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Levent TERLEMEZ

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Message 70125 - Posted: 26 Apr 2011, 11:01:31 UTC

I wonder while if 2 of 4 cpu cores are crunching wus, are the other 2 cores helping for the crunching or just stick around the other system threads? Will anyone can explain shortly? Thanks alot.
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Message 70126 - Posted: 26 Apr 2011, 13:21:59 UTC - in response to Message 70125.  

I wonder while if 2 of 4 cpu cores are crunching wus, are the other 2 cores helping for the crunching or just stick around the other system threads? Will anyone can explain shortly? Thanks alot.


The default settings would use all 4 cpu's but if you changed any of them you could be using only two.
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Message 70128 - Posted: 26 Apr 2011, 15:39:47 UTC

Cores that are not running WUs are available for other tasks on the machine. Rosetta runs as a single threaded process (not strictly true, but only one thread is going to use any material CPU time, so the main work is only running on a single CPU per task).

There are some other BOINC projects that run in multiple threads. For those the number of CPUs being used and the number of tasks in a "running" status may differ.
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Message 70139 - Posted: 27 Apr 2011, 7:30:16 UTC

Thanks for the information.
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Message 70141 - Posted: 27 Apr 2011, 13:31:16 UTC
Last modified: 27 Apr 2011, 13:34:13 UTC

Default is 1 WU per CORE.

Now, this DOES NOT mean that the core that's "busy" crunching a WU won't have time for whatever else you are doing. Rosetta runs on the lowest priority possible (just above Idle Process), so whevner you move your mouse, open up a media player, open up a spreadsheet, word processor, an internet browser... etc. Rosetta will "give up" it's computation in favor of whatever else you do.

Meaning Rosetta won't affect PC performance even if you have ALL cores running a WU, assuming you have enough RAM.

Although, this "letting go of computation in favor of whatever the user is doing" does take small amount of time. You wouldn't notice it when opening most applications, but you will notice it when playing CPU intensive applications (Physics-intensive games, simulations... etc). Which is why I suspend BOINC all together when playing some games that require my full PC to run decently.

My two cents.
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Message 70142 - Posted: 27 Apr 2011, 15:15:42 UTC - in response to Message 70141.  

Which is why I suspend BOINC all together when playing some games that require my full PC to run decently.


Do you do this manually or automatically?
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Message 70144 - Posted: 27 Apr 2011, 16:42:40 UTC

Thanks for catching my omission on CPU priority Chilean. You also said

Meaning Rosetta won't affect PC performance even if you have ALL cores running a WU, assuming you have enough RAM.


Its that last part that's the gotcha. And so I would hesitate to word the first part so aggressively. Some environments won't even notice R@h is running, others will see a machine that becomes sluggish to respond. As you say the sluggishness is due to memory swapping, not access to an available CPU. But this gets difficult to describe in terms that computer novices can clearly grasp.
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Message 70159 - Posted: 28 Apr 2011, 21:20:38 UTC - in response to Message 70142.  

Which is why I suspend BOINC all together when playing some games that require my full PC to run decently.


Do you do this manually or automatically?


Manually. Activity -> Suspend.
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Message 70160 - Posted: 28 Apr 2011, 21:27:43 UTC - in response to Message 70144.  

Thanks for catching my omission on CPU priority Chilean. You also said

Meaning Rosetta won't affect PC performance even if you have ALL cores running a WU, assuming you have enough RAM.


Its that last part that's the gotcha. And so I would hesitate to word the first part so aggressively. Some environments won't even notice R@h is running, others will see a machine that becomes sluggish to respond. As you say the sluggishness is due to memory swapping, not access to an available CPU. But this gets difficult to describe in terms that computer novices can clearly grasp.


Yes. For some reason some apps do run slower when BOINC is running.

But I'd assume a computer novice wouldn't run anything that would be affected by BOINC tho. I mean, I myself don't ever suspend BOINC unless I run new full screen games and sometimes when I'm decoding/encoding/burning HD movies in a hurry.
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Message boards : Number crunching : Just cruosity...



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