hi,

so i've been away for awhile, the last time i was doing this, it was still the classic.... safe to say, i'm not longer familiar with the settings.

i'm trying to run this client on a bunch of computers, and i've noticed that on one of the system, the CPU is running lfat out all the time, which i'm fine with.

but on the other units, the cpu usage varies from 50 - 100%, but when the system goes on "idle", cpu usage drops to around 25%.

i've got all of them setup the same as far as i can tell, but is there something i'm missing?

thanks heaps for any suggestions

What else are you doing on your computers?

The default is to "suspend" Boinc processing if non-boinc processing exceeds 25%. You can change that on the website or on individual machines.

Another thing that makes a difference on Intel cpu machines is to not use the internal gpu for the cpu.

Usually the whole system production increases if you stop crunching on the internal intel gpu's. You can turn off downloading Intel gpu tasks on the website.

I have no experience with the MMX video chips from Nvidia but if they aren't part of the cpu memory bus then the cpu's should not be slowed down by the gpu processing. Since they are very entry-level (if I remember right) then you should not expect them to be processing gpu tasks in 7 minutes :)

I hope this helps.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

For now, let's ignore the strange behaviour of your CPU in terms of % utilisation - that can be a bit of a red herring.
First observation - you have 9 computers listed, all generated in the last few days. I think this actually represents four "real" computers.
"Computer one" has an Intel i5-6300U CPU with its built-in Intel GPU.
"Computer two" has an Intel i7-8550U CPU, Intel built-in GPU, plus nVidia MX150 GPU - this one is almost certainly a fairly new laptop
"Computer three" has an Intel i5-4300U CPU, Intel built-in GPU
"Computer four" has an Intel i5-8250U CPU, Intel built-in GPU

As Tom says there is little point in running the Intel GPU as they share so many resources with the CPU that both suffer badly when doing computational work. To turn off the supply of data (easiest way of stopping them) you go to your account web settings page (https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/prefs.php?subset=project), and de-select the "use Intel GPU" option.

Now to sorting out the issue of the low CPU usage - I'm going to guess that is on the computer with the nVidia GPU OK?, fairly simple to sort this:
Using the "advanced view" of the BOINC manager, select "Options", then "Computing Preferences", a window with four tabs on it will pop up - select the "computing" tab (this i normally the one that pops up on top). You will see near the top "usagE limits", and below that "Use at most 100 % of the CPUs" - reduce the value to either 87.5 or 75%, then save and exit. This will release one thread of your computer for the GPU to use and so not be fighting with whatever else the computer is doing (I would always allow one thread - 12.5% on an 8-thread CPU - for the operating system and other uses, plus one for - another 12.5% the GPU).
There are other ways to do the same thing, but they involve careful editing of files, which if done incorrectly can make life very difficult even for the most experienced among us.


Edit:
For Tom's benefit - the MX150 is something like a GTX1030, clocked a bit higher, but with a lower power allowance making it more suitable for use in laptops.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Actually, I’ve got 4 of these units (Intel i7-8550U CPU, Intel built-in GPU, plus nVidia MX150 GPU) just chugging away for now.

They are on a clean install and are just sitting there doing that... which is the strange part.

there is two sort of MX150 , one 10W and another 25W more powerfull ^^

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