Posts by EvilEls

1) Message boards : BOINC Manager : CPU & GPU usage profiles in BOINC-Manager (Message 48789) Posted 23 Apr 2013 by EvilEls Post: Hello everybody! I have BOINC crunching almost 24/7 on my machine. Also when playing games. Unfortunately in some cases BOINC is definitely reducing the performance of (hardware-esurient) games. Of course I could stop BOINC for the time I play but that would be waste of resources as I have an i7 cpu that is not even close to fully utilization when it comes to core/thread usage. Most games still use just one core/thread, some two and only very few more. So what I do now is, I check how many cores/threads the game can handle and then set my BOINC to use MAX_AVAILABLE_THREADS MINUS NUMBER_OF_THREADS_GAME_USES. For example: Before I play EvE Online I go to the BOINC settings and reduce the number of used cores/threads from eight (what is max available at my i7 cpu) to seven in order to have a game-dedicated, free core/thread, but still having BOINC running on the remaining seven cores/threads + I deactivate the gpu-crunching as long as I play. This settings alteration is of course not a big problem as it is easily accessible. But it is kind of a pain in the ass changing the settings all the time. Therefore I think it would be a great idea to have predefined profiles that are set up in the settings and are accessible via the tray icon or the menu navigation within the management client software. This would allow me to setup a couple of profiles that match the hardware requirements for each of my games. Sticking to my example above that would mean, that whenever I want to play EvE Online I just right click the windows tray icon and pick one of my setup profiles which results in an automated setting alteration. Done playing I’d just reset the profile to “Full Throttle” having my settings restored. Maybe the profile setup even allows to assign them an executable files. So that whenever this exe if found running the according profile becomes active. I could also imagine of a feature that detects other processes on a computer that are using plenty of cpu over a given amount of time, notifying me about this fact and suggesting an appropriate profile setup. Even gpu usage could be auto-detected and the BOINC gpu utilization becomes deactivated. AND – vice versa – the client could detect threads/cores that are on idle, suggesting the usage of the same. It all may sound “useless” in terms of stability, productivity and so on. But it would greatly increase usability and overall user experience + the ease of integration in common pc systems. Also please have in mind, that the common guy out there is NOT A NERD like most of us are! I’ve heard from a lot of people that are annoyed by the fact that their pcs become slower in games whilst crunching with BOINC and turn it off for good. My gut feeling tells me, that a little GUI based interface (maybe a wizzard) could significantly increase the client acceptance and understanding of what happens behind the scenes. It would be great to find a feature like this in one of the upcoming client versions. Thank you for your time!
2) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Request: SETI@home Updating Needs Fixing - Stop Updating When Servers Known To Be Offline (Message 34010) Posted 31 Jul 2010 by EvilEls Post: I'm not complaining! I just made a suggestion how one could cope with the issue war59312 initially described, remember ;) I now upgraded to latest BOINC and will keep an eye on the transfers.
3) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Request: SETI@home Updating Needs Fixing - Stop Updating When Servers Known To Be Offline (Message 33980) Posted 29 Jul 2010 by EvilEls Post: Now, for fun, open BOINC Manager->Advanced view->Projects tab->Select Seti->Click Properties. Between Resource Share and Disk Usage you should see a Project Backoff saying either "File downloads deferred for" or "File uploads deferred for" with a timer. Do you see this value? There is Scheduler RPC deferred for: 00:06:52 entry. But no "File up/download deferred for" Does this value do the same? Or do I need a newer BOINC client? I unfortunately need to use <max_file_xfers> because I have only limited hours which I can use to transfer data from/to project servers. Therefore I need to use “some force” in order to get everything done within this rather short timeframe.
4) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Request: SETI@home Updating Needs Fixing - Stop Updating When Servers Known To Be Offline (Message 33964) Posted 26 Jul 2010 by EvilEls Post: What BOINC version do you use? The new versions have "Project backoff" feature which does exactly that. (if one upload failed all uploads are paused for some time (minutes to hours)) I have 6.10.56 running but I cannot see this behavior. It is still like I wrote above. Up to 50 transfer re-tries within 20 minutes. No throttle or something. Do I need a newer version? @Brent: c'mon mate, no need to sing out. It's not that bad ;)
5) Message boards : BOINC Manager : Request: SETI@home Updating Needs Fixing - Stop Updating When Servers Known To Be Offline (Message 33918) Posted 23 Jul 2010 by EvilEls Post: Hi everybody! I think Will is right. Having some decent numbers of ready to report units all trying to connect once in a while over 3 days produces completely unnecessary and avoidable traffic. Projects could provide a downtime or down_until string (timestamp) that is probed after a unsuccessful up/download attempt and/or on failing regular project connection, silencing all communication with this project until given date/time. Even easier way whithout touching servers would be, if scheduled transfers to one specific project inherit information of transaction failures from others. So for example; when a connection fails at noon sharp and it is re-scheduled for 1pm, all following connections scheduled for the period noon until 1pm (re-scheduled transfers and newly finished jobs) are stalled until 1pm. Just define a practical value for the period in which transfers inherit retry times; and at which point they are no longer have to obey them keeping their own retry time. Means for the example from above with a given inherit period of 1h: Transfers that are scheduled for a connection later than “last connection failure + 60min” (1:00:01pm and later) will not be affected and executed as planed; UNTIL no transfer fails less than 60min prior this event. Rather simple logic that could save some traffic and relieve hammering against project servers. Maybe this could be implemented as a friendly_network_behavior_option or something. In my case I now have about 50 seti results waiting all trying to re-connect in a 20min timeframe which could be avoided if the first failing retry “tells” the other 49 transfers, that the service is still unavailable delaying them all until its own next retry. This would be 49 less connections within 20min from a single machine =) Cheers and have a nice weekend!
6) Message boards : News : BOINC 6.10.56 released (Message 33493) Posted 22 Jun 2010 by EvilEls Post: On WINDOWS remote desktop access GPU tasks are stopped and fail to continue after leaving the RDP session. As far as I read that thread, it's Windows 7 that has the problem. Which isn't that weird, as it's all new territory. I'll forward that to the developers. I could just reproduce the same issue on a XP machine. After leaving the remote session all tasks fail. Tested with xp prof 32 sp3, ati hd2400, latest vga driver, project collatz. After "real" login on host machine, tasks are processed normaly again.
7) Message boards : News : BOINC 6.10.56 released (Message 33486) Posted 22 Jun 2010 by EvilEls Post: On WINDOWS remote desktop access GPU tasks are stopped and fail to continue after leaving the RDP session. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?s=c388c0d641058907115ba32bae58a20d&p=4297485&postcount=8
8) Message boards : BOINC Manager : My Wish List - part 3. (Message 27491) Posted 19 Sep 2009 by EvilEls Post: Yepp, using it. Starting BOINC client version 6.6.36 for windows_x86_64 Configured to use all coprocessors log flags: task, file_xfer, sched_ops Libraries: libcurl/7.19.4 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3 Data directory: C:\ProgramData\BOINC Running under account The evil Els Processor: 8 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz [Intel64 Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5] Processor features: fpu tsc pae nx sse sse2 pni mmx OS: Microsoft Windows Vista: Ultimate x64 Edition, Service Pack 2, (06.00.6002.00) Memory: 11.99 GB physical, 23.91 GB virtual Disk: 100.00 GB total, 31.71 GB free Local time is UTC +2 hours CUDA device: GeForce GTX 285 (driver version 19038, compute capability 1.3, 2048MB, est. 127GFLOPS)
9) Message boards : BOINC Manager : My Wish List - part 3. (Message 27473) Posted 18 Sep 2009 by EvilEls Post: Hello everybody! I have BOINC crunching almost 24/7 on my machine. Also when playing games. Unfortunately in some cases BOINC is definitely reducing the performance of (hardware-esurient) games. Of course I could stop BOINC for the time I play but that would be waste of resources as I have an i7 cpu that is not even close to fully utilization when it comes to core/thread usage. Most games still use just one core/thread, some two and only very few more. So what I do now is, I check how many cores/threads the game can handle and then set my BOINC to use MAX_AVAILABLE_THREADS MINUS NUMBER_OF_THREADS_GAME_USES. For example: Before I play EvE Online I go to the BOINC settings and reduce the number of used cores/threads from eight (what is max available at my i7 cpu) to seven in order to have a game-dedicated, free core/thread, but still having BOINC running on the remaining seven cores/threads + I deactivate the gpu-crunching as long as I play. This settings alteration is of course not a big problem as it is easily accessible. But it is kind of a pain in the ass changing the settings all the time. Therefore I think it would be a great idea to have predefined profiles that are set up in the settings and are accessible via the tray icon or the menu navigation within the management client software. This would allow me to setup a couple of profiles that match the hardware requirements for each of my games. Sticking to my example above that would mean, that whenever I want to play EvE Online I just right click the windows tray icon and pick one of my setup profiles which results in an automated setting alteration. Done playing I’d just reset the profile to “Full Throttle” having my settings restored. Maybe the profile setup even allows to assign them an executable files. So that whenever this exe if found running the according profile becomes active. I could also imagine of a feature that detects other processes on a computer that are using plenty of cpu over a given amount of time, notifying me about this fact and suggesting an appropriate profile setup. Even gpu usage could be auto-detected and the BOINC gpu utilization becomes deactivated. AND – vice versa – the client could detect threads/cores that are on idle, suggesting the usage of the same. It all may sound “useless” in terms of stability, productivity and so on. But it would greatly increase usability and overall user experience + the ease of integration in common pc systems. Also please have in mind, that the common guy out there is NOT A NERD like most of us are! I’ve heard from a lot of people that are annoyed by the fact that their pcs become slower in games whilst crunching with BOINC and turn it off for good. My gut feeling tells me, that a little GUI based interface (maybe a wizzard) could significantly increase the client acceptance and understanding of what happens behind the scenes. It would be great to find a feature like this in one of the upcoming client versions. Thank you for your time!

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