I have a laptop I run MW, Seti, & Einstein on. It is an Intel Core i7-7820HQ with Intel HD 630 graphics and an Nvidia Quadro M1200, running Windows 10 Pro. In the past (with this laptop and an older one that is now retired) I had not crunched any Intel GPU tasks. As has been noted here and on Seti, when crunching the iGPU the swap file gets thrashed, and I would end up getting a lot of suspensions of work due to the CPU being busy. I only tried this with Seti tasks, and when I saw how poorly it performed I added the <ignore_intel_dev></ignore_intel_dev> option to my cc_config file.

Recently I realized I never tried crunching iGPU tasks for Einstein. I don't have high hopes that it would run efficiently, but I wanted to give it a shot. So, I removed the above command in the cc_config, disabled iGPU tasks in Seti, and confirmed that I was allowing iGPU tasks in Einstein. After a few days of running it this way, I noticed a few things. First, I was not getting any iGPU tasks. I haven't had a chance to look into it in detail yet, but there is some kind of error when attempting to retreive those types of tasks. Einstein was sending/receiving/crunching CPU and Nvidia GPU tasks just fine, though.

The second thing I observed, and what I feel is the bigger problem, was I was getting the constant computation suspension problem as I had in the past. Boinc would suspend for about ten seconds, then resume, but then a minute later it would suspend again. Rinse, repeat. I noticed this would only happen when the laptop would be in the docking station (where I have a second monitor connected to the Quadro). If the laptop was not in the docking station, it would run without this constant hiccup. I added the <ignore_intel_dev></ignore_intel_dev> option back into cc_config this morning, and the problem went away.

I haven't been operating the laptop any differently than before. Quite the contrary, I had closed other applications and monitored task manager to see if another application was choking the system, but I couldn't find anything. I suspect that my laptop is having a thrashing problem with the iGPU being enabled...even though it does not have any tasks to crunch.

Something doesn't seem right. I'm fine crunching without using the iGPU, but I am concerned that this may be a bug. Assuming thrashing is the problem, why would that be the case if the iGPU is not doing anything with Boinc?