JUST A Suggestion, that will be booed by those who enjoy personal preference or have a thing for bizarre hypnotic patterns:

<Rant>Continuing to develop fancy screen savers and graphics of the work your computer(s) are doing on a BOINC project is a truly wasteful thing - both in the time spent development, and, for those with the righy video cards, something that will slow your donation.

I am sure the programming time is minimal, with tremendous libraries of video effects and techniques for calling 3D graphic screens and screen savers commonly available. Now you can go mad like the NJ/Philadelphia crew who 'shopped a bunch of signs I happened to recognize well, and gave us All Your Base, a work of art if there ever was one using a screen rather than a paintbrush!

BUT the reason CUDA works is NVidia 200-core graphics processors, by definition, highly specialized in multi-dimensional vector graphics DON'T DO A THING when no or hardly any 3-D work is running. When they are not, a small BOINC daemon sits there deciding which processor can do a segment of a work unit faster, and tosses it to the GPU if the machine is being asked for a multi-dimensional vector problem that your average InAMteDl cpu was NOT designed to do efficiently.

So running a screen saver, or watching your project at work are killing potential CUDA time.

NOW the reason screen savers were invented was to prevent burn-in on monochrome and color CRTs, which are best served by simply turning off the high voltage and guns when not in use, anyway.

The burn-in time for a Liquid Crystal with cathode lamp, or LED (Oh, PLEASE!!!! I want one, but only if sections are replaceable when individual LEDs die) is Close to Never. But the life of the Cold Cathode lamp and, potential LEDs is not "forever" (take a look at your average LED traffic light - OK< they run in adverse conditions, 24/7, etc. BUT ...)

The only reason to leave a display of any kind ON is in preparation of calibration of color temperature for Photoshop users. It's not the pattern on the screen one cares about for LEDs, it's just having the light on and settled down to a full-on temp. it will hold for a week or so.

The only reason for these mind-numbing graphics probably comes from folks who go by the name of their favorite RPG character: When a particular data set run on their machine(s) provide a team of scientists the ability to discover ET or a cure for cancer, these computer owners will claim THEY did it.

Sorry guy, WE will all have done it - by volunteering what is both the largest and fastest and slowest and least reliable Supercomputer In The World so badly needed, but underfunded basic research can get done, while the world's largest supercomputer is being built down South for the NSA*.

The people who keep the patchwork system going and write the code can claim some responsibility, but, as individuals, we're just folks who don't let CPU cycles go to waste, and know leaving most of the Silicon and even good disk drives running 24/7 is grand-total cheaper than turning them on and off.

Sorry, some times you have to get it out of your system .</rant>
ðe Wtp

Some folks installed SETI back in the day because it was a neat screensaver.

One of the reasons I continue to participate is because occasionally it throws a funky molecular bonding experiment, or astronomical map on my screen.

I've considered backing out of projects that didn't do something interesting.

So, it's a tool to encourage participation. Which can be turned off if the user desires.

I agree with the OP. Ditch the graphics and crunch more data.

More often than not, what applications are run and how they are run is based solely on WANT and not on NEED.

That's why they are called PERSONAL COMPUTERS.

I suggest that the thread starter take an Art course and chill out!

n2n

The BOINC screen saver has an option for the screen to go blank after X minutes. My screen saver turns on after 5 minutes. Then puts the monitor to sleep after 5 more. BOINC screen saver goes blank after 5 minutes and therefore minimal GPU is wasted... but I still get the hypnotic effects.