A bit of ThreadMaster help?

Message boards : Number crunching : A bit of ThreadMaster help?

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Alan Roberts

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Message 18313 - Posted: 9 Jun 2006, 19:21:15 UTC

Hello from a new user. I've used ThreadMaster to throttle Rosetta running on older computer at home (Win2K pro) for temperature and noise control purposes.

Trying the same game on a new dual-core desktop running Windows XP Pro, 32-bit this afternoon, primarily to keep the temp low enough for the fans to throttle back. I'm not getting any control from ThreadMaster.

Does anyone know if ThreadMaster actually operates on WinXP Pro (the web site explicitly calls out Win2K and WinServer2.3K)? Any tricks beyond the documented registry entries?

Thanks,
Alan Roberts
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Message 18317 - Posted: 9 Jun 2006, 19:50:02 UTC

Greetings! Welcome to Rosetta. Can't say I've used ThreadMaster before. But on a dual core, you might achieve your objective simply by limiting BOINC to 1 CPU. This is in your General Preferences.

You might set up your dual core as your "home" location, and set it to limit to 1 CPU. And have another location that would allow both CPUs if you need to.

Since this would be basically the same as running BOINC at 50%, and all other work would essentially come out of the other half, it would probably be enough for you to "keep your cool" :)
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Message 18323 - Posted: 9 Jun 2006, 20:46:18 UTC - in response to Message 18317.  
Last modified: 9 Jun 2006, 20:49:06 UTC

>But on a dual core, you might achieve your objective simply by limiting
>BOINC to 1 CPU. This is in your General Preferences.

Thanks Feet1st (this is Alan Roberts, I'm over at the account setting for a different box).

I was running limited to one CPU, and that was keeping the fan at a tolerable level. I only had a single Rosetta task running in this mode.

Watching load in task manager, it was pretty variable (Graphic for each CPU core bouncing around in the 30-60% range ... I'm *assuming* this was happening as the threads within the process context-switched for various reasons). It certainly looked like both cores were in use for Rosetta (nothing else would have been loading either core). I was assuming threads might get scheduled onto both cores?

Switching over to use of ThreadMaster and back to two CPUs in General Preferences was my experiment at squeezing more work out of the box while maintaining a tolerable fan noise level.

FWIW, I think I've tracked down the problem in the time since my post. Based on my previous use on a uniprocessor, I had ThreadMaster set to activate when an application crossed at 95% percentage. Then my custom setting for rosetta_..._intelx86.exe would come into play as a limit. Since no other applications (read "foreground" applications) had a custom setting, they remained free to use all of the box without having to keep adding to ThreadMaster's "Exceptions" list.

While looking at Task Manager on the dual-core box, I realized that while both cores were running a rosetta...exe process, and the graphical display of CPU usage show 100% on both cores, over on the Processes tab each process was reporting at approximately 50%. I'm guessing that ThreadMaster gets the same information (perhaps out of the WMI API).

When I reset ThreadMaster to fire at a threshold percentage of 47%, and drop rosetta to 24%, I end up with two rosetta processes (5 threads each), both running pretty tightly at 23-26%, the box reporting the mid 50% and the fan speed back where it was when on single CPU.

I've got one box running with ThreadMaster throttling, an identical box that is running limited to single CPU. I'm assuming that if I compare credits earned over the weekend, it should tell me which approach gets more Rosetta work out of the box at the desired fan noise level.

Cheers,
Alan

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Message boards : Number crunching : A bit of ThreadMaster help?



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