Process Priority

verty
verty
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Topic 189646

BOINC spawns the einstein process at Low priority on Windows XP. Can this be changed in a config file?

I would like it to be spawned at Below Normal priority.

Thierry Van Driessche
Thierry Van Dri...
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Process Priority

--> Task Manager --> Right click on E@H application--> Set priority, done.

But, as soon as Boinc is closed and start over again it will start over at low priority.

Greetings from Belgium
Thierry

Paul D. Buck
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There is no reason to raise

There is no reason to raise the priority of the processes runing for BOINC. The intent is to use as much resourse as is available and so, with it running at low it does not interfere with any other processes running on the computer.

Increasing the priority will not gain you much additional processing in any period of time. The only way to really gain substantial increases in processing would be to run it at real-time. But then the computer does nothing else.

I know it seems counter-intuitive to say that changing the priority will not get you anything. But, it is the truth. As a general rule of thumb playing with process priorities mostly buys trouble.

verty
verty
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RE: There is no reason to

Message 14950 in response to message 14949

Quote:

There is no reason to raise the priority of the processes runing for BOINC. The intent is to use as much resourse as is available and so, with it running at low it does not interfere with any other processes running on the computer.

Increasing the priority will not gain you much additional processing in any period of time. The only way to really gain substantial increases in processing would be to run it at real-time. But then the computer does nothing else.

I know it seems counter-intuitive to say that changing the priority will not get you anything. But, it is the truth. As a general rule of thumb playing with process priorities mostly buys trouble.

I understand that. It is a personal preference of mine. Certainly I am not advocating it for everybody. I realise that it hardly makes a difference, perhaps a couple of CPU-seconds per hour.

I also realise that it might slow down certain background tasks in windows. I also realise that typically games have a game loop that uses the full timeslice every time and waits to be preempted, so when running a game typically no background work will get done.

If it happens that there is a noticable slow down of some windows activity, I would like to notice it. It is not the case that I want the processing to be invisible. Another point is that there might be other low priority tasks which I care less about and would rather have them get less time.

Einstein only runs for 7 hours atm, so if it happened that low priority tasks were delayed they would receive the full attention at that time.

And lastly, games use 100% at normal priority, and I haven't heard about problems from low priority tasks not completing because a game was loaded indefinitely.

I don't want processes such as Machine Debug Manager wasting CPU time that Einstein could use, no matter how little it is. Call me fussy.

JoeB
JoeB
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Hi, I have a 1.3 gig K7

Hi,
I have a 1.3 gig K7 aka Athlon aka Sempron running win98se.
I have used a program called Process Explorer to look at and change the process priorities. Currently I'm running BOINC 4.45. The priorities it uses are "normal(8)" for the BOINC Manager and Client and "Idle (4)" for einstein 4.79. Looks like the manager and client use about 2% of the CPU time/cycles and 4.79 about 96%. By using Process Explorer to set the 4.79 priority to "high(13)" the basic einstein computation (4.79) gains about 1% of resource use - up to about 97%. This is worth about 6 minutes savings on my typical 9hr 45 min WU time. The manager and client still seem to work fine with these settings. But the system is very sluggish and basically unusable for other tasks. When the WU is complete BOINC resets the 4.79 priority on the new WU back to idle. Note: Process Explorer itself can use up to 2%, so don't leave it running if a few % matter to you.
It seems to me that einstein 4.19 had less overhead by about 1% than 4.45. I really hope that the developers don't add too many "fancy" features to future BOINC versions at the expense of increased overhead.

Joe B

verty
verty
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RE: By using Process

Message 14952 in response to message 14951

Quote:
By using Process Explorer to set the 4.79 priority to "high(13)" the basic einstein computation (4.79) gains about 1% of resource use - up to about 97%.

You really shouldn't set the priority above Normal, with it on High all other processes will get vastly less CPU time, and this potentially includes important system processes.

Generally programs that run at High require low latency for specific (small) tasks. Normal is the highest you should set it to. I wouldn't even go that far. Below-Normal is enough for me.

JoeB
JoeB
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RE: ... You really

Message 14953 in response to message 14952

Quote:

...

You really shouldn't set the priority above Normal, with it on High all other processes will get vastly less CPU time, and this potentially includes important system processes.

...

What "important system processes" are you talking about and how can having them get "vastly less CPU time" hurt the 4.79 computation? I have already reported that other programs run sluggishly and that is the extent of any of the effects I see.

Joe B

verty
verty
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RE: What "Important system

Message 14954 in response to message 14953

Quote:
What "Important system processes" are you talking about and how can having them get "vastly less CPU time" hurt the 4.79 computation? I have already reported that other programs run sluggishly and that is the extent of any of the effects I see.

I meant antivirus programs, anti-spyware programs, etc, would typically run at normal priority. By setting your Einstein process to High you give important processes such as these very little CPU time, thereby stalling them. It seems rather risky to me. I think it is better to let such processes preempt 'Einstein'. They won't take long, after all, and what they do is important.

An example, my 'Sygate Personal Firewall' runs at normal priority.

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