Hellos,

This is quite specific, but anyways...

I work with computer graphics, 3d studio max specifically, and run BOINC on this machine, a P4 with a quad core CPU. Problem is, there is a strong performance issue running 3d studio max when BOINC is processing tasks from climateprediction.net.

And the weird part, this happens only with tasks from climateprediction.

Explaining further. Althought with 4 cores, I run BOINC with 2 processors at most. Whitout BOINC and with a 10k tris model on Max viewport I get some 30fps on both shaded and wireframe. With BOINC running 2 LHC@home tasks or 2 Einstein@home tasks I get no less than 28fps, generally 29 or 30fps. If instead I have 2 climateprediction tasks, and only climateprediction, I get 12 to 15fps on the viewport. Which should be being rendered on the VIDEOCARD, I supose (Max viewport uses DirectX). This happens even if I change the affinity of hadsm* process to CPU2 and CPU3, while leaving Max with affinity to CPU0 and CPU1 or if I have only ONE climateprediction task (i.e., configured to use 1 processor at most).

I also installed the Microsoft hotfix for multiple core, without any success...

I\'m currently considering giving up running climateprediction during daytime, and leaving it running during night time on the rare days I leave the computer to process something.

Since CPU limiting of BOINC is not really limiting I also tried those third party CPU limiters programs, but it\'s annoying to have to set it up everyday.

Any suggestions?


Eduardo
PS: and I\'m running climateprediction at my home computer, an AMD with 64 bit Ubuntu, without any performance issues...

I\'m not sure what the specific problem is, since the idle priority should keep the models from affecting performance, unless the video rendering is also low priority.

I have, however, noticed one thing in regard to affinities. One of your models is HADAM3 (i.e. 7149568). On my machine the HADAM3 uses CPU0 time even if the affinities are set to avoid CPU0. So it might be a good idea to avoid the HADAM3 model when thrashing the machine. (It uses more memory too. You could always get more memory anyway, which should be good up to about 3 GB on 32-bit XP.)

The climate models use a lot of memory bandwidth, this is probably what is causing the problem since the Intel chips have a severe bottleneck in this area. (The AMDs have much better bandwidth and are probably not affected to the same extent). The four cores all share a single memory interface, so setting affinity won\'t have much effect.

I would recommend suspending the climate models while you are using the PC for graphics work.

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I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
News and Announcements and FAQ

These climate models are the most computationally intense of all of the BOINC projects, and the HADAM3 model is the worst of these models, because it\'s a high resolution model.

When running climate models, it\'s long been recommended that BOINC be suspended before running any other computationally intense programs, such as audio/video rendering, some types of games, etc.
Not doing this can cause the model to crash when it\'s program is suddenly deprived of hardware resources.

And frequent backups (as per a link in my sig below), are highly advised.

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Backups: Here

Thanks for the answers!

I will find a way to finish this tasks then and not get new ones. Meanwhile I leave it crunching climateprediction at home.


Thanks!
Eduardo