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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: WCG using more CPU than in DEVICE profile |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 7
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I have my device profiles set to only allow certain percentages (one is @ 50% and one is @ 30%..I believe). However, on numerous occassions when one of my machines is running extremely slow I find that wcg is using 80 or 90 % of my CPU.
Is this a known issue? Is there some other setting... If I can't solve this I'll have to shorten the available usage hours and that doesn't make a lot of sense either. Janice |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The BOINC throttle isn't as smooth as the old UD throttle, and the percentages can bounce around.
----------------------------------------Desktop computers don't even have to worry about it. Throttling was designed to reduce heat on certain laptops that could not run at 100%. Jobs run at low computer priority, and other things take over when they want. I have a different intense application here. When running a database optimize or validation, BOINC slows and stops completely. When it finishes, BOINC resumes. On the other hand, things like games do not coexist well. BOINC should be snoozed for gaming. With that said, certain projects like AC@H can cause computers to be sluggish if they have only a limited amount of memory. A 512Mb computer here has that problem with AC@H running, while a 3Gb computer doesn't care. Small projects like DDD-T have a lot less impact. Is your situation different?
SUPPORT ADVISOR
----------------------------------------Work+GPU i7 8700 12threads School i7 4770 8threads Default+GPU Ryzen 7 3700X 16threads Ryzen 7 3800X 16 threads Ryzen 9 3900X 24threads Home i7 3540M 4threads50% [Edit 6 times, last edit by retsof at Feb 24, 2008 4:40:01 AM] |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Janice, as retsof said, Boinc is not using CPU power which is not available. Which means that if it gets 80-90 % when your machine is so slow it is because the application or the game that you are running does not use it for some other reasons.
----------------------------------------The most probable are memory swapping to disk if you have not enough RAM, or video needs exceeding the capacity of your hardware. Possible also but less common on personal PCs could be a disk intensive job, e.g. housekeeping of a large database. I have recently built a new machine for crunching and testing with much processing power but minimum video capacity since I have no intention of running games, video editing or similar activity on it. Just for testing I have run RCT3 on it and the result is decent during the day (of the game). But when the video is more demanding (e.g. night + rain + fireworks + large crowds) the game becomes "sticky" whether Boinc is running or not And it is not running even a little faster if Boinc is not running. Is it something similar that you are experiencing? Cheers. Jean. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Some of both Jm and restof's questions are a little more technical than I can understand.
Both devices have 512 mem with another 512 of virtual mem. For the device with the smaller processor, I had previously unselected AC@H as an option for that machine except when nothing else is available. I also checked my recent results for both devices and in the time period where I've been paying attention, it appears that AC@H has not been running on either device. For, now I've modified my work and home profiles (one device is on each profile) to not do any work while the computer is in use and see if this helps out.  I'll be offline in the next 3 weeks quite a bit so will have to follow-up with this topic more after March 18. |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Some of both Jm and restof's questions are a little more technical than I can understand. Try this. For memory that limited, the windows swap file could be too small. That could cause it to struggle to get anything done.My small Win XP machine of 512Mb has a disk swap file (virtual memory) 4 times larger --- 2 gigabytes. Another Win XP machine used for other things was having problems with 2 simultaneous tasks with 1 Gb of memory, but ran a lot smoother with 2 Gb. It now has 3 Gb. For a Windows Vista 32 bit machine, get no less than 2 Gb to start. The one I finished building today has 4 Gb. It will not address more than that anyway, so that is the limit. That has nothing to do with the throttling. Mine is set to 100%.
SUPPORT ADVISOR
----------------------------------------Work+GPU i7 8700 12threads School i7 4770 8threads Default+GPU Ryzen 7 3700X 16threads Ryzen 7 3800X 16 threads Ryzen 9 3900X 24threads Home i7 3540M 4threads50% [Edit 1 times, last edit by retsof at Feb 26, 2008 4:29:05 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
JRMeans, here are the Cliff Notes:
It is normal for the CPU to go up to 100% even when you have it set to use 30%. BOINC will use a maximum of 30% on average, but the actual usage will go up and down. So, that's not a problem. What is a problem is the reported slow-down of your computer, and it is that aspect my colleagues have tried to address. It is likely that your computer has a performance bottleneck - memory, or writing to disk. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello JRMeans,
If the BOINC throttle is set to 30%, then BOINC runs for 3 seconds (at 100%) and stops for 7 seconds. This type of throttle is useful for keeping laptops from overheating. It serves no other purpose. If something is interfering with your computer, making it unresponsive, then the problem is probably not being caused by the throttle but by something else. Maybe BOINC, maybe some other software or hardware. Lawrence |
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