• You choose from the same games, and for Minecraft the same server software and modpacks.
• You pay monthly, VAT included, and can cancel monthly.
• You get the same help through support tickets, in English or Dutch.

The big difference: the processor

Premium runs on the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and the Ryzen 9 9950X. According to AMD, both have 16 cores and boost up to 5.7 GHz, and they belong to the Zen 4 and Zen 5 generations. Standard runs on solid hardware from earlier generations, at a sharp price. We don’t name models for it, because they differ per location and can change. You pick where your server lives when you order:

• Standard: Europe (Netherlands, Germany or France), Canada or Singapore.
• Premium: Europe (Netherlands or France) or the United States (San Jose, California).

Within a location you don’t pick the machine yourself. Everything side by side, including the DDoS protection per line, is on Specifications.

Why speed per core matters so much

For many games, what counts isn’t the number of cores but how fast a single core is. Minecraft is the best-known example. The Minecraft Wiki explains that the server simulates the world largely on one core and uses a few more at most for other work. It therefore calls a processor with good single-core performance essential.

In practice you only notice the difference when things get busy: lots of players at once, huge farms, plenty of redstone or a modpack with hundreds of mods. Playing with a few friends in an ordinary world? Then Standard is usually more than enough.

More room per plan, too

At the same amount of memory, a Premium plan gets more processor time than a Standard plan, and for most games more storage as well. You can see this in the plan tables on each game’s page. So with Premium you don’t just get a faster processor, you also get more room to use it.

What does processor time mean?

In the game panel, CPU Usage shows how much processor time your server uses, as a percentage. 100% stands for one full processor thread, 200% for two, and so on. Every plan has a maximum. If your server often hits that maximum at busy moments and the game stutters, you need more processor time: a bigger plan or the Premium line.

When is Standard enough?

• You play with a small group of friends, with no plugins or just a few.
• You run a lighter game, such as a Bedrock server or Terraria.
• You want to try out whether your own server is right for you.
• Your players are in Canada or South-East Asia: Standard has locations there, Premium doesn’t.

When should you choose Premium?

• Ten or more people regularly play at the same time.
• You build big farms or lots of redstone, or you play a heavy modpack.
• You play a demanding game. That’s why we only offer ARK: Survival Ascended on Premium.
• Your players are on the US West Coast: Premium has a location in San Jose.

Pick the right location too

A fast processor doesn’t help much if your players are on the other side of the world. Choose the location closest to most of your players. For players in Western Europe, the European locations of both lines are the obvious choice. Standard in Europe runs in the Netherlands, Germany or France; Premium in Europe runs in the Netherlands or France.

Still unsure? Measure it

The fairest way to decide: start on Standard and spend a week watching CPU Usage and Memory Usage in the game panel on busy evenings. If everything stays well below the maximum and the game runs smoothly, you’re set. If you often hit the limit, you’ll know exactly why you’re upgrading and how much you need.

Switching later

As your server grows, you move up to a bigger plan within your line in My CakeHosting. Going from Standard to Premium means a new server, because the lines run on different machines. You order the Premium plan, move your world over with a backup and cancel your Standard server. Want help moving? Open a support ticket and we’ll think along with you.