That remaining time is an estimation. If your computer has just recently started crunching CPU tasks then it might be BOINC doesn't yet have enough results to know what is the real computation speed of that computer. So it may look like the time goes slowly if the initial estimation was too optimistic. Those estimations will become better after some while.
Another scenario is that something could be suddenly slowing down your computer. Is it running some heavy work in the background?
Maybe the computer is "throttling" (clocking down the processor speed) for some reason (high temperature or heavier work load with multiple cores...). You could monitor some frequencies with cpu-z, gpu-z or msi afterburner, for example.
Welcome to Einstein. Thanks for participating and we hope you enjoy your stay here.
You have a nice fast CPU (i7-4790) and BOINC is not detecting a discrete GPU so you only have CPU tasks. You are crunching Gamma ray pulsar tasks (FGRP4) and have returned quite a few already. There is no sign of computation errors or invalid results.
You have completed enough for the estimated crunch time to be reasonably reliable. A Haswell core (at standard clocks) should be able to complete these tasks somewhere in the range of 4-5 hours. There shouldn't be a big variation in crunch time. I would expect +/- 30 mins at most, unless you have other compute intensive apps that are running.
I looked at all your returned tasks. The elapsed times range from a low of 20K secs to a high of 30K secs. This variation is a lot more than expected and suggests that perhaps your non-BOINC compute loads are high and perhaps quite variable. This isn't a problem since BOINC is designed to run at low priority, releasing the CPU when higher priority tasks need service. If you look at a quicker running task compared to a slower running task, notice how the gap between CPU time and elapsed time changes markedly. It's maybe a few hundred seconds for a ~20K sec task and several thousand secs for a ~30K sec task.
You comment, "time is running down slow" suggests the the task(s) showing this behaviour is/are going to take a lot longer to finish than previous tasks. I notice that there are two very recently completed tasks that took close to 30K secs that would probably have been running at the time you posted your message. Slightly earlier tasks were taking around 22-24K and later tasks are quicker too. So I guess you have to tell us what else the machine was doing at the time you noticed the very slow running. It seems quite likely that BOINC was deferring to whatever that job was.
i7-4790 and i7-4790K are known to run very hot with the stock cooler. If that CPU in this case is not equipped with an aftermarket cooler, it might be useful or interesting anyway to check out CPU temps while crunching.
thanks for all the suggestions and apologies about the delay in answering.
This is a Linux VM I generally only use to do RDP sessions with, so that the only times it is a little more taxed is the times when I actively use VPN and RDP.
I have also recently played with the settings, which also improved the estimates of completion. It is now only "stuck" on remaining time for a second every couple of seconds.
The temps are doing ok - the host is showing that they are steady between 68 and 70C throughout all cores so that I cannot see throttling happening. Even though I have the occasional highest temps of close to 80C, when throttling might occur.
Never the less - it is happily crunching along so that I should stop the cherry-picking of "issues" ;)
Remaining time slow
)
Did you talk about GPU or CPU tasks?
That remaining time is an estimation. If your computer has just recently started crunching CPU tasks then it might be BOINC doesn't yet have enough results to know what is the real computation speed of that computer. So it may look like the time goes slowly if the initial estimation was too optimistic. Those estimations will become better after some while.
Another scenario is that something could be suddenly slowing down your computer. Is it running some heavy work in the background?
Maybe the computer is "throttling" (clocking down the processor speed) for some reason (high temperature or heavier work load with multiple cores...). You could monitor some frequencies with cpu-z, gpu-z or msi afterburner, for example.
Hi Rene, Welcome to
)
Hi Rene,
Welcome to Einstein. Thanks for participating and we hope you enjoy your stay here.
You have a nice fast CPU (i7-4790) and BOINC is not detecting a discrete GPU so you only have CPU tasks. You are crunching Gamma ray pulsar tasks (FGRP4) and have returned quite a few already. There is no sign of computation errors or invalid results.
You have completed enough for the estimated crunch time to be reasonably reliable. A Haswell core (at standard clocks) should be able to complete these tasks somewhere in the range of 4-5 hours. There shouldn't be a big variation in crunch time. I would expect +/- 30 mins at most, unless you have other compute intensive apps that are running.
I looked at all your returned tasks. The elapsed times range from a low of 20K secs to a high of 30K secs. This variation is a lot more than expected and suggests that perhaps your non-BOINC compute loads are high and perhaps quite variable. This isn't a problem since BOINC is designed to run at low priority, releasing the CPU when higher priority tasks need service. If you look at a quicker running task compared to a slower running task, notice how the gap between CPU time and elapsed time changes markedly. It's maybe a few hundred seconds for a ~20K sec task and several thousand secs for a ~30K sec task.
You comment, "time is running down slow" suggests the the task(s) showing this behaviour is/are going to take a lot longer to finish than previous tasks. I notice that there are two very recently completed tasks that took close to 30K secs that would probably have been running at the time you posted your message. Slightly earlier tasks were taking around 22-24K and later tasks are quicker too. So I guess you have to tell us what else the machine was doing at the time you noticed the very slow running. It seems quite likely that BOINC was deferring to whatever that job was.
Cheers,
Gary.
i7-4790 and i7-4790K are
)
i7-4790 and i7-4790K are known to run very hot with the stock cooler. If that CPU in this case is not equipped with an aftermarket cooler, it might be useful or interesting anyway to check out CPU temps while crunching.
Hey all, thanks for all
)
Hey all,
thanks for all the suggestions and apologies about the delay in answering.
This is a Linux VM I generally only use to do RDP sessions with, so that the only times it is a little more taxed is the times when I actively use VPN and RDP.
I have also recently played with the settings, which also improved the estimates of completion. It is now only "stuck" on remaining time for a second every couple of seconds.
The temps are doing ok - the host is showing that they are steady between 68 and 70C throughout all cores so that I cannot see throttling happening. Even though I have the occasional highest temps of close to 80C, when throttling might occur.
Never the less - it is happily crunching along so that I should stop the cherry-picking of "issues" ;)
Thanks again,
Rene