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Message boards : Number crunching : Rosetta and two gpus

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Message 22963 - Posted: 13 Jan 2012 | 11:05:26 UTC

Rosetta runs fine with no gpu grid. 100% cpu usage. As soon as the two nvidia cards kick in at .51% cpu usage each, my window task manager reports cpu usage at 75-80%. also rosetta only runs 3 tasks. Any ideas? I dont think I set swan sync on this computer as its xp 64 and i dont see it in variables. Would love to have a more stable cpu usage in windows task manager. thanks

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Message 22972 - Posted: 13 Jan 2012 | 20:55:45 UTC - in response to Message 22963.
Last modified: 13 Jan 2012 | 20:59:29 UTC

Welcome to the forum.

The task results do show that you are not using swan_sync.

I suggest you reduce the number of CPU's 'configured' to be used in Boinc Manager - try 3, and if that's not enough drop to 2 CPU cores. You can do this by setting the 'on multiprocessor systems use at most' value to 75%.
All GPU projects use some CPU processing power, some more than others. Obviously using two GPU's requires more CPU time than one. One CPU core might be enough to cover both GPU's sufficiently. The CPU usage is still likely to fluctuate between 80% and 100%, so it's not like you are loosing a full CPU core. You are just optimizing for better GPU performance. To some extent the GPU tasks you are running make a difference to CPU utilization, so expect variation.
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Message 23473 - Posted: 15 Feb 2012 | 22:13:09 UTC
Last modified: 15 Feb 2012 | 22:24:55 UTC

I've just switched over to Rosetta and I've noticed that it is a very demanding project for my CPU. I usually run Bionic 24/7 on my personal computer, but Rosetta is the first project I've attached to that seems to eat up every spare Cpu cycle and cause stutter and system lag when the settings are left at 100%. it also uses substantially more ram and HDD space, but its a great program and I'm determined to contribute, even at my snail-slow pace of 700ppd.

my guess is that GPU grid is "reserving" some processor space because it needs a processor to feed the GPUs but it isn't crunching like Rosetta is. the processor is merely preparing instructions for the GPUs which goes in bursts, but because Gpu grid is allocating .5 Cpu cores per instance(1 total) you aren't seeing 1 whole core crunching.

but GPU grid is doing the same type of research at something like 100 times faster than a CPU could do the same thing. Gpus are just that much faster. I think its a fair trade off, honestly. I'm almost positive that windows 7 did something to address this because of the way my cpu is being utilized, but i doubt there is really a setting available that would address this particular issue. you can get a copy of win 7, or wait 2 years and get one of those new maxwell cards when they come out.

I suggest that you always keep in mind that you are a volunteer though and that volunteering 700ppd is more than 99% of people do. the 1% who build dedicated server farms and such are a great help, of course, but really gpu grid and the rest of the bionic platform relies on us doing what we can with our 'spare' cycles. so if your program is running at 75% that is really great. there is no reason to lament the loss of that other 25%(which as I explained is producing 10x the work), just contribute and think "100% is too much" ^_)^

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Message 23476 - Posted: 16 Feb 2012 | 1:43:14 UTC

I can recommend Docking@home as a less resource hungry project compared to Rosetta. I run Docking and GPUGRID together on a 6 Core AMD Phenom II running 100% with a GTX460 using 0.39 CPU and they work together without slowing down normal performance on everyday tasks.

Docking work units have a much lower memory usage compared to Rosseta ones.

I found that if I ran Rosseta instead of Docking much the higher memory usage started slowing down my systems significantly, and CPU usage dropped significantly.

GPUGRID, Docking and Rosseta are all Biological based projects, so both Docking and Rosseta are complimentary to GPU Grid.

Running Docking my Hex-cores can easily average over 7.5K per day.

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Message 23478 - Posted: 16 Feb 2012 | 1:57:57 UTC - in response to Message 23476.

Different projects tax the system in different ways, so it's important to find a good balance. I would specifically look at power usage, especially in the summer; I have seen a difference of >30W power consumption on an i7-920 running different CPU projects. The more power used the higher the CPU temps, the higher the ambient temps and the more heating issues you have with other components.
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Message 23569 - Posted: 20 Feb 2012 | 16:40:59 UTC - in response to Message 22963.

Rosetta runs fine with no gpu grid. 100% cpu usage. As soon as the two nvidia cards kick in at .51% cpu usage each, my window task manager reports cpu usage at 75-80%. also rosetta only runs 3 tasks. Any ideas? I dont think I set swan sync on this computer as its xp 64 and i dont see it in variables. Would love to have a more stable cpu usage in windows task manager. thanks


One of your pc's seems to have 12gb of ram while the other only 4gb of ram, this could be the problem. Your low ram overhead could be causing your problems.

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Message boards : Number crunching : Rosetta and two gpus

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