Very long run time.
5 Jul 2020 3:44:33 UTC
Topic 223004
(moderation:
I have a problem I haven't encountered on any other project.
I joined Einstein at Home a couple of days ago. I am finding that while some work units are processed with a similar run time and CPU time, others have a huge discrepancy. Typically, with the second kind, run time is >34,000 while CPU time is ~500. More than that, my computer is now so sluggish it is almost unusable.
If I take no other action I'm going to have to abort a good deal of the work sent because it is going to go well over the fortnight time limit. I am using the default settings.
Any suggestions, please?
99.94 wrote: I have a
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First reduce your cache size so you don't have to abort workunits until you figure it out and 2nd try rebooting the pc.
Hi and welcome to
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Hi and welcome to Einstein@home!
You need to either give more details about you computer and the type of tasks it's running or preferably go to Your account -> Preferences -> Privacy and allow your computers to be shown on the site for anyone to be able to give good advice.
No sensitive info is show, if you like to see what's shown then click on my name to the left of this post and then to the right you'll find a Show computers link, you can then browse my computers to see what kind of info is shown.
Thank you very much! I've
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Thank you very much!
I've never given the privacy setting any thought. I think computers are hidden by default.
Anyway, I have changed it and the computer should be visible now.
Thanks again.
Thanks for unhiding your
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Thanks for unhiding your computers!
Looking at your computer specs I suspect that it's a laptop computer and you have a 4 core CPU and a 775M Nvidia GPU. As laptops usually have less efficient cooling solutions it might be overheating and therefore reducing it's speed to protect itself.
You've been running tasks on both the GPU and on the CPU and the default settings will try to run as many tasks as possible. The GPU tasks are the ones that take 34,000 seconds and as almost all of the work is done on the GPU the CPU time will be low, that's completely normal.
To try and get things running a bit better you could try and reduce the number of tasks that's run. To do this then go to Your account -> Preferences and click on Advanced settings. Then scroll down to about the middle of the page and find "Use at most", set that to 75% of the processors to free one CPU core and see if that makes a difference. You could also try setting it at 50% and compare the results.
While on that page scroll down to the heading "Network usage" and check the cache settings. Set "Store at least" to a very low number eg. 0.1 days and the "Store up to an additional" to 0.
Then scroll to the bottom and hit Save.
After that open Boinc Manager on your computer and in Advanced view on the Projects tab highlight Einstein@home and then click the Update button on the left to download the new settings. Then monitor what's going on to see if the situation improves.
If the above doesn't work you could always opt out of using your GPU by editing your Project preferences (Account|Preferences|Project). Deselect Use Nvidia GPU and further down deselect any application with "GPU" in it's name. Remember to save at the bottom of the page.
Hope this helps get your machine running smoothly again and still contributing to the project!
Thank you very much. That
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Thank you very much. That helps. I will give it a try.
The computer is an iMac desktop. It is five years old.