Folding Forum

Q9550, 8 GB, GTX260 (181.20), WinXP Pro SP2

tried to play Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Las Vegas 2 while running a GPU and Windows SMP 6.23bR1 client. End result: BSOD.

Even with both clients set to "idle" priority.

Rule of thumb: don't fold and game at the same time.

I was getting similar issue, there are two ways (at least for me) to game and gpu fold at the same time. a) start the game locked to the same core as the gpu fahcore is locked to (which is kinda lame but it doesnt matter with older games that wont run on multiple cores anyway). b) avoid changing resolution and refresh rate of the screen. (in other words, keep the ingame resolution and refresh rate the same as when in desktop. Lame too but w/e, im not a demanding gamer )

^w^ing wrote:I was getting similar issue, there are two ways (at least for me) to game and gpu fold at the same time. a) start the game locked to the same core as the gpu fahcore is locked to (which is kinda lame but it doesnt matter with older games that wont run on multiple cores anyway). b) avoid changing resolution and refresh rate of the screen. (in other words, keep the ingame resolution and refresh rate the same as when in desktop. Lame too but w/e, im not a demanding gamer )

I'm only using a single GTX260 (I think it only has one GPU on it). I don't know. I'm really not much of a gamer, and it's only been very recently that I started getting back into it every so slightly/slowly.

But for what's suppose to be "idle" priority...hmmm...the resulting behavior seems to show that it's not.

Las Vegas 2 starts full screened automatically. Still, I don't think that F@H is supposed to be so intrusive that it would cause a BSOD (since the game certainly doesn't cause it by itself, and F@H doesn't cause it by itself either.)

Which would leave me to think that either you have to CTRL+C out of the client(s) before starting (safer), or that you really can't game with the client(s) running.

alpha754293 wrote: I'm only using a single GTX260 (I think it only has one GPU on it). I don't know. I'm really not much of a gamer, and it's only been very recently that I started getting back into it every so slightly/slowly.

But for what's suppose to be "idle" priority...hmmm...the resulting behavior seems to show that it's not.

Las Vegas 2 starts full screened automatically. Still, I don't think that F@H is supposed to be so intrusive that it would cause a BSOD (since the game certainly doesn't cause it by itself, and F@H doesn't cause it by itself either.)

Which would leave me to think that either you have to CTRL+C out of the client(s) before starting (safer), or that you really can't game with the client(s) running.

Well, Im using an 8800GTS which too have only one gpu core. What i meant was locking the game process and the fahcore_11 process (which feeds the gpu) to one cpu core. By default (if you didnt change the NV_FAH_CPU_AFFINITY enviromental variable), fahcore 11 is locked to the "last" core (core 1 on dual core, core 3 on quad core), so the simplest way is to set explorer.exe's affinity to that last core and launch the game.

The idle priority actually works, but it works in the way that the actual process, which runs on the cpu really has that priority, problem is on the gpu itself (most likely just in how the drivers arrange what/how/when to do things), where that kind of scheduled priority system doesnt work. So in the end, yes, the idle priority isnt really idle. As another result of that, it always eats some of the game's fps.

I didnt mean full screen, that doesnt really matter, what matters is as said, avoiding the actual switches between different resolutions and refresh rates of the screen, that almost always cause an BSOD (unless im lucky enough and windows scheduler actually managed the two process affinities as i said earlier without me doing it manually).

Now, while things are how they are, the only really safe way to game is to shut down the client. These "workarounds" work for me with all games I tried, but then again, I practically only play UT2004 which isnt so demanding for today's hardware...

^w^ing wrote:

alpha754293 wrote: I'm only using a single GTX260 (I think it only has one GPU on it). I don't know. I'm really not much of a gamer, and it's only been very recently that I started getting back into it every so slightly/slowly.

But for what's suppose to be "idle" priority...hmmm...the resulting behavior seems to show that it's not.

Las Vegas 2 starts full screened automatically. Still, I don't think that F@H is supposed to be so intrusive that it would cause a BSOD (since the game certainly doesn't cause it by itself, and F@H doesn't cause it by itself either.)

Which would leave me to think that either you have to CTRL+C out of the client(s) before starting (safer), or that you really can't game with the client(s) running.

Well, Im using an 8800GTS which too have only one gpu core. What i meant was locking the game process and the fahcore_11 process (which feeds the gpu) to one cpu core. By default (if you didnt change the NV_FAH_CPU_AFFINITY enviromental variable), fahcore 11 is locked to the "last" core (core 1 on dual core, core 3 on quad core), so the simplest way is to set explorer.exe's affinity to that last core and launch the game.

The idle priority actually works, but it works in the way that the actual process, which runs on the cpu really has that priority, problem is on the gpu itself (most likely just in how the drivers arrange what/how/when to do things), where that kind of scheduled priority system doesnt work. So in the end, yes, the idle priority isnt really idle. As another result of that, it always eats some of the game's fps.

I didnt mean full screen, that doesnt really matter, what matters is as said, avoiding the actual switches between different resolutions and refresh rates of the screen, that almost always cause an BSOD (unless im lucky enough and windows scheduler actually managed the two process affinities as i said earlier without me doing it manually).

Now, while things are how they are, the only really safe way to game is to shut down the client. These "workarounds" work for me with all games I tried, but then again, I practically only play UT2004 which isnt so demanding for today's hardware...

hmmm...interesting tips/pointers. I'll have to keep these in mind. Thanks.

couldnt you just run the client on a lower priority than the game?

I get the same sometimes, but with UrbanTerror Mod (Quake3). It only happens sometimes, and other times i can play with a diminished FPS.

But as a rule i always try to switch off GPU prior to gaming.

As for setting affinity i usually run GPU on core two of my dual core (using taskset). Leaving core one for everything else.

spazzychalk wrote:couldnt you just run the client on a lower priority than the game?

If you'r somehow able to manage priorities on the gpu side, then yes that would work. afaik thats not possible.

v00d00 wrote: ... As for setting affinity i usually run GPU on core two of my dual core (using taskset). Leaving core one for everything else.

For me, applications with affinity set to different core than which the fahcore 11 is locked to tends to lag terribly, in case of games, they go BSOD. Running these applications on the same core keeps me unlagged, plus with current gpu drivers, folding isnt slowed down at all.

btw did you two actually read what was said

It's not the GPU client, its the SMP client that is messing you up, I have the same problem. I can game fine with the GPU client open, it just doesn't do all the work it normally would, but my computer locks up if I have an SMP client open and try to run a game.

hm, I dont know about alpha754293, but I do not run the SMP client atm. To be precise, I did, and im gonna, but it wasnt a factor in this issue, everything behaved the same with/without the SMP client.

I still think that the simple way to solve it is don't run the F@H client when gaming.

v00d00 wrote: ... As for setting affinity i usually run GPU on core two of my dual core (using taskset). Leaving core one for everything else.

For me, applications with affinity set to different core than which the fahcore 11 is locked to tends to lag terribly, in case of games, they go BSOD. Running these applications on the same core keeps me unlagged, plus with current gpu drivers, folding isnt slowed down at all.

btw did you two actually read what was said [/quote]

Sorry, im not a windows user, im running GPU on Linux.

Also this only occurs on certain workunits, certain others dont seem to fill the gfx memory to the point where it dumps.

And yes i read what you said. I manually locked mine to core 2 so i could still use the machine without lagging X out. We could go into the reason why, but it would be irrelevant since you guys are mainly on about windows i think.

This is not a new topic. There have been a number of issues reported when trying to fold and game at the same time. The guys from both ATI and nVidia have looked into some issues but I know that many have not be solved. You're testing combinations that probably still contain bugs so try it at your own risk. Someday it might be possible, but probably not soon.

You shouldn't have to bind the GPU core to one of the CPU cores.

I'm running it on my GTX260 on Q9550 and I was told that if the nVidia driver is < 180.60, then it tends to show that the one of my CPU cores has 100% utilization.

After updating it to the latest driver, it doesn't do that anymore.

Of course you shouldnt have to bind the gpu core to one cpu core, its just how it works the best atm. And even with the new drivers that drop the cpu utilization, all what i wrote still applies.