I'm on my second unit. Performance seems much slower than the first one. Today for instance my machine was on all day and less than 1 hour of the project was completed.
Any hints.
... my machine was on all day and less than 1 hour of the project was completed ...
Hi, and welcome to the project.
When you say "all day" would we be safe in assuming 8 hours or more? If so, there are a couple of things you can check.
You may have the preference set for only allowing the task to run when the computer is idle and if you were also doing "light" things like surfing, emails, word processing, etc, your computer would appear to be occupied and hence BOINC would not run - even though your machine would really still be at least 95% idle. In the vast majority of cases it is quite safe to allow BOINC unfettered use of your CPU and you would be unlikely to notice the difference. However there will be an amazing difference in the amount of crunching that gets done. BOINC is very good at getting out of the way when you really need your CPU cycles so there is little need to impose that restriction.
You may also be running the screensaver graphics. Please be aware that the graphics will steal lots of CPU cycles from the science app when you are using an older machine with integrated graphics - which appears to be the case for your computer. If you are displaying the screensave graphics, disabling it would probably make a significant difference.
Individual tasks do have a cyclic nature to their crunch times. There are many recent high volume threads in "Cruncher's Corner" that discuss this if you are interested. For the two tasks that you have so far been allocated, the first was very close to a crunch time minimum (the trough of the cycle) and the second is quite close to a crunch time maximum (the peak of the cycle). This is just the luck of the draw but your second task will take a lot longer than the first. Your first task took just over 40 hours of CPU time. Your second will probably take between 50 and 60 hours.
Your first task took around 360 hours of "wall clock" time for 40 hours of CPU time - ie less than 3 hours per day of CPU time. If your machine runs for a lot more than 3 hours per day, you need to investigate why BOINC doesn't get more than it is currently getting. At the rate of progress displayed in your first task, it is quite likely that the second one will fail to meet the deadline.
Hi Gary
thanks for the reply
I've set BOINC to 100% CPU useage and "run always". I turn on my computer before I leave for work and don't turn it off until bed time about 11:00PM. I set my virtual memory to 2Gig's an allowed 5 Gigs of disk space. This evening I went from 93 hrs down to 86 hrs. We'll see how much is done tomorrow evening when I get home from work. By the way my computer is a Dell Power Edge 2400 with an 866MHZ CPU. It's a little faster than my Lap Top I used for Boinc the first task.
Thanks again
... This evening I went from 93 hrs down to 86 hrs.
The time remaining can be quite deceptive. The time remaining is continually being reviewed by BOINC in order to arrive at better estimates for the actual finishing time. If the original estimate was rather larger than it should have been then the remaining time will be dropping much more quickly than actual elapsed time. So the remaining time, dropping from 93 to 86 does not necessarily tell you that 7 hours work has been done. You need to note the change in the accumulated CPU time to find out exactly how much work has been done.
If you leave your computer on while you go to work and nobody else is using it, the increase in CPU time recorded by BOINC should be pretty much the same as "wall clock" elapsed time. So if you left at 8.00am and returned at 6.00pm you should see around 10 hours increase in the accumulated CPU time for the task in progress. I don't understand how it could be that you only got a 1 hour CPU time increase as you reported in your first message??
Quote:
By the way my computer is a Dell Power Edge 2400 with an 866MHZ CPU. It's a little faster than my Lap Top I used for Boinc the first task.
Your account only shows one computer registered so I presume you transferred the entire BOINC installation from your laptop to the Dell after the first result was finished. It's quite feasible to do this - just a little unusual :). It means, however, that BOINC could be quite confused about how long the current task should take. A lot depends on the relative specs of the two machines.
Slow Performance
)
Hi, and welcome to the project.
When you say "all day" would we be safe in assuming 8 hours or more? If so, there are a couple of things you can check.
You may have the preference set for only allowing the task to run when the computer is idle and if you were also doing "light" things like surfing, emails, word processing, etc, your computer would appear to be occupied and hence BOINC would not run - even though your machine would really still be at least 95% idle. In the vast majority of cases it is quite safe to allow BOINC unfettered use of your CPU and you would be unlikely to notice the difference. However there will be an amazing difference in the amount of crunching that gets done. BOINC is very good at getting out of the way when you really need your CPU cycles so there is little need to impose that restriction.
You may also be running the screensaver graphics. Please be aware that the graphics will steal lots of CPU cycles from the science app when you are using an older machine with integrated graphics - which appears to be the case for your computer. If you are displaying the screensave graphics, disabling it would probably make a significant difference.
Individual tasks do have a cyclic nature to their crunch times. There are many recent high volume threads in "Cruncher's Corner" that discuss this if you are interested. For the two tasks that you have so far been allocated, the first was very close to a crunch time minimum (the trough of the cycle) and the second is quite close to a crunch time maximum (the peak of the cycle). This is just the luck of the draw but your second task will take a lot longer than the first. Your first task took just over 40 hours of CPU time. Your second will probably take between 50 and 60 hours.
Your first task took around 360 hours of "wall clock" time for 40 hours of CPU time - ie less than 3 hours per day of CPU time. If your machine runs for a lot more than 3 hours per day, you need to investigate why BOINC doesn't get more than it is currently getting. At the rate of progress displayed in your first task, it is quite likely that the second one will fail to meet the deadline.
Cheers,
Gary.
Hi Gary thanks for the
)
Hi Gary
thanks for the reply
I've set BOINC to 100% CPU useage and "run always". I turn on my computer before I leave for work and don't turn it off until bed time about 11:00PM. I set my virtual memory to 2Gig's an allowed 5 Gigs of disk space. This evening I went from 93 hrs down to 86 hrs. We'll see how much is done tomorrow evening when I get home from work. By the way my computer is a Dell Power Edge 2400 with an 866MHZ CPU. It's a little faster than my Lap Top I used for Boinc the first task.
Thanks again
Oday280
RE: ... This evening I went
)
The time remaining can be quite deceptive. The time remaining is continually being reviewed by BOINC in order to arrive at better estimates for the actual finishing time. If the original estimate was rather larger than it should have been then the remaining time will be dropping much more quickly than actual elapsed time. So the remaining time, dropping from 93 to 86 does not necessarily tell you that 7 hours work has been done. You need to note the change in the accumulated CPU time to find out exactly how much work has been done.
If you leave your computer on while you go to work and nobody else is using it, the increase in CPU time recorded by BOINC should be pretty much the same as "wall clock" elapsed time. So if you left at 8.00am and returned at 6.00pm you should see around 10 hours increase in the accumulated CPU time for the task in progress. I don't understand how it could be that you only got a 1 hour CPU time increase as you reported in your first message??
Your account only shows one computer registered so I presume you transferred the entire BOINC installation from your laptop to the Dell after the first result was finished. It's quite feasible to do this - just a little unusual :). It means, however, that BOINC could be quite confused about how long the current task should take. A lot depends on the relative specs of the two machines.
Cheers,
Gary.