The FAH software uses processing power at the wrong times

[Paul]

Hello,
I have a slight problem with the FAH software. It's becoming so irritating for me that I may have to uninstall it

I have FAH set to the lowest priority, and when my computer is idle, I can see that it makes very good use of all my processing power, as expected. I noticed it only uses a single core and doesn't take advantage of duo cores.

However, I do quite a bit of converting videos to h264 formats since I am limited on hard disk space. I've noticed that when I run the conversion software while FAH is running, it still uses about 25 percent of my processing power, where as usually it would use 50 percent, or rather, one of the cores.

When I am trying to do CPU intensive tasks, I need all the power available, so this usually ends up with me having to pause FAH by hand every time. Sometimes pause just does nothing and I end up closing the program.

I tried to use the screen saver thing, but it appears not to take notice of how idle the computer is. The screen saver suddenly appears on the screen when I am busy as I, for example, set up the video conversion process.

Is there any way to make the program more sensitive to when the computer is idle?

[uncle fuzzy]

Did you change the setting on core priority, or did you accept the default idle? On default, FAH should completely get out of your way. If you changed it to low, FAH will always hold on to some of the core.

Which client are you running? A dual core will run 2 copies of the CPU client.

On further reading of your post, change from the 5.03 GUI client to the 5.04 console client and run it as a service.

[Paul]

In the Folding@Home control panel, I have the "Core Priority" set to "Lowest possible (recommended)". I can't see anything about idle? 2 copies of the CPU client?

EDIT: Ok

[uncle fuzzy]

I only ran one WU with the 5.03, so I have to think back really hard. The 5.04, and v6 beta, console clients have idle selected as the default core priority setting. Many people have selected low, thinking it was "lower". They had problems.

Is there any setting below the one you chose? Low means the client will always demand some of the core. Idle will only take cycles no other program wants. You may want to change after your current WU. I know there is a procedure out there for changing from 5.03 to 5.04 in the middle of a WU, but I'm not real good on searching the wiki (since there is no longer a link at the top of the page).

One client for each core, each in their own folder, cannot use 2 v5.03s, switch to a couple 5.04s and have fun.

[Paul]

ok cool. How do I set the two 5.04 console clients as services? And I'm not worried about being in a team or having a special name, so all I need to do is just executed the files right?

I wonder if my university has a team. I might join that later if it does.

[uncle fuzzy]

Make 2 folders, one for each core. Download the 5.04 client to one of the folders, copy it to the other. Double click the executable. It will start the configuration process. About the fourth question will be "Do you want to start this as a service"? Default is [n]no[/b], change it to yes. Choose change advanced options. Leave core priority at idle. Make sure you give each core it's own machine ID.

To enable you to easily control it, create a shortcut to sevices.msc. This will let you start, pause, or stop the client. The other choice is to have to do Start>Run>services.msc to open it every time you want to control a client.

[sortofageek]

To be safe when running two as a service or when installing a console client if the GUI has ever been installed on that computer, stop the clients after configuring and navigate to the registry entry for each service. Add the -local switch at the end of the command line to tell the service to use the correct folder for each.

[Paul]

Thank you very much for your help

[uncle fuzzy]

Da nada. Fold, my little friend. Fold.

This will also hide the client from view. To monitor progress, you can read the FAHlog.txt file or the unitinfo.txt files in the folding folder, or install a 3rd-party program, like FahMon.

[Paul]

Poop! I ran both before I saw that message and it deleted the work unit.

Oh, no configuration process started. It just seemed to starting folding from where the graphical client had been stopped! Very clever

I noticed a nice "-configonly" command line switch

[sortofageek]

Yes, -configonly is very handy in a case like this, lets you get it all right before you start folding.

[bruce]

Is there any setting below the one you chose? Low means the client will always demand some of the core. Idle will only take cycles no other program wants.

Not quite, although it's not exactly the same in Windows as in Linux.

Both will demand all of the resources that are not used by somebody else. If some other task is also at Low, then one of two things can happen.
A) If FAH is also at Low, they'll share somewhat equally, depending on how often the other task does I/O.
B) If FAH is at Idle, the task running at Low should get everything it wants before FAH gets any (though it's not quite as absolute as my statement implies)

Obviously there may also be another task running at Idle, but I won't go into that because the situation is essentially reversed. Two tasks at the same priority have to figure out how to share. Two tasks at different priorities will alway run the higher priority until it has to wait for something to happen, then the other one can run.

[Paul]

*blush* It seems I was running the conveter in idle mode as well. It doesn't make too much of a difference running it in normal mode so I'll still have to stop it, but at least it is easier now. I might be able to get the program to stop the services when it runs and starts them again when finished.

I am glad to see FAH taking advantage of both cores

Thank you for your help

[uncle fuzzy]

You could always try bumping up the core priority on your video program. FAH would still fold on the idle cycles.

[7im]

While the CPU fah client will also give CPU cycles to programs with higher priority, fah might not give up the RAM it is using. Plan accordingly to have enough system RAM for all applications that you want to run concurrently.