Einstein@Home causing system chunkiness

Cruisin'
Cruisin'
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Topic 195807

After a system restore I'm reattaching to projects. My 3 are WCG, MW@home and Einstein@Home. Just today finished reattaching to Einstein. Now my system chunks up a bit when playing games as if things aren't quite getting out of the way well enough.

So I wanted to go over with the community what these BOINC settings mean and to get a better understanding of how they affect me.

On preferences I have:

Allow computing while:

Computer is at work YES

While GPU is at work YES.

Now these are getting out of the way after whatever I put in, say I started using 50% of the system?

Also have told it not to leave suspended tasks in memory.

I have unattached from the Einstein@Home project and my system chunkiness has stopped.

32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR 400 Memory

Olivier
Olivier
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Einstein@Home causing system chunkiness

I assume you are using your GPU for eintein? From my experience crunching with your GPU while gaming always gives lower gaming performance (fps etc). I have an almost simmilar setup:

64bit Windows 7 Pro
AMD Athlon 4800+ CPU
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 250GTS GPU
3GB DDR Memory

If you really want to crunch while gaming you should test your game fps while using different project settings. Im guessing the GPU project should halt when the system is over 20-25% usage.
Personally, i just shut down BOINC altogether to get max gaming performance.

0
0
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GPU tasks hurt performance in

GPU tasks hurt performance in games quite a bit for me.

In the boinc manager, i uncheck this:
"Use GPU while computer is in use"

And in the "activity" menu set:
"Use GPU based on preferences"

..so that it doesn't interfere.

Cruisin'
Cruisin'
Joined: 9 Apr 11
Posts: 29
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RE: GPU tasks hurt

Quote:

GPU tasks hurt performance in games quite a bit for me.

In the boinc manager, i uncheck this:
"Use GPU while computer is in use"

And in the "activity" menu set:
"Use GPU based on preferences"

..so that it doesn't interfere.

OK did both those things and now have these settings set in my preferences:

I set these parameters:

Suspend work while computer is in use: No

Suspend GPU work while computer is in use: Yes

Suspend work if CPU usage is above: 50%

Leave tasks in memory while suspended: No.

Use at most 75% of CPU time.

I'll reattach to Einstein later

32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR 400 Memory

FrankHagen
FrankHagen
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RE: Suspend work while

Quote:

Suspend work while computer is in use: No

Suspend GPU work while computer is in use: Yes

Suspend work if CPU usage is above: 50%

you DO NOT want to do this with 270.xx driver versions. you will run into the dowclock problem. so stick with those you are running now - even then you might run into this.

Quote:
Leave tasks in memory while suspended: No.

afaik this has no effect on cuda tasks, they won't stay in memory anyway.

oh - and make sure you are running only one gpu-project at a time. swapping cuda-tasks is not a bright idea too..

Cruisin'
Cruisin'
Joined: 9 Apr 11
Posts: 29
Credit: 147758
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RE: RE: Suspend work

Quote:
Quote:

Suspend work while computer is in use: No

Suspend GPU work while computer is in use: Yes

Suspend work if CPU usage is above: 50%

you DO NOT want to do this with 270.xx driver versions. you will run into the dowclock problem. so stick with those you are running now - even then you might run into this.

Which one of those dont I want to do? Do I NOT want to suspend work while computer is in use? Or GPU or all 3 of those choices are wrong?

Quote:

Quote:
Leave tasks in memory while suspended: No.

afaik this has no effect on cuda tasks, they won't stay in memory anyway.

oh - and make sure you are running only one gpu-project at a time. swapping cuda-tasks is not a bright idea too..

I'm running MW@home usually and Einstein@home and they both use GPU. So what am I suppose to do? limit only one to gpu?

32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR 400 Memory

FrankHagen
FrankHagen
Joined: 13 Feb 08
Posts: 102
Credit: 272200
RAC: 0

RE: RE: RE: Suspend

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:

Suspend work while computer is in use: No

Suspend GPU work while computer is in use: Yes

Suspend work if CPU usage is above: 50%

you DO NOT want to do this with 270.xx driver versions. you will run into the dowclock problem. so stick with those you are running now - even then you might run into this.

Which one of those dont I want to do? Do I NOT want to suspend work while computer is in use? Or GPU or all 3 of those choices are wrong?

all 3 of them will leed to boinc suspending gpu-tasks. and this is the thing which causes the driver to shut down into power-safe mode.

Quote:

I'm running MW@home usually and Einstein@home and they both use GPU. So what am I suppose to do? limit only one to gpu?

it would work if all tasks finish normally. but since you never know how or when boinc decides to switch projects, you might run into the same problem described above.

Cruisin'
Cruisin'
Joined: 9 Apr 11
Posts: 29
Credit: 147758
RAC: 0

RE: RE: RE: RE: Suspe

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:

Suspend work while computer is in use: No

Suspend GPU work while computer is in use: Yes

Suspend work if CPU usage is above: 50%

you DO NOT want to do this with 270.xx driver versions. you will run into the dowclock problem. so stick with those you are running now - even then you might run into this.

Which one of those dont I want to do? Do I NOT want to suspend work while computer is in use? Or GPU or all 3 of those choices are wrong?

all 3 of them will leed to boinc suspending gpu-tasks. and this is the thing which causes the driver to shut down into power-safe mode.

Quote:

I'm running MW@home usually and Einstein@home and they both use GPU. So what am I suppose to do? limit only one to gpu?

it would work if all tasks finish normally. but since you never know how or when boinc decides to switch projects, you might run into the same problem described above.

So what is my best bet? Turning that all on then just closing BOINC when I want to game or something?

32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR 400 Memory

FrankHagen
FrankHagen
Joined: 13 Feb 08
Posts: 102
Credit: 272200
RAC: 0

RE: So what is my best bet?

Quote:
So what is my best bet? Turning that all on then just closing BOINC when I want to game or something?

hmm - i'd manually stop all GPU-tasks. if the driver crashes, you'll have to reboot to get into normal mode again. if the tasks are not stopped, boinc will run one directly after restart and you are in an endless loop.

best choice would be stopping all except the one running and wait until it finishes. but who wants to do that?

mikey
mikey
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 11889
Credit: 1828173831
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RE: RE: So what is my

Quote:
Quote:
So what is my best bet? Turning that all on then just closing BOINC when I want to game or something?

hmm - i'd manually stop all GPU-tasks. if the driver crashes, you'll have to reboot to get into normal mode again. if the tasks are not stopped, boinc will run one directly after restart and you are in an endless loop.

best choice would be stopping all except the one running and wait until it finishes. but who wants to do that?

I believe you can also set it up to do this automatically if you know the name of the file that starts the gaming process. In the app_info.xml file you just add a line that says 'when this file runs stop Boinc'. Again send a PM to the user Claggy and he will help you much better than I can!

Richard Haselgrove
Richard Haselgrove
Joined: 10 Dec 05
Posts: 2139
Credit: 2752885405
RAC: 1391683

RE: RE: RE: So what is

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
So what is my best bet? Turning that all on then just closing BOINC when I want to game or something?

hmm - i'd manually stop all GPU-tasks. if the driver crashes, you'll have to reboot to get into normal mode again. if the tasks are not stopped, boinc will run one directly after restart and you are in an endless loop.

best choice would be stopping all except the one running and wait until it finishes. but who wants to do that?


I believe you can also set it up to do this automatically if you know the name of the file that starts the gaming process. In the app_info.xml file you just add a line that says 'when this file runs stop Boinc'. Again send a PM to the user Claggy and he will help you much better than I can!


No, not app_info - that belongs in a cc_config.xml:

Quote:
important.exe
BOINC will suspend use of GPUs whenever the executable is running.


See client configuration for details.

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