Would leaving a broswer open even if not connected to the interet influence Boinc? How about Opera with say 100 tabs open? I am guessing that must be what is doing it. I am going to try for a few days when I sleep to close everything other than Boinc and see what happens.
Programs that are loaded but not actually doing anything will be swapped out to virtual RAM if the physical memory is needed for an active process. As long as you have enough virtual memory you shouldn't notice anything significant.
You often see people giving the reason for slow execution speed as "other (perhaps rogue) processes stealing your cpu cycles". As an example let's assume an EAH result normally takes 10K cpu seconds on your machine. Suddenly you notice that the latest results are now taking 14K cpu seconds. Would you interpret this as a sign that other processes are consuming a significant proportion of your available cpu cycles? If you do then you would be wrong :). Many people seem to fall for this. It's not the cpu time that would change under these circumstances but rather the wall clock time - something that isn't easily visible without a bit of work on your part. You would need to record from your messages tab, the actual wall clock starting and finishing times for every time any crunching was done on a particular result and see how this total elapsed time compared with the reported cpu time.
Fortunately, BOINC does this hard work for you and reports (on each computer's page on the website) the actual cpu efficiency which is the ratio of cpu time to wall clock time. Alinator has asked you a couple of times already to have a look at this value but you don't seem to have noticed since you haven't reported the figure :). Please have a look and let us know.
Would leaving a broswer open even if not connected to the interet influence Boinc? How about Opera with say 100 tabs open? I am guessing that must be what is doing it. I am going to try for a few days when I sleep to close everything other than Boinc and see what happens.
Don't have recent personal experience with Opera, but with Firefox I have seen that some rogue web pages can eat a very big chunk of processor performance.
I took the Times (the London newspaper) off my standard set of news sites to open when I noticed they had an advertisement on their front page which ate up a whole core. I e-mailed them, and the response several days later was that they could not be bothered to check their site's behavior on low-usage browsers (Last time I checked Firefox usage was about 15% and climbing).
I assume Javascript, Java, Active-X controls, Flash things, cgi scripts, and so on, usually used to generate advertisements, are responsible for most of this. Not saying that most of such things are a problem--but it only takes one in a window you have left open.
The easy way to to tell is to look. I suggest downloading Process Explorer from Microsoft's web site as a far more informative replacment for Windows Task Manager. It will not only tell you what fraction of your CPU a process used in the last sample period, but give you a graph of recent behavior. If two of your BOINC science aps are not getting over 49% each on a Core 2 Duo setup, and you are not deliberately doing something significantly using CPU like playing a game or watching a DVD, then you have an opportunity.
Don't have recent personal experience with Opera, but with Firefox I have seen that some rogue web pages can eat a very big chunk of processor performance.
I took the Times (the London newspaper) off my standard set of news sites to open when I noticed they had an advertisement on their front page which ate up a whole core. I e-mailed them, and the response several days later was that they could not be bothered to check their site's behavior on low-usage browsers (Last time I checked Firefox usage was about 15% and climbing).
I assume Javascript, Java, Active-X controls, Flash things, cgi scripts, and so on, usually used to generate advertisements, are responsible for most of this. Not saying that most of such things are a problem--but it only takes one in a window you have left open. [snip]
(Off topic/sorry) When using FF, may I suggest the Adblock Plus & NoScript extensions to help weed out ads and Java, etc.
I'm an active Opera user and I've occasionally seen a website, generally using a noxious animated banner devour a large chunk of CPU time. I'm not sure how much of a problem it is in general since I block somewhere upwards of 98% of ads via a HOST file. I don't have many leakers and I don't know if the ones I do have are representive of the overall lot or not.
Anyone got a link to taskinfo? I would like to try it.
Ok,I shut down Opera over night, and just now I see the results of yesturday is 900, but that is still with two machines, three processors... I guess I work too much and too long of hours. But 900 is certainly better than the 300-400, but still not where I want to be.
I just thought of something. It appears that World Community Grid is not added to the Boinc stats, is that right? It seems it uses the Boinc client, but does not add credits.. I have never seen in my list of projects WCG, odd, very odd...
Hi guys, thanks! Would
)
Hi guys, thanks!
Would leaving a broswer open even if not connected to the interet influence Boinc? How about Opera with say 100 tabs open? I am guessing that must be what is doing it. I am going to try for a few days when I sleep to close everything other than Boinc and see what happens.
I suppose it's possible, but
)
I suppose it's possible, but I have walked away and left IE and Firefox windows open for extend periods and never noticed a big hit in performance.
Alinator
RE: Would leaving a broswer
)
Programs that are loaded but not actually doing anything will be swapped out to virtual RAM if the physical memory is needed for an active process. As long as you have enough virtual memory you shouldn't notice anything significant.
You often see people giving the reason for slow execution speed as "other (perhaps rogue) processes stealing your cpu cycles". As an example let's assume an EAH result normally takes 10K cpu seconds on your machine. Suddenly you notice that the latest results are now taking 14K cpu seconds. Would you interpret this as a sign that other processes are consuming a significant proportion of your available cpu cycles? If you do then you would be wrong :). Many people seem to fall for this. It's not the cpu time that would change under these circumstances but rather the wall clock time - something that isn't easily visible without a bit of work on your part. You would need to record from your messages tab, the actual wall clock starting and finishing times for every time any crunching was done on a particular result and see how this total elapsed time compared with the reported cpu time.
Fortunately, BOINC does this hard work for you and reports (on each computer's page on the website) the actual cpu efficiency which is the ratio of cpu time to wall clock time. Alinator has asked you a couple of times already to have a look at this value but you don't seem to have noticed since you haven't reported the figure :). Please have a look and let us know.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: Hi guys, thanks! Would
)
Don't have recent personal experience with Opera, but with Firefox I have seen that some rogue web pages can eat a very big chunk of processor performance.
I took the Times (the London newspaper) off my standard set of news sites to open when I noticed they had an advertisement on their front page which ate up a whole core. I e-mailed them, and the response several days later was that they could not be bothered to check their site's behavior on low-usage browsers (Last time I checked Firefox usage was about 15% and climbing).
I assume Javascript, Java, Active-X controls, Flash things, cgi scripts, and so on, usually used to generate advertisements, are responsible for most of this. Not saying that most of such things are a problem--but it only takes one in a window you have left open.
The easy way to to tell is to look. I suggest downloading Process Explorer from Microsoft's web site as a far more informative replacment for Windows Task Manager. It will not only tell you what fraction of your CPU a process used in the last sample period, but give you a graph of recent behavior. If two of your BOINC science aps are not getting over 49% each on a Core 2 Duo setup, and you are not deliberately doing something significantly using CPU like playing a game or watching a DVD, then you have an opportunity.
RE: Don't have recent
)
(Off topic/sorry) When using FF, may I suggest the Adblock Plus & NoScript extensions to help weed out ads and Java, etc.
I'm an active Opera user and
)
I'm an active Opera user and I've occasionally seen a website, generally using a noxious animated banner devour a large chunk of CPU time. I'm not sure how much of a problem it is in general since I block somewhere upwards of 98% of ads via a HOST file. I don't have many leakers and I don't know if the ones I do have are representive of the overall lot or not.
TaskInfo is one of the better
)
TaskInfo is one of the better ones. It gives you a more detailed look at what is going on than Process Explorer does. You can download it at zdnet.
Anyone got a link to
)
Anyone got a link to taskinfo? I would like to try it.
Ok,I shut down Opera over night, and just now I see the results of yesturday is 900, but that is still with two machines, three processors... I guess I work too much and too long of hours. But 900 is certainly better than the 300-400, but still not where I want to be.
I just thought of something. It appears that World Community Grid is not added to the Boinc stats, is that right? It seems it uses the Boinc client, but does not add credits.. I have never seen in my list of projects WCG, odd, very odd...
WCG is coming through just
)
WCG is coming through just fine. If you're not seeing it in your stats you probably have a CPID problem.
http://www.boincstats.com/stats/project_graph.php?pr=wcg
TaskInfo is at:
)
TaskInfo is at: http://downloads.zdnet.com/search.aspx?kw=taskinfo&cat=230&Go%21=
It will be listed as TaskInfo (exe)