Folding Forum

Hi !

I'm running V7.5.1 fresh install on a Windows 10 64 Dell LATITUDE 5501 laptop with an INTEL Core i7-9850H CPU.

What ever I set low or middle CPU load, the average computing load is still 50 % CPU, so the fan is continuously active and computer comes hot and Noisy.



I'm also running the same client on an old Dell Latitude E5500 - Win 7 64 - Intel Core2 Duo CPU where low CPU setting works perfectly.


1) I think there is an issue with my Core i7 CPU

2) It would be great if we could have more setting values in load setting - I mean for example 10% - 25% - 50% - 75% - 100%


Regards,
Laurent (France)

Welcome to Folding@Home!

The very limited slider options for CPUs were written when CPUs had very few threads. (F@H calls them CPUs) Your CPU has 12 threads.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 0-ghz.html

So here are some generic Instructions to set the number of CPUs you want.

In the taskbar to the lower right of the screen, you should see a F@H molecule icon, click it (you may need to click an Up Arrow to see it ^)

The second item in this menu is Advanced Control, click it

On this screen to the left is a Configure button, click it

Now you get a screen with a Slots tab, click it

On this white field should be a cpu item, click it and then click edit

By default F@H set the number of CPUs to -1 meaning let the software decide.
You can enter any number from 1 to the number of threads your CPU supports. (12 for you)
If you have GPUs, F@H reserves one CPU per GPU to feed it data across the PCIE bus. (you don't)
F@H has difficulty with large primes and their multiples number of CPUs.
7 is always large, 5 is sometimes large, and 3 is never large. Try to choose a number that is a multiple of 2 and/or 3.
2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12 are good numbers of CPUs to choose.
5. 10 may work most of the time. Other numbers will bite you

Type the number you want, and click save.

Hi !
Thanks for replying.

I already tested thoses values, but in this case, the CPU frequency increase so much and the average load remains around 50%...
I don't want to burn my computer with folding process…

I do not find any solution to decrease the load on my CPU... I think this issue is similar to a bug.

Odd, 2 threads out of 12 should be 17%, 3 out of 12 25%

Autourdupc wrote:Hi !
Thanks for replying.

I already tested thoses values, but in this case, the CPU frequency increase so much and the average load remains around 50%...
I don't want to burn my computer with folding process…

I do not find any solution to decrease the load on my CPU... I think this issue is similar to a bug.

Remove the CPU slot and save. Then create a new CPU slot with 2 threads. Sometimes the change doesn't take effect until the next work unit, hence the delete and create operation.

That only applies to increasing the CPU thread count, you can always reduce the number on the current WU. But the number of threads will never go over what was set at the time of download.

What else is running on the laptop, and what does the log show after changing the settings?

JimboPalmer wrote:Odd, 2 threads out of 12 should be 17%, 3 out of 12 25%

I've noticed win 10 task manager lies about cpu usage, on my new computer with 8 cores running cpu slot with 6 and a gpu core task manager reports 100% usage. Other monitor programs report correctly with 88% usage. No idea how task manager is counting things but it's not useful.

I set 3 CPU... It should be 25%

--> It is 37% @3,6 Ghz !




Laurent

Autourdupc wrote:I set 3 CPU... It should be 25%

--> It is 37% @3,6 Ghz !

Try right clicking the CPU usage graph and click "Change graph to" > "Logical processors"

How much CPU is being used by the FAHCore_A7 process? That is the process doing folding. Other FAH process should be using very little CPU time.

You can get a better idea of the effective CPU utilisation with a tool like HWMonitor.
The Task Manager tells me that all my cores are stuck at 100%, but HWMonitor shows that most of them actually fluctuate between 85 and 95%.
A laptop cooling pad (tablette de ventilation) might offer a good solution. How is airflow passage? Free, clean?

Windows task manager is atrocious when it comes to reporting speed and utilization. Microsoft can never make up their mind. Newer versions report percentage based on overall logical CPU cores. You will get greater percentages due to turbo boost.

Have you looked at your CPU temperatures? Many laptops are just not designed for constant high loads. My old Lenovos were fine when new, but got hotter as they accumulated dust. It's almost impossible to clean them out thoroughly - it takes a lot of disassembly (e.g., remove keyboard, battery, RAM...).

FYI, My lapteop is new… ANd cooling is very good (3 cm above the table) to get a good air flow.
Even if CPU monitor is not accurate, the fan never stops and is very Noisy, means that CPU is heating, means that used cores are very busy… So it seem that Windows monitor is not so bad.

I will do more tests tomorrow and let you know.

Regards,
Laurent.

The problem is not really the number of cores/threads used on modern intel based laptops; the core frequency will boost significantly if it finds that it has the thermal/power headroom, which high fan speeds allow for. I would rather recommend disabling the boost feature and run more threads (8 or 10) at your base clock speed of 2.59GHz.

Some ways of doing this can be found here: https://www.geeks3d.com/20170213/how-to ... -notebook/

I've personally only tried the first option (lowering "maximum processor state" in the power options), which for my i7-8750h required a value of 98% or lower for the boost to disable, but this allows me to run on 10 threads with fans and temperatures at very pleasant levels.

edit: you could also simply adjust your fan curves to a lower noise level (using either supplied software from the manufacturer or something like speedfan), which will limit the CPU to whatever speed it can run at without overheating at your preferred maximum allowed fan speed. This will make your CPU run at the limit of it's thermal design though, and while I've tested that this works on my laptop, I would not really recommend it.