Please help - I can't turn off CPU computing!

Thanks for letting us know what happened.  It helps us give better advice the next time, and sometimes someone else will look here and see what worked.

Yes, and Einstein makes it really easy to set up using preferences at Account|Preferences|Project|other settings

It is surprisingly difficult to compare the actual productivity after changing settings when you are running the current Einstein Gravity Wave application.  The work content per task varies quite a lot, and the pattern of that variation is not splendidly obvious.  So lots of folks have posted conclusions here which would not stand up to careful comparative review.  A careful review might constitute a really huge sample size (think weeks of work), or an attempt to prepare closely related tasks.

My method for the second when I was reviewing GW multiplicity was to first get hundreds of tasks aboard which were sequential, or nearly sequential descending issue order tasks within the same base frequency.  Then I selectively placed on hold most of the tasks, leaving "to be tried" ones sprinkled along.  I ran the first test condition.  Then I unsuspended the same number of tasks similarly sprinkled to run at the second test condition, and took care to sort the results in issue number order to check whether my observed performance difference was valid.

But you don't need to bother with all that.  I think for your hardware and setup, that here at Einstein you'll find that running two tasks at a time on your Nvidia 1050Ti with a capable modern CPU supporting it will give you a nice output improvement--probably 5% on GRP, and probably well over 10% on GW.

You may find that some GW tasks need more memory than your 4G card can supply when run at 2X.  If so these will probably fail quite quickly, and the Stderr will have buried in it a clear error message referring to memory needs (CL_MEM_OBJECT_ALLOCATION_FAILURE).  This consideration might then lead you to choose to run GW only at 1X.  But the GRP work will easily fit in your card at 2X, even higher.  But the higher multiples above 2X will help very little if any, and as you go higher you may find the production to turn the corner and go down.

As to How to do it:

First, I suggest you set your work fetch "cache" settings very low, as the Einstein behavior in knowing how much work to fetch goes a bit nutty when faced with changes in task type (between GW and GRP) or changes in multiplicity (as between 1X and 2X).

Go to Account|Preferences|Computing|Network Usage

The two parameters of interest are "Store at least" and "Store up to an additional"

The sum of these two is best kept down to something very low--say 0.1--when you are making changes.

When you are "mixing" task types it is still best kept pretty low--say 0.3 if you are mixing task types (say both GW and GRP).

If you get a stable configuration and plan to stop fiddling, it can safely be raised in steps up to a few days--say 3, which gives your machine something to work on during work delivery outages.

Finally the answer to the question you actually asked:

To adjust how many tasks run at the same time (which I call multiplicity of 1X, 2X, ...)

Go to Preferences|Project|Other settings

To change the Gamma-ray setting, find it at "GPU utilization factor of FGRP apps:"

You'll see it at 1.0 now, most likely.  That gives you 1X.  Set it to 0.5 to get 2X, or 0.33 to get 3X.

To change the Gravity Wave setting, revise GPU utilization factor of GW apps.  But with your 4G memory, I doubt you will like the result if you go above 2X, as memory capacity failures will likely dominate for the higher issue number tasks within each base frequency.

Hi John, Welcome to Einstein!

Archae86 has covered all the important stuff.  It can be quite complicated at first so please ask if you're not really sure about something.  There are lots of little 'gotchas' that can really trip you up at first when you aren't aware of them.  Hasten slowly! :-)

One of the biggest problems that he mentioned is that you really need to keep the work cache size small, particularly if you are running the two separate GPU searches - Gamma-ray pulsar (GRP) and Gravitational wave (GW).  The reason for that is that GRP tasks finish more quickly than what the estimate will claim, whilst it's the complete reverse for GW.

There is only one 'estimate correction' mechanism (called duration correction factor - DCF) so results completing for one type will adversely affect the estimates for the other type.  This can (and regularly does) cause people with too large a work cache size to end up with huge numbers of tasks that can't be completed within the deadline.

So, until you have this behaviour all figured out, keep your work cache size small!! :-)  It's best to use the first setting only and to leave the second one at zero.

I would highly suggest that while you are playing with multiplicity settings, you do so with only one search type enabled at a time.  The most efficient search for your particular GPU may well be GRP and you may find it gives you the highest output at x2 multiplicity (the 0.5 setting that Archae86 mentioned).  The gain (if any) will only be modest at best.  It will likely be worse at x3 (0.33 setting), if you ever try it - I wouldn't bother.

It's quite a while since I used an nvidia GPU (a 750Ti some years ago) so I'm not the best person to comment on likely performance of your card.  There are reports of modern nvidia cards not showing any improvement with multiple tasks of the GW type.  I don't know if that also applies to a 1050Ti.  If your card has 4GB, you could try GW tasks at x2 multiplicity.  You should have enough memory for that.

I'm running GW tasks at x4 on several 8GB AMD RX 570's.  The CPUs are quite weak - Intel G4560 and i3-9100F and AMD Athlon 3000G.  With those basic setups, the multiplicity improvements are rather large.  When running single tasks, they were taking around 16-17 mins on average (there are relatively minor fluctuations).  At x4, there are 4 completed tasks roughly every 36-38 mins (again with minor fluctuations) - ie. around 9 mins per task on average.

As Archae86 mentioned, the work content of a few GW tasks is rather larger than the minor fluctuations mentioned previously.  When I encounter those, the 9min average per task becomes something like 13-14mins per task (ie ~50% longer).  I've been monitoring the hosts for around a month now.  The number of these longer running tasks is quite small - maybe 5% of all tasks received.  During this time I haven't seen any memory errors using x4 on an 8GB GPU.

I hope some of this might be of use to you as you explore how to optimise your setup.