WCG KILLS conroe performance :(

[afireinside]

This is pretty sad... Typical daily OS with typical daily apps running... ventrilo, firefox, mirc, itunes, steam, etc. 3d01 compare:

WCG on:
http://afireinside.evilspork.net/AFI/WCSLOW.JPG

WCG off:
http://afireinside.evilspork.net/AFI/WCGOFF.JPG

And I was wondering why I was getting lower fps in cod2 and windows felt slower than my opty rig... Conroe performance when dual loaded is downright pathetic.

[-Acid-]

build another rig for gaming with boinc installed maybe a 6300 allendale job

[[XC] leviathan18]

disable boinc when you play

[bullet2urbrain]

i dunno how bad of a drop that really is.. i have run 3d01 only like 10 times total.

however i can tell you my SPi 1.5 time goes from 15.047 after a fresh reboot to 18.134 with SoB running in background.

its crazy speed drop.

And yeah AFI, just stop BOINC when you play, we understand.

[[XC] hipno650]

ya thats what i do just turn it off when gaming and back on when not.

[gr8golf]

I'm a noob - so I am glad to see this thread. I've been surprised at how *little* the running BOINC client affects my other programs. What is the best way to *turn off* BOINC when I am gaming? Is suspending the BOINC projects the way to go?

[[XC] hipno650]

i just close the whole program. be there is probably a better way. and i to am supprised at how much it does not affect performance like i thought i would come to a crawl.

[afireinside]

Maybe I screwed something up but BOINC pulled my OS down to a crawl. I load windows easily 2x as fast with it disabled.

[[XC] hipno650]

is it chrunching a wu when this happens because that would be why!!!!!! because your cpu usage is 100% witch i bound to slow things down:stick: :D

[afireinside]

Isn't it SUPPOSED to be crunching WUs? I thought DC projects used unneeded processing power, not killing my performance and requiring me to babysit it whenever I want to use cpu power.

[rob725]

On my main machine, I do not autoload boinc. Just start it manually and don't notice it most the time; catch it paging once in a while. If benching or heavy gaming, I just exit program and restart it later.

[rob725]

Isn't it SUPPOSED to be crunching WUs? I thought DC projects used unneeded processing power, not killing my performance and requiring me to babysit it whenever I want to use cpu power.

It still has to task switch in and out, use ram...Most other things you do won't use 100%, so it will jump in and try and use the rest. If you're doing things that are peaking around 100% it may be trying to bop in and out and be sort of thrashing a little. Do you notice much while web browsing or doing other low cpu utilization stuff?

[WesM63]

Thats pretty weird AFI. I can't feel any difference in windows with bonic on and with it off. Feels the same to me.:confused:

[-Acid-]

i just use a different p.c \ laptop
2 p.c's running it 24\7 now
third gonna go online tonight [fingers crossed]

[[XC] hipno650]

i run wcg all the time 100% on my gaming comp when searching the net or listening to music cuz it does not affet that speed at all. the only time i turn it off is when gaming or video edditing.

[ShootStraight]

Doesnt BOINC have a setting in the profile to run only when the computer is idle?

Other than that, i'd check to make sure things have the right priorities in windows. It *should* release the resources if prempted by other programs.

HTH

-SS

[Haltech]

you can change the settings in your WCG profile. you have to log into the grid to change it.. once you make the changes, goto the boinc client and force an update to WCG.. Problem solved...

5000 point drop in 3dmark isnt bad at all... People would kill for 35,000.. well the avg joe anyways.. if benching is your main concern, you should have a benching drive with a benching os on it.

[afireinside]

You think I don't? I have a 40gb drive with 4 different windows installs on it. Different setups for pi, 01, 03/05/06 etc. I'm running with BOINC disabled and even windows feels faster now. losing 4k in 01 is like running your CPU a few hundred mhz slower.

[Haltech]

I dont get it.. You run boinc on your benching drive?

I seriously dont know how you can feel a few hundred mhz difference with it on or off. If thats the case, something seriously wrong with your regular OS.

[afireinside]

No I run BOINC on my daily OS on my RAID 0 array... At least I did run it. Nothing is wrong with my OS, it's running perfectly fine without BOINC. Maybe it's 965 but dual loading this thing kills it.

[rob725]

That is strange. I just suspended the project and didn't really notice much difference, maybe a little snappier, but not really much different.

[WesM63]

I'll test it on my rig here shortly. 965 vs 975

[rob725]

Not sure what to test, but SP 2M gives a little over 3 sec diff on both 965 and 975, a little under 10%. As you said, about a 300ish mhz difference, but still, you wouldn't think that would make windows sluggish.

[Haltech]

No I run BOINC on my daily OS on my RAID 0 array... At least I did run it. Nothing is wrong with my OS, it's running perfectly fine without BOINC. Maybe it's 965 but dual loading this thing kills it.

Which brings me back to my point.. Somethings wrong with your OS if it becomes a slug under load...

Either tinker with your bios and take a spare drive and reload the OS WITHOUT RAID.. I think your RAID is the problem.

[afireinside]

my HDtach is 40% faster on matrix raid than nvraid. Games load noticably faster. I've already spent a week tinkering with every setting in the BIOS. OS is butter smooth without WCG running. Wesm63 just duplicated a 40k to 45k result on his 975+conroe and stock 7900gt.

[Haltech]

Ok, maybe im lame.. But why are you benching with boinc active @ full load on 2 cores?

[afireinside]

Ok, maybe im lame.. But why are you benching with boinc active @ full load on 2 cores?

So I could see how much a difference fully loading the cpu vs only loading one core makes in 3d?

[WesM63]

Yep, i just duplicated AFI's test and with WCG running it does cripple my 3D01 score 5k points. See the SS's below. However, I don't have the lagish problems AFI seems to have. We are pretty much determined its 965's poor memory management.

WCG on and tons of other stuff:
http://www.needmoreboost.com/xs/bonicon.jpg

WCG suspended, same stuff running:
http://www.needmoreboost.com/xs/bonicoff.jpg

I duplicated AFI's test, we're running pretty much the same speeds settings and everything, only diffrence is he is running 965 and i'm running 975.

[gr8golf]

It still has to task switch in and out, use ram...Most other things you do won't use 100%, so it will jump in and try and use the rest. If you're doing things that are peaking around 100% it may be trying to bop in and out and be sort of thrashing a little. Do you notice much while web browsing or doing other low cpu utilization stuff?


No - that is what I meant by saying that I was surprised how *little* it affected my PC in general use. I do think it makes a difference when gaming - so I need to figure out the best way to suspend or disable it while gaming.

[Fr3ak]

Well I wonder that you are surprised that your 3D Mark score is lower.
When running 3D Mark the CPU is not loaded 100% all the time. There are many benchmarks and loading screens its way less than 100% CPU usage.
Every time its not 100% used, Boinc uses the idle CPU usage and Ram. Now 3D Mark needs 100% CPU again, but it takes a few milliseconds to switch the tasks and give the memory free.
That happens several times per minute, which results in worse benchmark results.
Of course you cant have a program, that uses idle cpu time and ram (i.e loading the cpu 100% all the time) without noticing something.
Windows load balancing is far from being perfect.

I ran boinc on several PCs now and I must say, that I didnt noticed anything on most PCs, but thats while surfing the web, etc.
Of course loading times are slighly slower and benchmarks will be worse.
If you need all the power your PC has, shut down Boinc.
But personally I dont need 4ghz to surf the web and check emails :)

[rob725]

No - that is what I meant by saying that I was surprised how *little* it affected my PC in general use. I do think it makes a difference when gaming - so I need to figure out the best way to suspend or disable it while gaming.

Sorry for not being more clear; that was actually directed afireinside.
For some games, I let it run, for demanding ones I exit.

[lawrywild]

err wtf?

I would've thought it'd be pretty obvious that running WCG would slow a benchmark down..

Fr3ak pretty much explained it how I would've..

[brot]

how can you feel a difference in windows itself when boinc is on..?
Even my p2-450 allows smooth working with kde and wcg running. And i cant feel any difference on my amd-xp 1800+ with windows 2k. Something seems to be damaged.
edit: forgot to mention my 500mhz ibook ;)

[WesM63]

No worries guys, AFI and I were just trying to figure out what was causing his machine to be laggy in windows n the like. I think we've narrowed it down to the poor 965 chipset. I wish i had 2 conroe rigs side by side to test it but i don't.

I don't notice any diffrence with WCG on or off. :confused:

[Fr3ak]

Maybe its the onboard Raid controller causing problems, no idea.

[afireinside]

What would the RAID controller have to do with CPU performance and OS speed?

On AMD my bench scores are VERY close between WCG on/off.

[lawrywild]

You've tried reinstalling windows and boinc again from scratch??

[cadaveca]

What would the RAID controller have to do with CPU performance and OS speed?

On AMD my bench scores are VERY close between WCG on/off.
Yes, but with the added latency of the mem controller being in the the northbridge, it's liek trying to wade through quicksand. Look at the difference in memusage between ON and OFF. 500MB!!!

:D

[Haltech]

if you think motherboard supplied RAID is stellar, you need to consider a real RAID card to see what youre missing. With the size of hard drives today, their cache size and speed, i dont know why power users want raid for a system that is their primary workstation. Backup is a nightmare, motherboard swaps as well...

Raid 5/6 Works beautiful as a file, database or ftp server. or... if you use it as a dedicated photoshop, rendering box or ripping/encoding station. you will see a dramatic performance increase with a proper aftermarket raid card with gobs of onboard memory.

[rob725]

Backup is fine with the right software. If raid goes down, I can fix drive, boot off backup drive and restore back to raid.

[STEvil]

WCG is probably holding the WU in ram while the CPU is being used by a higher priority process. You can set an option which allows you to either hold a WU in memory while pre-empted or not. If your page file isnt big enough or is too big (thus causing massive fragmenting) it wont help either.

EDIT

There is also another option which allows you to set idle time before WCG will become active... so it wont kick in/out every second or whatever if the CPU is not under constant load.