Boinc freezes screen

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Jaharr

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Joined: 13 Dec 14
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Czech Republic
Message 58652 - Posted: 13 Dec 2014, 13:44:56 UTC

Hello,
When i am using Boinc and i am running youtube video (just as music player) in firefox, sometimes steam too (seems to occur more often)

PC screen freezes but mouse is still moving and music si playing(not in loop) but i cant click on anything or it has zero answer.

CTRL+alt+del still works it will put you in the menu but when i click on anything the response is the black screen and not any change(music still) playing. Its possible to do ctrl+alt+del combo again.

Turn off or restart dont work i have to do hard reset.

Any ideas what could be causing it?

Programs always running: dropbox, Thundebird, totalcommander, firefox, eset smart security 6, boinc 7.4.27 (but problem apeared with previous versions too), steam sometimes

Projects: Einstein and Asteroids
PC: Win 7 x64 ultimate
CPU: Xeon x5550 (4cores 8threads) @ 3GHZ
GPU: MSI HD7870 (drivers new AMD omega)
RAM: 3x4GB 1333
Motherboard GA-X58-usb3
PSU ss400ET-F3
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Profile Jord
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Message 58658 - Posted: 13 Dec 2014, 18:25:42 UTC - in response to Message 58652.  

GPU: MSI HD7870 (drivers new AMD omega)

If this GPU is used, and all CPU cores are used, it can happen that everything on screen slows down, or freezes yes. That's why the default setting for using the GPU is to only use it when the computer is idle. That way you don't have slow downs and freezes.
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Jaharr

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Czech Republic
Message 58665 - Posted: 13 Dec 2014, 20:42:14 UTC - in response to Message 58658.  

My settings is to use only half CPU cores available. So is there some way to use GPU only partialy so GPU can work if i am only using firefox or writing something?

Also thanks for reply i will disable the option for the moment.
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Message 58676 - Posted: 14 Dec 2014, 12:30:25 UTC - in response to Message 58665.  

No, there is no way that one can set to only use part of a GPU's stream processors to do work. It's all of them, or none of them.

It also depends heavily on what kind of work the GPU is doing. I have set my BOINC not to use any CPU cores for Seti for instance. Everything runs only on my HD 7870. But some of the Multibeam v7 tasks I had lately will make both my screens flash to black and back, or make my mouse movements very slow and stuttering. That's pure due to the GPU having trouble with the actual kernels being calculated and there's not much one can do about that, other than to set the GPU's use back to the default "Suspend GPU work while computer is in use? Yes".

There's no need to disable the GPU completely, not if you run your computer for some hours more each day without actually being at the keyboard.
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Profile Gary Charpentier
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Message 58684 - Posted: 15 Dec 2014, 5:41:31 UTC - in response to Message 58676.  

No, there is no way that one can set to only use part of a GPU's stream processors to do work. It's all of them, or none of them.

It also depends heavily on what kind of work the GPU is doing. I have set my BOINC not to use any CPU cores for Seti for instance. Everything runs only on my HD 7870. But some of the Multibeam v7 tasks I had lately will make both my screens flash to black and back, or make my mouse movements very slow and stuttering. That's pure due to the GPU having trouble with the actual kernels being calculated and there's not much one can do about that, other than to set the GPU's use back to the default "Suspend GPU work while computer is in use? Yes".

There's no need to disable the GPU completely, not if you run your computer for some hours more each day without actually being at the keyboard.

And that is an issue with Seti v7 tasks. Frankly I wish there was a way to leave a handful of processors free to keep the system responsive. Not knowing how the GPU gets used, I don't know it is would be possible to tell the science app there are say 500 processors available when the GPU actually has 512. Not expecting miracles, but it would be nice to have the mouse pointer update. Without it, it can be very frustrating to get the tray icon to display to pick snooze!
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Message 58694 - Posted: 15 Dec 2014, 9:43:59 UTC - in response to Message 58684.  

Not knowing how the GPU gets used, I don't know it is would be possible to tell the science app there are say 500 processors available when the GPU actually has 512.

That isn't possible yet. Not sure if it ever will be.
I asked for that option way back when the only GPUs around were the early CUDA ones. It isn't something for the BOINC or application developers to implement either, but for the GPU manufacturers & OpenCL/CUDA developers to add.

At the moment there's two settings a GPU has: all stream processors on or all off. Mind, even when you run multiple tasks at the same time on a GPU, that doesn't mean more than one task runs at the same time on that GPU's stream processors. The GPU alternates between parts of tasks, but this happens so quickly that it seems as if multiple tasks run side by side at the same time.
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