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Message boards : Graphics cards (GPUs) : Application making computer slow

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Robinski
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Message 1993 - Posted: 1 Sep 2008 | 20:10:16 UTC

The GPU application is making my computer really slow.

I have a Core2Duo E6550 which runs on 2.33GHz.
With Vista64. I have a 8600GT GPU.

The CPU is 50% loaded, which means 1 core at 100% load, and it slows down everything I do.

Would it be possible to diagnose this problem and optimize the application so it won't slowdown the whole machine.

When I run Floding@Home on the GPU, the CPU doesn't get loaded that much, and my machine isn't slowed down, so their might be another/better way of processing stuff on a GPU.

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Message 1995 - Posted: 1 Sep 2008 | 21:16:15 UTC

The slow-down is not caused by the CPU load but rather the GPU load. It's been said that the effect is less severe on faster cards. And that it runs more smoothly with folding@home because they calculate smaller atoms which puts less strain on the GPU.

I never used folding@home GPU2, but when my Radeon 1950Pro ran the GPU1 client the system was about as sluggish as my system is now, with GPU-Grid running on a 9800GTX+. It's noticeable but not too bad.

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Message 1996 - Posted: 1 Sep 2008 | 21:21:16 UTC - in response to Message 1993.

The GPU application is making my computer really slow.

I have a Core2Duo E6550 which runs on 2.33GHz.
With Vista64. I have a 8600GT GPU.

The CPU is 50% loaded, which means 1 core at 100% load, and it slows down everything I do.

Would it be possible to diagnose this problem and optimize the application so it won't slowdown the whole machine.

When I run Floding@Home on the GPU, the CPU doesn't get loaded that much, and my machine isn't slowed down, so their might be another/better way of processing stuff on a GPU.


I change a little the value "Max Frames/sec" under Ps3grid in your profile. A lower value is better for yozr feelinh and longer for the WU-runtime

Robinski
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Message 1998 - Posted: 1 Sep 2008 | 21:45:52 UTC - in response to Message 1996.

The GPU application is making my computer really slow.

I have a Core2Duo E6550 which runs on 2.33GHz.
With Vista64. I have a 8600GT GPU.

The CPU is 50% loaded, which means 1 core at 100% load, and it slows down everything I do.

Would it be possible to diagnose this problem and optimize the application so it won't slowdown the whole machine.

When I run Floding@Home on the GPU, the CPU doesn't get loaded that much, and my machine isn't slowed down, so their might be another/better way of processing stuff on a GPU.


I change a little the value "Max Frames/sec" under Ps3grid in your profile. A lower value is better for yozr feelinh and longer for the WU-runtime


That doesn't seem to work, changed the value from 100 to 50 and later to 10.
Updated from within boinc (checked the file on my computer) but still the same result. Machine just getting unworkable.

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Message 2001 - Posted: 1 Sep 2008 | 22:45:03 UTC - in response to Message 1998.

The GPU application is making my computer really slow.


This is an unfortunate side-effect of the way CUDA (NVDIA GPU) applications work: whilst the individual steps of the computation are happening on the GPU, the operating system is unable to update the display. Right now, the only way to mitigate this effect is to use a faster graphics card. We're looking at ways to split the computation, but so far these have slowed down the simulation by an unacceptable amount.

Incidentally, the Folding@Home application works on smaller molecular systems than those processed by GPU grid and so has much quicker computational steps. If F@H workunits were larger, and the computations longer, the same sort of slow-down would be seen.

The high CPU load is a related issue- whilst the computational kernel is running on the GPU, the CPU part of the application is waiting for it to finish. Unfortunately, the current CUDA runtime does this in a busy way - continually checking the state of the kernel without sleeping in between checks. In practice, however, although this makes the CPU load seem high it is not the CPU load itself which is responsible for the apparent slow-down of the machine. Once again, we are working on a way to improve this.

I change a little the value "Max Frames/sec"


This setting relates to the performance of BOINC screen saver graphics and is not used by GPUGRID.


MJH

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Message 2003 - Posted: 2 Sep 2008 | 0:07:25 UTC - in response to Message 2001.

I have the same problem with an BFG 8600GTS with OC from factory... I already tried folding@home GPU version an is not so agressive, but I think he had a thing to limit the percent of gpu in use...

There is no possibility to do that in boinc?

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Message 2004 - Posted: 2 Sep 2008 | 0:11:08 UTC

There's only a setting to limit the CPU usage in the FAH GPU2 client AFAIK.
I've never seen a setting to limit the GPU usage...
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Message 2005 - Posted: 2 Sep 2008 | 0:19:24 UTC - in response to Message 2004.

There's only a setting to limit the CPU usage in the FAH GPU2 client AFAIK.
I've never seen a setting to limit the GPU usage...


Sorry I think that was related to gpu too... I was wrong :)

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Message 2007 - Posted: 2 Sep 2008 | 5:48:45 UTC - in response to Message 2005.

I've got another problem - when gpugrid runs not only pc slows, but also explorer.exe proces takes much more cpu then usual - from 6 to 12% and that makes my seti wu crunch slower :(
what can i do with that?
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Message 2011 - Posted: 2 Sep 2008 | 7:39:55 UTC

My explorer.exe seems to be fine: 0 to 2%, on average about 1% load on a Q6600 @ 3 GHz.

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Message 2101 - Posted: 5 Sep 2008 | 16:07:40 UTC

Okay, the slow down happens on my computer too (crunching with Quadro NVS 290)

When I work with my PC, I will set GPUGrid to suspend; if I leave, I will resume GPUGrid.

Maybe, a special new setting is needed, like "USE GPU only if idle for ... minutes / seconds whatever"

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Message boards : Graphics cards (GPUs) : Application making computer slow

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