A little folding trouble

[theMan]

So, i just joined the f@h team last week, and things have been going great. After i finished a couple work units, I checked the box for the >5mb work units.

I now have this project 2409, which is 250 frames and for the first 25, was going at 9 minutes per frame. Then, today, when I looked at it, I was getting 45 minutes to an hour per frame. I have nothing running in the background, and the program is getting 99% of my cpu usage.

is this just a typical thing, or what? hope my question isn't too stupid....

 

[natethegreat]

No not a stupid question at all. When I usually notice a wu taking more time than normal is around the last 10 or so frames, I usually don't notice frametimes change that much otherwise.

Project 2409 is a 600 point wu wich can use a lot of resources and take a few days to finish. My XP 3200+ takes around 45-50 min/frame on a 600 pointer but it looks like your rig is quite a bit faster than that. one core of my X2 @ 2.6 is running a 600 pointer at 28min/frame.

Maybe your cruncher is just gnawing on an extra chewy part of a wu...

 

[Insidious]

mmmmmmm.... Grissel

 

[natethegreat]

This is what my crunchers are donig after a night of folding: FAHLogstats

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Just another thought: was there a crash or hard boot or any other type of non-normal shutdown in the interim? If so, and you haven't used the -forceasm flag, then your CPU optimizations might be disabled. Check your FAHlog.txt file and make sure that it indicates "Assembly optimizations on if available". If not, then either reboot normally or stop and restart the F@H service manually.

 

[GLeeM]

Just to clear up a little confusion.

theman is I think using the GUI client which shows "frames".

The console client shows percent done on most WUs. natethegreat is referring to percent done with his numbers.

So there must be two and a half "frames" in each percent done on 2409 WUs.

My first thought as to the problem is just what Hurricane Andrew suggested.

But if you just looked at it and didn't wait for another frame to finish before reporting - could it be that your antivirus (or another program) just finished doing something before looked for background tasks running?

 

[theMan]

nothing has been running for the entire time the WU has been running. and, I have tried closing the program, and restarting. that didn't do anything. then, i added the forceasm flag, and it started running at 10 minutes per frame, but then after a few minutes, went back to 45 minutes.

looking at the log, i found that on one day, it says "Assembly optimizations on if available" and then the next day, where i was having the most problems, it says: "User disabled assembly optimizations" But, then after I added the -forceasm flag, it says: "Assembly optimizations manually forced on"

so, how do i get it to just say "Assembly optimizations on if available" (without using the forceasm flag) ??

 

[chris huff]

I asked this question in another thread, but thought I'd ask here.

I have the AOL anti-virus from Kaspersky. I have used the GUI version of F@H.

AVS seems to really be interfering wit F@H. I've noticed that if I pause the protection, I can get a lot more work done. Also, the AVS scans now seem to take all day long.

Any ideas?

Any setting that I can change to allow them to work together?

Should I use the consol version?

thanks,
Chris

 

[theMan]

ok, i found a checkbox in configure that says "disable highly optimized assembly code" it was checked. i unchecked it, and restarted the program. i will see in a few minutes how fast it is going.

 

[theMan]

ok, well that must have been the problem, because now i am getting 12 minutes. but, is there a reason why -forceasm doesnt work and just unchecking that box does?

 

[GLeeM]

Originally posted by: chris huff
I asked this question in another thread, but thought I'd ask here.

I have the AOL anti-virus from Kaspersky. I have used the GUI version of F@H.

AVS seems to really be interfering wit F@H. I've noticed that if I pause the protection, I can get a lot more work done. Also, the AVS scans now seem to take all day long.

Any ideas?

Any setting that I can change to allow them to work together?

Should I use the consol version?

thanks,
Chris

Is there a way to tell your AV that F@H is "OK" and to ignore F@H?

 

[GLeeM]

Originally posted by: theman
but, is there a reason why -forceasm doesnt work and just unchecking that box does?

Not sure why the box is even needed, maybe for troubleshooting.

The box and the flag were sending conflicting messages to the client.

 

[theMan]

alright, well, thanks everybody. its now below 10 minutes per frame. it seems like this program is just too sensitive to any changes made or other programs running.

 

[GLeeM]

Originally posted by: theman
alright, well, thanks everybody. its now below 10 minutes per frame. it seems like this program is just too sensitive to any changes made or other programs running.

Most good DC programs are designed to only use your "idle" CPU time. They should back off whenever you (or a program you have set to run automatically) need to use your computer.

And yes, the client will usually do what you tell it to. If you change a setting telling it to not use optimizations...

The code in the cores is very optimized assembly code to make full use of your CPU to advance the science faster.