climateprediction.net home page
Priority settings really suck...

Priority settings really suck...

Questions and Answers : Windows : Priority settings really suck...
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
Profile Lorvija

Send message
Joined: 6 Aug 04
Posts: 11
Credit: 251,499
RAC: 0
Message 851 - Posted: 12 Aug 2004, 18:42:05 UTC

I´ve been running before CPDN classic HT on and didnt notice any slow downs or other things(propably the biggest help was HT). But now as I´m running two models in BOINC I´ve noticed a lot serious slowdowns which freeze the computer for several seconds for example when just right clicking the file.
When playing a game it doesnt disturb at all. But when doing fast file browsing and modifying(i do pretty much homepages) it really is visible.
Is there anything you could do to this?

ID: 851 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Profile old_user849

Send message
Joined: 14 Aug 04
Posts: 37
Credit: 276,676
RAC: 0
Message 963 - Posted: 14 Aug 2004, 9:30:47 UTC

Try adjusting your preferences on your account page.

Set it for 1 cpu adjust the other settings as well and then do an 'update'

K.
ID: 963 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Ingleside

Send message
Joined: 5 Aug 04
Posts: 108
Credit: 18,250,003
RAC: 35,434
Message 981 - Posted: 14 Aug 2004, 16:16:26 UTC

The ability to limit %cpu used & use lower thread-priority is buried in the BOINC taskbase, but problems with seti@home & predictor@home is currently preventing anyone from implementing these.

So for the moment try changing the preferences to 1 cpu at day, and switch back to 2 at night. Remember to hit "update" after each change. ;)
ID: 981 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Profile Lorvija

Send message
Joined: 6 Aug 04
Posts: 11
Credit: 251,499
RAC: 0
Message 984 - Posted: 14 Aug 2004, 17:02:54 UTC - in response to Message 981.  

> The ability to limit %cpu used & use lower thread-priority is buried in
> the BOINC taskbase, but problems with seti@home & predictor@home is
> currently preventing anyone from implementing these.
>
> So for the moment try changing the preferences to 1 cpu at day, and switch
> back to 2 at night. Remember to hit "update" after each change. ;)
>

Hmm, okay thx both. I´ll just wait until that update comes out.
I´m not that impatient person =)
ID: 984 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Jord
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 5 Aug 04
Posts: 250
Credit: 93,274
RAC: 0
Message 988 - Posted: 14 Aug 2004, 18:30:43 UTC - in response to Message 981.  
Last modified: 14 Aug 2004, 18:31:08 UTC

> The ability to limit %cpu used & use lower thread-priority is buried in
> the BOINC taskbase, but problems with seti@home & predictor@home is
> currently preventing anyone from implementing these.
>
There is but one problem with the setting: The cruncher itself is already set at Low priority in Windows. There is no Idle priority in Windows though, unlike in Linux for instance.

So unless as far as I know, some people over at Microsoft program a Lower than Low/Higher than Idle and Idle option for applications into Windows itself, Idle will always be taken up by the System Idle process, while all apps will start at a minimum of a Low priority.

BOINC itself however starts at Normal priority. You can test if it makes a difference by rightclicking on the BOINC_GUI (??) application and set its priority level down to Low as well. If all is well, both the hadsm3um_4.02_w and hadsm3_4.02_w applications should already be running at Low priority.
If they aren't change them to show like that.


--------------------
Jordâ„¢
<img src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/cpdn/stats.php?userID=2&amp;trans=off">
ID: 988 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Profile Keck_Komputers
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 5 Aug 04
Posts: 426
Credit: 2,426,069
RAC: 0
Message 995 - Posted: 15 Aug 2004, 3:58:04 UTC - in response to Message 988.  

&gt; BOINC itself however starts at Normal priority. You can test if it makes a
&gt; difference by rightclicking on the BOINC_GUI (??) application and set its
&gt; priority level down to Low as well. If all is well, both the hadsm3um_4.02_w
&gt; and hadsm3_4.02_w applications should already be running at Low priority.
&gt; If they aren't change them to show like that.
&gt;
&gt;
&gt; --------------------
&gt; Jordâ„¢
&gt; <img src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/cpdn/stats.php?userID=2&amp;trans=off">
&gt;
If you set the GUI priority as low as the app priorities it will freeze (that task only). So just change it to below normal. I ran it like this for a long time and never noticed a difference.
<br>John Keck
BOINCing since 2002/12/08
ID: 995 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Profile Lorvija

Send message
Joined: 6 Aug 04
Posts: 11
Credit: 251,499
RAC: 0
Message 1004 - Posted: 15 Aug 2004, 16:06:33 UTC - in response to Message 995.  

&gt; &gt; BOINC itself however starts at Normal priority. You can test if it makes
&gt; a
&gt; &gt; difference by rightclicking on the BOINC_GUI (??) application and set
&gt; its
&gt; &gt; priority level down to Low as well. If all is well, both the
&gt; hadsm3um_4.02_w
&gt; &gt; and hadsm3_4.02_w applications should already be running at Low priority.
&gt;
&gt; &gt; If they aren't change them to show like that.
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt; --------------------
&gt; &gt; Jordâ„¢
&gt; &gt; <img> src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/cpdn/stats.php?userID=2&amp;trans=off"&gt;
&gt; &gt;
&gt; If you set the GUI priority as low as the app priorities it will freeze (that
&gt; task only). So just change it to below normal. I ran it like this for a long
&gt; time and never noticed a difference.
&gt; <br>John Keck
&gt; BOINCing since 2002/12/08
&gt;
&gt;
Ok thx guys. Will do it!

ID: 1004 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote
Ingleside

Send message
Joined: 5 Aug 04
Posts: 108
Credit: 18,250,003
RAC: 35,434
Message 1006 - Posted: 15 Aug 2004, 18:00:07 UTC - in response to Message 988.  
Last modified: 15 Aug 2004, 19:16:36 UTC

&gt; There is but one problem with the setting: The cruncher itself is already set
&gt; at Low priority in Windows. There is no Idle priority in Windows though,
&gt; unlike in Linux for instance.

The TaskManager only shows/changes process-priority, but every process can start multiple threads.
The process-priorities in NT4 is:
low, normal, high, realtime; or 4, 8, 13, 25.
Win2k adds below/above normal at 6 &amp; 10.

&gt;
&gt; So unless as far as I know, some people over at Microsoft program a Lower than
&gt; Low/Higher than Idle and Idle option for applications into Windows itself,
&gt; Idle will always be taken up by the System Idle process, while all apps will
&gt; start at a minimum of a Low priority.

System idle process is running at priority 0.

Threads is set relative to process-priority, and these are for win2k:
low, below normal, normal, above normal, high, real-time; or
-2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +11

So a process running as normal-class can have a thread started as low, this gives effective priority 6. If you changes the process to "low" by taskmanager or similar, the thread automatically decreases to 2.

Seti@home for BOINC is using thread-priority "low" &amp; process-class "low", so this gives priority 2.
CPDN uses thread-priority "normal" &amp; process-class "low" for hadsm3um_4.02_w and this gives effective priority 4. This is the same as "classic" seti@home, and this is too high for some office-programs and similar.

But there are also a special "idle"-thread-priority, this sets the thread-priority to 1. In distributed computing among others UD with THINK is using this priority, and folding@home has this as default but is configurable to run at priority 1-4.
Some (badly programmed) programs can also rely on idle priority for some things, and of course if DC is using higher priority you've got a problem.

The "idle"-thread-priority doesn't follow the normal rules of being relative to the process-class-priority, and only responds then this is bumped to "real-time", then the effective priority is 16.

&gt;
&gt; BOINC itself however starts at Normal priority. You can test if it makes a
&gt; difference by rightclicking on the BOINC_GUI (??) application and set its
&gt; priority level down to Low as well. If all is well, both the hadsm3um_4.02_w
&gt; and hadsm3_4.02_w applications should already be running at Low priority.
&gt; If they aren't change them to show like that.
&gt;

There's no point to change the priority of BOINC itself, since it's the applications like seti@home or CPDN that uses 99%+ of the cpu-power.

And since BOINC starts the applications with process-class-priority "low", the only you can do in TaskManager is to increase the priority, and of course this will only make things worse. ;)

Not being a programmer, don't know if there's an easy compiler-flag or something to say "thread #1" should run as "idle" &amp; "thread #2" should run as "high".
Of course, maybe you'll have to rewrite half the code to change the thread-priority, or the compiler doesn't have this choise at all...
ID: 1006 · Report as offensive     Reply Quote

Questions and Answers : Windows : Priority settings really suck...

©2024 climateprediction.net