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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: CPU usage fluctuations |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 9
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
A running graph of CPU usage while the BOINC Agent runs shows wild fluctuations, changing from 5% to 100% of capacity, hundreds of times each minute.
As I recall, a similar graph when I ran the UD Agent showed something like a constant 80% of capacity usage for the CPU. The question: Are these multiple, wild swings of CPU usage harmful to the CPU? |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
No.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello hh1000,
What OS? I run BOINC on Windows XP at 100% and it steadily uses all available cycles. I(s there some reason why you would want to run at less than 100%, such as a laptop with cooling issues? Lawrence |
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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 old UD throttle was more even, but the BOINC throttle has some wild fluctuations. It may be fixed in a later release. If your computer does not get too hot, just run at 100%.
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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 Apr 3, 2008 3:24:29 PM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
A running graph of CPU usage while the BOINC Agent runs shows wild fluctuations, changing from 5% to 100% of capacity, hundreds of times each minute. As I recall, a similar graph when I ran the UD Agent showed something like a constant 80% of capacity usage for the CPU. The question: Are these multiple, wild swings of CPU usage harmful to the CPU? This is by design. BOINC achieves the CPU percentage you specify (60% by default) using a binary throttle. The BOINC CPU usage goes from 0 to 100 regularly. Task Manager doesn't sample at high enough resolution to show the expected square wave profile exactly, so the averaged sampling may appear a little wild. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thanks for the definitive and reassuring replies. To answer some questions:
System is Windows XP Pro sp2, running on a laptop, and there are no heat issues. I kept the CPU usage setting at its default 60%, as there are other needed background tasks. It is the wild percentage usage swings, and their frequency that had me concerned. |
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retsof
Former Community Advisor USA Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Post Count: 6824 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I kept the CPU usage setting at its default 60%, as there are other needed background tasks. BOINC runs at low priority. When I want to do something else, BOINC slows down or stops entirely. It resumes when the other task is over.60% may still be a good throttle setting for a laptop.
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% |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
If it is a dual core laptop you can change your settings in your profile to only allow a max of one processor and set it to 100%. This way the task manager shows a constant 50% usage of the processor since it is only using 1 core, not 2. This is how I got around the jumping and dropping processor usage in task manager. For my case it was the laptop processor fan that was driving me crazy. It would speed up then slow down constantly. With this setup it remains constant.
Hopefully soon the BOINC throttle will be as nice as the UD throttle was. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hopefully soon the BOINC throttle will be as nice as the UD throttle was. That would make the graph of my CPU usage a lot nicer looking. This BOINC Agent is turning out to be pretty nifty. With just a couple of clicks it is now also running SETI@home. Hopefully this won't take away too much from its WCG tasking. Total CPU Time: 1:152:12:24:45 Total Points: 373,503 Results Returned: 1,262 WCG |
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