FaH Newbee Q:How may I increase CPU usage

[Brian_S_Wilson]

I'm using FaH 7.6.13 on a windows 10 Xenon 8 core system, 16 GB primary memory and multiple SSD drives with plenty of free space. Options are /TP /nologo /EHa /wd4297 /wd4103 /0x /MT, Bits 32. When I first installed FaH it started with one GPU and one CPU slot. Task manager showed very low system usage even though everything was set at at full. I couldn't find any way to increase CPU usage so I settled for increasing the number of CPU slots until system usage rose above 90%.

Is there a way to increase the CPU usage if I reduce the number of CPU slots? How would I adjust this feature for better performance in FaH?

[bruce]

Without a copy of FAH's log (see below) we can only guess.

Some assigned projects are able to use upwards of 90% of an 8-core Xenon and others may be more limited. Also, your CPU may be thermally limiting itself to protect it from overheating. Have you monitored the CPU temperature? Do you need a better cooling subsystem to dissipate the heat?

According to https://apps.foldingathome.org/cpu, you have been processing on Windows using one NVidia GPU and one or more CPU slots. Reducing the number of CPU cores isn't likely to be beneficial, although it POSSIBLE that modifying your system to use one 3- and one 4-core slot instead of one 6-core slot would increase your CPU utilization by altering the assignments sent to you. As long as you have a supported GPU, one CPU thread is going to be allocated to supporting the GPU, so the total available for CPU processing will be based on 7 computing threads which generally will be reduced to 6 due to a limitation of the FAHCore.

(Your macOSX has also contributed. Let's talk about it later.)

[JimboPalmer]

[I am probably off base, but I never let that stop me before]
Traditionally, F@H has had a bug that makes the very first Work Unit on any PC only use one CPU thread. Starting with the second CPU WU, it would use more. (bruce hints 6 in your setup)

So far as I know, this is still a current bug and there is no real solution but wait for the second Core_a7 WU.

[bruce]

I think the solution is (A) fix the but in the client and (B) perhaps, unhook the internet cable ... wait for FAH to try to download a WU ... Set the CPU count ... let FAHClient download the first WU.

I've never tested method B, but I think that's all that Dev needs to change to fix A.

[PantherX]

I have used method B and it works. Of course, Web Control might not load properly as it can't get data from the internet but since I use Advanced Control (AKA FAHControl), it isn't a huge issue for me.