Typically, the computer is on 15 hours a day. Sometimes I'm working with it for much of the day, during which BOINC does not run.

Why?
Rosetta (like Seti) applications are set to run at Idle priority (the lowest level). Any other running programme of similar priority will get equal CPU resources. If it's priority is higher, then Rosetta applications will slow & even stop to allow the higher priority application to use the CPU resources.
If there is an application that is affected by having BOINC doing work in the background, you can use the Exclusive applications option to stop BOINC when just that particular application is running.

Back in the days of single core or just hyperthreaded systems, yeah you often needed to stop BOINC to allow other programmes to run OK. But with multi core/thread systems, unless the programme you are running is heavily multi threaded it just isn't necessary anymore.

I've found that this will handle CPU time problems, However, the paused BOINC applications usually do NOT release any memory they have allocated, unless you shut down BOINC. Therefore, your plan does not help if the important contention is for memory instead of for CPU time, unless you use the setting for releasing memory from BOINC applications that are not running.

Thanks, @Robert and @Grant. I've never received such prompt and good input in a forum before.
Grant, I suspect the only program I use that might tax the processor at times would be ArcGIS, which might have moments when it could be considered heavily multi-threaded. I'm out of my depth trying to determine whether I'll regret giving BOINC more resource access.
Robert, I think I'll try your 51/100 settings tip. I wonder if I should alter the memory settings?
Eric

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system: up-to-date Windows 10, Intel quad-core 3.6 GHz processor, 8 GB RAM

That would interfere with the way it recovers from times when one of the projects has no tasks available to send.

Instead, it looks back over the last few weeks, and tries to get tasks from whichever project would move it toward the new weighting.

I'm not sure I follow you. If I've made a choice that I want different weightings, I obviously want past history forgotten. I want from now on to have the ratio I set. Anything else is just confusing.

Imagine you ran project A at 10 and project B at 1. Then you decide one day that you want the reverse, A=1 and B=10. The way it works now, the history shows it's been doing way too much A, so it will consequently do B exclusively, which is not what you just asked it to do.

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* My computer usage would be irregular seen over a couple decades, but is more regular the past few years. Typically, the computer is on 15 hours a day. Sometimes I'm working with it for much of the day, during which BOINC does not run. Other times, the sceensaver might come on 5-10 times per day and run for an hour each time. I have the screensaver set to come on after ten minutes, then I think the comp sleeps after an hour. But, depending on how far back we go -- I ran SETI@home for 20 years -- there are times when the computer is off for a few days or a few weeks, and there was a ten-year era when it would often be running only on weekends.
* See my computing preferences screenshot below.

Any particular reason you stop Boinc so much? I leave mine on all the time, with very few programs that it slows down, so I set those as exclusive applications to pause Boinc when they run. 3 games, and VLC media player. Some stop the GPU, some stop the CPU also.

Or if you're always running something that needs some CPU for your work, tell Boinc to use less than all the cores, leaving some for you.

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I've found that this will handle CPU time problems, However, the paused BOINC applications usually do NOT release any memory they have allocated, unless you shut down BOINC. Therefore, your plan does not help if the important contention is for memory instead of for CPU time, unless you use the setting for releasing memory from BOINC applications that are not running.

Surely the paused Boinc programs would be shoved in the swap file by Windows?

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Any particular reason you stop Boinc so much? I leave mine on all the time, with very few programs that it slows down, so I set those as exclusive applications to pause Boinc when they run. 3 games, and VLC media player. Some stop the GPU, some stop the CPU also.

Or if you're always running something that needs some CPU for your work, tell Boinc to use less than all the cores, leaving some for you.

I guess when I set it up years ago, I just didn't want it to keep the computer running all day. But maybe I'll try giving it more time and resources.
Eric

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system: up-to-date Windows 10, Intel quad-core 3.6 GHz processor, 8 GB RAM

Any particular reason you stop Boinc so much? I leave mine on all the time, with very few programs that it slows down, so I set those as exclusive applications to pause Boinc when they run. 3 games, and VLC media player. Some stop the GPU, some stop the CPU also.

Or if you're always running something that needs some CPU for your work, tell Boinc to use less than all the cores, leaving some for you.

I guess when I set it up years ago, I just didn't want it to keep the computer running all day. But maybe I'll try giving it more time and resources.
Eric

My 6 run 24/7. Up to 2.5kW (ouch). The plug they all run from is actually warm.

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@EricM:

OK: this is becoming much more clear.

The fact that you now have Rosetta tasks suggests that it was indeed the other project that was getting priority. The missed deadlines are due to the other settings.

The project needs your computer to give each task 8 hours of CPU time inside 72 hours of wall time. From what you’ve written, tasks will be taking at best 38 hours to complete (maximum 10 hours per day, at 50% CPU time, and tasks not running at all at other times because either you’re using the computer or it’s asleep). To avoid BOINC downloading more work than it can complete, it’s essential to keep Store at least low. If your computer is frequently/​always connected to the Internet, it doesn’t matter: BOINC can always fetch more work when it needs it. You will not be overloading the project server by requesting work that infrequently. I would still recommend reducing Store up to an additional to zero, though in my experience that setting doesn’t seem to influence the amount of work downloaded in any event.

That would interfere with the way it recovers from times when one of the projects has no tasks available to send.

Instead, it looks back over the last few weeks, and tries to get tasks from whichever project would move it toward the new weighting.

Peter Hucker said:
I'm not sure I follow you. If I've made a choice that I want different weightings, I obviously want past history forgotten. I want from now on to have the ratio I set. Anything else is just confusing.

Imagine you ran project A at 10 and project B at 1. Then you decide one day that you want the reverse, A=1 and B=10. The way it works now, the history shows it's been doing way too much A, so it will consequently do B exclusively, which is not what you just asked it to do.

Easy answer to your hypothesis...the Boinc Developers made that formula and they are the only ones that can change it. Join there email group and ask them why it's the way it is, I'm sure Dr A will give you a response at some point.

Grant, I suspect the only program I use that might tax the processor at times would be ArcGIS, which might have moments when it could be considered heavily multi-threaded.

That's a pretty old FAQ, from the looks of it v10 can make use of extra cores & threads, but not much unless it is one of their server applications.
If you are running a more current version than v10, then i would expect it would make better use of extra cores & threads, possibly even GPU support (if it can make use of GPU support, and you have a supported GPU then i'd suggest taking advantage of that- anything up to a 100 times boost in performance is possible with a high end GPU v a high end CPU if the software can make use of it).

I'm out of my depth trying to determine whether I'll regret giving BOINC more resource access.

Only way to know is to try it and see- Set it so BOINC isn't suspended while the computer is in use, and see if it affects your other programmes, or if it affects system responsiveness over all.
If so, as suggested by Peter you could just reserve 1 or 2 CPU cores/threads for non BOINC use. That way BOINC will never make use of them, even if they aren't being uses by other programmes.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Peter Hucker wrote:

24/7. Up to 2.5kW

That’s ≈£4,000 p.a. on electricity? Ouch indeed…

Easy answer to your hypothesis...the Boinc Developers made that formula and they are the only ones that can change it. Join there email group and ask them why it's the way it is, I'm sure Dr A will give you a response at some point.

Yeah ok.... they're not the listening type.

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I would still recommend reducing Store up to an additional to zero, though in my experience that setting doesn’t seem to influence the amount of work downloaded in any event.

It does, just in very odd ways- It is best to have it as low as possible.

Having a large value for Additional days will result the cache running down significantly below the Store at least value, before it then gets more work to build it back up to the Store at least + Additional days value (and the larger each of those values, the greater the run down before it rebuilds the cache again). If people really feel a need for a cache, set it in Store at least value. The Additional days value should be as small as possible.
Weird things are much less likely to occur that way.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Peter Hucker wrote:

24/7. Up to 2.5kW

That’s ≈£4,000 p.a. on electricity? Ouch indeed…

I guess my tariff is lower than yours, because it's about half that. I do remember saving 30% by changing supplier a long time ago.

Mind you, I'm on one of those direct debit things that, like Boinc, never manages to settle down. So I could be racking up a massive debt....

What I'd love is Economy 7. My friend has it (he's still got storage radiators!) and only pays 5p a unit at night!

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I would still recommend reducing Store up to an additional to zero, though in my experience that setting doesn’t seem to influence the amount of work downloaded in any event.

It does, just in very odd ways- It is best to have it as low as possible.

Having a large value for Additional days will result the cache running down significantly below the Store at least value, before it then gets more work to build it back up to the Store at least + Additional days value (and the larger each of those values, the greater the run down before it rebuilds the cache again). If people really feel a need for a cache, set it in Store at least value. The Additional days value should be as small as possible.
Weird things are much less likely to occur that way.

It seems a very simple setting to me, and it should obviously do the following (although Boinc is never sensible):

I set 6 hours + 12 hours. The queue falls to 6 hours, then it downloads an extra 12. That's a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 6+12. It can't mean anything else.

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Peter Hucker wrote:

I guess my tariff is lower than yours, because it's about half that. I do remember saving 30% by changing supplier a long time ago.

Mind you, I'm on one of those direct debit things that, like Boinc, never manages to settle down. So I could be racking up a massive debt....

What I'd love is Economy 7. My friend has it (he's still got storage radiators!) and only pays 5p a unit at night!

Good point – I’m in a rented flat and still on the supplier and tariff I inherited when I moved in. It’s unlikely that’s the best deal I could get…

In another place I neglected the direct debit discrepancy for so long it ended up with the supplier owing me £2,500!

Is the average cost still cheaper on Economy 7, despite the higher daytime rate? You can still change, can’t you? Though I suppose you’d have to pay £££ for a new meter…

But you’re really pulling 400 W per machine? I know the X5600s were not reknowned for their power efficiency, but they’re only 95 W TDP.

EricM,

Thanks, @Robert and @Grant. I've never received such prompt and good input in a forum before.
Grant, I suspect the only program I use that might tax the processor at times would be ArcGIS, which might have moments when it could be considered heavily multi-threaded. I'm out of my depth trying to determine whether I'll regret giving BOINC more resource access.
Robert, I think I'll try your 51/100 settings tip. I wonder if I should alter the memory settings?
Eric

Many of us have much more free time than usual to help due to the COVID-19 warnings about going out in public.

Also, there are many more than usual new users that need the help we know how to provide.

I'd observe what Task Manager says about how much memory is is use, and how close it is to the maximum amount BOINC is allowed to use, before changing the memory settings. It's been at least months since I found a good reason to change the BOINC memory settings on my computer.

Assume that Windows 10 uses about 1 GB of memory, so don't allow BOINC to use so much that there isn't 1 GB left if you are using Windows 10. Earlier versions of Windows use less.

That would interfere with the way it recovers from times when one of the projects has no tasks available to send.

Instead, it looks back over the last few weeks, and tries to get tasks from whichever project would move it toward the new weighting.

I'm not sure I follow you. If I've made a choice that I want different weightings, I obviously want past history forgotten. I want from now on to have the ratio I set. Anything else is just confusing.

Imagine you ran project A at 10 and project B at 1. Then you decide one day that you want the reverse, A=1 and B=10. The way it works now, the history shows it's been doing way too much A, so it will consequently do B exclusively, which is not what you just asked it to do.

How do you want that plan adjusted to handle times when one of the two projects had no work to download for the last few days, or very little work like it's happened on Rosetta@home recently? Many people do not agree that the adjustment should take effect immediately, without even waiting for several tasks to be reported and receive credits.

Many people just don't have enough spare time to frequently adjust their project setting, like you appear to want to do.

EricM wrote:

I wonder if I should alter the memory settings?

In my recent observation, tasks are allocating anything from 300 to 3000, and averaging around 700, MB of memory each. At a limit of 75% of 8 GB for 4 cores, most tasks will be fine. But if nothing else is using the computer while BOINC is active, you could increase that to, say, 93%. (I don’t recommend 100% because the operating system will always need some memory for itself.)

Good point – I’m in a rented flat and still on the supplier and tariff I inherited when I moved in. It’s unlikely that’s the best deal I could get…

In another place I neglected the direct debit discrepancy for so long it ended up with the supplier owing me £2,500!

Is the average cost still cheaper on Economy 7, despite the higher daytime rate? You can still change, can’t you? Though I suppose you’d have to pay £££ for a new meter…

But you’re really pulling 400 W per machine? I know the X5600s were not reknowned for their power efficiency, but they’re only 95 W TDP.

I used uswitch to find the cheapest. EDF was 30% less than Scottish Power (which came from the previous house owner). For some reason I never thought about changing until I'd been here for about 10 years.

They should have given you that earlier, I thought they had to by law. I get money given to me automatically if I'm owed more than a hundred or so. But they let me build up a much bigger (interest free) debt and just keep increasing the direct debit to try to pay it off. I'm paying a fraction of it just now due to the coronavirus, I asked them if I could lower it temporarily. And they let me off with a missed payment now and then as long as I tell them. One day I'm going to be hit over the head with a huge bill.

Economy 7 hasn't been available from any supplier I know of for years. You can only have it if you already had it. I already have a dual rate meter, EDF used to do "Eco 20:20" which was 20% off evenings and weekends, but the price of that increased so I was better off with a single tarriff. The meter gives two readings, but they're charged at the same rate. If I could get Economy 7, I'd tell the computers to only run at night, and get more computers to compensate. I love finding old hardware and connecting it together. Cheap to buy, but expensive to run.

It's not the CPUs that eat the juice, it's the GPUs. I have four AMD Radeon R9 280X cards. They were only 50 quid each, and they have very fast double precision, which is good for Milkyway. And there's all the cooling, including some 40 year old very loud Torin TA450 fans https://www.ebay.ca/itm/362032760647. I think they used to be used on mainframes or something. They're 115V, but two in series are happy off UK mains. I dunno why he's asking that much for them, I got a pack of 10 (used) for about 15 quid 30 years ago.

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