Just installed FoH - It runs at 100% CPU continually

Hi,

Just installed FoH and joined team 32 as laxin213. Briefly used foh 2 years ago on another rig - first time on this machine. When I run the client on my new watercooled rig (specs in sig), I peg at 100% cpu continuously. I have not overclocked the machine yet at all. Its only been built for less than a week. Its really bogging the system down. At install I checked the box to only run at idle. Is FoH supposed to run like this and is there anything I can do to change that if so? In the website it mentions running in the background taking up only idle resources.

I read the sticky on this I'll try to answer these.

1. All clients should be run with the -verbosity 9 flag in extra parameters. I don't know how to do that
2. Machine Specs - In sig

a. CPU @ GHz (Intel core i7 Sandy bridge 2600k @ 3.4) not overclocked
b. GPU(s) @ core/shaders/memory, what you set and what they're running as reported by a monitoring app like GPU-Z or Afterburner. screenshot below

3. Software 7.1.52

a. OS and Version win 7 64 bit all updates
b. GPU driver version 301.42

4. The log at the start of the client including the banner. I don't know how to do that

thats what it does it uses your cpu power to compute

i didnt know that it used both cpu and gpu with one client though. idk lol

well, here I go again (and again - saved the Word Doc this time ^^), just made a Really nice reply for you, clicked the Preview Post button and PC crashed, FireFox saved nothing as was between pages and even a backup open Word doc did not recover... Thought I was safe...

Something keeps setting my 5850 GFx cards voltage from 1.087 to 1.65v
most people do not like to go as high as 1.2 long term (I try to stay below 1.2v for my OC's) lol
suspect it is related to that ^

1st time it did that the other day I was not expecting it to survive...


************************** Here again :

folding@home uses a Low priority to utilise unused CPU time on your PC in a way that should run seamlessly in the background - running in this way it "sort of" takes the place of the System Idle process, but your CPUs will be running at 100% running the folding computations

By default folding@home sets work for all your available CPU cores (inc Virtual ones). Your Hyperthreaded cores though do not have their own Floating Point registers and rely on your Physical Cores to do that part of their share of the workload - so slowing down expected WU (Work Unit) progress. Combine that folding@home is heavily impacted (produced PPD (Points Per Day)) by other processes running on your PC if Max Cores are set AND also that you get an exponential PPD reward for Fast returns above and beyond their baseline test systems capabilities - then this leads to a PC in regular use (say 15% + of its CPU time) producing lower than expected PPD.

If you are getting a slight lag in your use of the PC you can try doing one of the following in FAHControl:

select Expert from the DropDown
click Configure
select the Advanced tab
adjust the Percent CPU usage slider
click Save

This setting however Only affects one CPU Core, but maybe enough to eliminate any noticeable UI lag

OR
(if you use your PC more than very lightly)

select Expert from the DropDown
click Configure
select the Slots tab
select smp and click Edit
change the SMP CPUs from the default of -1 to 6
---(you are best advised to avoid odd Prime numbers as some SMP Work Units have issues with that)
click OK
Click Save
now to make the changes take effect:
click the Pause button and wait for the Status to change to Paused
then click Fold

All done. Due to the characteristics of folding@home and HyperThreaded cores, reducing the number of SMP Core Work Units assigned to your PC will possibly not impact your PPD negatively. If you use your PC here and there during the day for periods using up 15% + CPU time, you could even increase your PPD by doing this

right... now to find out what is causing that Scary voltage change, which sometimes crashes my PC, on my 5850

THe lag the op is experiencing is unrelated to the cpu client. It's caused by the gpu drivers. For the last year, nVidia drivers have been a lottery, some working well, some very laggy. This startd happening with drivers after 260.xx. Pause GPU folding and the lag should go away. Often enabling aero cures the gpu lag problem.

Thanks for the replies. I plan to mess with aero and see if that helps before I thinker with F@H

I found a good link here on aero teaking in win7. I'll try that this weekend... Thanks again.

aha,

Good to know, sounds like what was causing a friends problems also then.

Certainly on my CPU (6cores / 12threads) reducing the number of SMP Cores by 2 had no negative PPD impact + would still also stop daily PC use having such an impact on PPD also - even without running an AMD based GFx card (needs more CPU time than NVidia GFx cards so is the main reason people reduce SMP cores)

I hear quite a few saying the same of 4core / 8threaded CPU's too, but have not personal experience yet there

Anyways, hope it smooths up for you one way or the other laxin213

Just an update - here's what I've tried so far in this order:

1. Tried the aero troubleshooting that I linked above first. Rebooted the PC and still the same lag - its like the machine is a couple seconds behind any input from the keyboard or mouse. Just laggy. No noticeable change.

2. Totally uninstalled the nvida 301.42 drivers for the GTX570 that I have. This is my primary gaming and desktop rig, and I wanted to use it for folding also. totally wiped them out and went into the various nvdia folders and removed any remnats, along with using cc cleaner to clear up any old parts of the nvida software. rebooted the machine and re-installed the drivers from a fresh download off nvida's website. No noticeable change.

3. I also took Humanoid1's advice above and tried this:
elect Expert from the DropDown
click Configure
select the Slots tab
select smp and click Edit
change the SMP CPUs from the default of -1 to 6
---(you are best advised to avoid odd Prime numbers as some SMP Work Units have issues with that)
click OK
Click Save
now to make the changes take effect:
click the Pause button and wait for the Status to change to Paused
then click Fold

No noticeable change.

Any other ideas or do I need to get a dedicated folder or as ChasR mentioned the way it is with my drivers for now...

Did you pause the gpu? Lag isn't generally caused by the cpu client, unless you run out of memory and with 16GB that's not happening to you. I've run FAH on literally hundreds of cpus without lag issues except those related to memory contention on gaming rigs and some older machines running 512 MB of ram.

GPUs are another matter, especially on gaming rigs. I've generally always had to pause the gpu while gaming. If 301.42 are laggy drivers, doing a clean reinstall of them won't make any difference. Install different drivers, either a later beta or an earlier version.