FPS/ CPU usage adjustment
4 Nov 2015 8:30:24 UTC
Topic 198293
(moderation:
I want to reduce the CPU usage of Einstein from 20% on my nVidia cards or 50% on my ATI cards to something more like 4% CPU as the Lunatic's optimized SETI WU's.
The only adjustment seems to be the FPS which says it will effect CPU usage. So will setting this to 0 FPS signficantly reduce the CPU usage?
EDIT: I realize that the 20% and 50% might be estimates (SETI claims 4% but is actually 8-9%) and not indicative of the actual CPU usage but the results for my machines seem to be missing. I have only results for the last week to look at for data points on 3 machines that have been working Einstein for the last couple months (and 18 months for the Dell m6500).
The limited results (5 data points) that I can look at seem to indicate that Einstien is actually using 0.2% CPU on the ATI card and 1.5% CPU on the nVidia.
That's much better than SETI WU so why is the Einstein WU claiming 20% and 50% CPU requirements?
FPS/ CPU usage adjustment
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You could always try an app_config.xml and limit CPU usage by that means.
But I guess the question is, why do you want to limit your CPU usage by the GPUs?
If you drop them too far down, one of the problems you might run into is
throwing errors on those GPU work units (something I've seen when there wasn't enough resources, ie running CPU work task as well as GPU and the GPU starving)
If you do plan on going thru with limiting, the new Beta Parkes use about 0.16 CPU on AMD chip machines and 0.10 CPU on Intel chip machine (these are for Nvidia cards only, don't know what ATI use)
If you are worried that the GPU are taking too much of your CPUs, why not just not crunch on the GPUs?
Happy Crunching...
And as for Seti.. MBs require at least 0.35 CPU (usually it bouncing between 0.30 and 0.34) while AP are typically less than 0.16 CPU but the lunatics was written specifically by volunteers to optimize those tasks.
RE: But I guess the
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I'm not going to give up CPU time from my CPU only projects to GPU projects.
I'm going to guard those precious CPU work slices.
Mentioned in an edit on the OP; it seems from the 3 WU's listed in the history that Einstein actually only used about 1.5% CPU compared to the total WU seconds (no where near the 20 or 50% descriptions' claim) while SETI is actually using about 8% CPU when the Lunatics WU description reads 4%. Of course that is lapsed time as there is no measure of actual used GPU time given.
Not sure how to set that up. Server side options do not have that choice and from your initial part of your post it infers that you'd always need some CPU. There is only 1 GPU on each of the 6 machines here and all funds are spent for BOINC related expenses this year.
RE: Mentioned in an edit on
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I think you are confusing CPU time vs actual support of the GPUs Yes, the "CPU time" is usually smaller than the "GPU time" but that doesn't mean GPU don't need any CPU at all. There is always going to be a need for CPU cycles by the GPU during the computations or anaylsis.
On your account page, middle of the page, you will see Einstein@home Preferences.
Once you click there, it will take you to the different locations you can set your computers to. Find the one you use for your computers and click edit.
Then unclick "use ATI GPU" "use Nvidia GPU" "use Intel GPU" that should leave only the "use CPU" as the only option. That should only allow CPU task to run on your systems.
RE: I want to reduce the
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You need to just ignore those numbers as they are just estimates for budgeting purposes. For example, if you were able to run 5 concurrent tasks on an nvidia GPU (not that you could on yours), BOINC would reserve a complete CPU core for GPU support duties (5x0.2=1 complete core). If you are running a single GPU task, it is not 'using' 20% of a CPU. It is using CPU cycles when necessary which in total add up to the time shown in the CPU Time column on the website - just a couple of hundred seconds in several hours of crunch time for yours.
In your cases the actual percentages used are very low so you aren't wasting CPU time. If you really wanted to, you could change the estimate, by using an app_config.xml file, but it wont make any improvement on the already quite low fraction of CPU time that a GPU task is consuming. A task will use just what it needs and not a cycle more, no matter what the estimate says. If you fiddle around with these estimates without really knowing what you are doing, you could actually make things worse.
This is only for video display purposes - nothing to do with GPU crunching. If you wanted to run a video at a high frame rate you might use up a lot of CPU resources as well.
Because some much more powerful cards may actually need that much particularly when crunching multiple concurrent GPU tasks. The numbers are a conservative compromise when considering the much higher crunching capabilities of top of the range GPUs and the amount of CPU support they might need.
Cheers,
Gary.
RE: RE: The only
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I think maybe the OP is thinking about this E@H setting?
Graphics setting: frames per second (FPS)
Warning: affects CPU consumption! Default value: 20
This setting (and the next 3 "graphics" ones) only affect the BOINC screensaver. If you are worried about these settings affecting performance the simplest thing to do is to disable the BOINC screensaver.
Yes, I was trying to do too
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Yes, I was trying to do too many things at once. I meant to say "video output from a BOINC or project screensaver" instead of just video.
Cheers,
Gary.