Fiddling around while waiting for Frances to make landfall again, I\'ve notice different video cards make a world of difference in BOINC performance under Windows.

Watching Processes in the task manager, I noted the following.

One my machine with a Radeon 8500 in the AGP slot when graphics are opened, cpu % are evenly split between hadsm3um_4.03_w and hadsm3_4.03_win -- 50/50. Toggle the starfield off (0 [zero]) and hadsm3um_4.03_w jumps back to 99% most of the time with the graphic grabbing 2-5% on ocassion. That\'s displaying temp with the world rotating.

On another machine with a MSI P4MAM-V only the onboard video adapter is used. Under the same conditions (temp display and rotating) the graphics grabs 99% of the CPU time (regardless of stars on/off) killing the crunching until closed.

On both units, if I switch to cloud cover and snow display the graphic program grabs the processor 99%.

An interesting side note, when displaying cloud cover, the graphics program generates page faults like mad... between 8 and 10 thousand a second. Displaying temp, no page faults are generated.

What\'s your experience?

No effect on the p4 3.0 still crunching at 99
P4 3.0 512cache
P4 1.8 512cache
Gainward FX5900u 256
Visiontek gf4 4600 128
160 gig
20 gig
Dx9b
1gig pc3200
1gig pc2100
on dsl
XP pro
BOINC Ver 4.05
M7 <b>CPDN@h, Berkeley's Staff, Friends Club ©</b>

&gt;
&gt;
&gt;
&gt; What's your experience?
&gt;
&gt;

EXACTLY like yours. Sub par (or outdated) graphics hardware virtually requires a full disabling of the screensaver in order to crunch anything.

4 systems, all Win2K-Pro, all running AV, all running DX9b

The one with a Geforce5700 never shows anything but 0% for the graphic load. Athlon 2200 "equivalent" ;-) on Asus Nforce2 mobo
2x256MB

The other Athlon (let's call it a 2400) uses an Abit Nforce2 Board also with 512MB, however uses the integrated GF4-MX graphics. This flops between 3 to 6% usage but NEVER reaches zero.

The other 2 are a 1.4 Tualatin and an 800MHz Coppermine P3 that runs at 1066. (don't ask me how - miracle luck of the draw). Both of these COMPLETELY bog down (100% cpu going to graphics), to the point where even the image is extremly slow to refresh.

I have many cards here. I feel a task upon me. I'm gonna throw every AGP card I have into the Coppermine and see what difference it makes, as well as what the cutoff seems to be. Obviously I don't have every current card, or even most of them, but I'm odd and this is fun to me. :-)

Also 3 new athlon setups arrived today. hee-hee

Ah to have $ for more systems!!!

Been think about BIOS and the AGP memory "Hole" setting porbably won't help but if mismatched with video hardware could be slowing things down. Guess if we want to actually watch the graphics, we better get the best above board video hardware we can afford.

&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt; What's your experience?
&gt; &gt;
&gt; &gt;
&gt;
&gt; EXACTLY like yours. Sub par (or outdated) graphics hardware virtually requires
&gt; a full disabling of the screensaver in order to crunch anything.
&gt;
&gt; 4 systems, all Win2K-Pro, all running AV, all running DX9b
&gt;
&gt; The one with a Geforce5700 never shows anything but 0% for the graphic load.
&gt; Athlon 2200 "equivalent" ;-) on Asus Nforce2 mobo
&gt; 2x256MB
&gt;
&gt; The other Athlon (let's call it a 2400) uses an Abit Nforce2 Board also with
&gt; 512MB, however uses the integrated GF4-MX graphics. This flops between 3 to 6%
&gt; usage but NEVER reaches zero.
&gt;
&gt; The other 2 are a 1.4 Tualatin and an 800MHz Coppermine P3 that runs at 1066.
&gt; (don't ask me how - miracle luck of the draw). Both of these COMPLETELY bog
&gt; down (100% cpu going to graphics), to the point where even the image is
&gt; extremly slow to refresh.
&gt;
&gt; I have many cards here. I feel a task upon me. I'm gonna throw every AGP card
&gt; I have into the Coppermine and see what difference it makes, as well as what
&gt; the cutoff seems to be. Obviously I don't have every current card, or even
&gt; most of them, but I'm odd and this is fun to me. :-)
&gt;
&gt; Also 3 new athlon setups arrived today. hee-hee
&gt;
&gt;

&gt; Ah to have $ for more systems!!!
&gt;
&gt; Been think about BIOS and the AGP memory "Hole" setting porbably won't help
&gt; but if mismatched with video hardware could be slowing things down. Guess if
&gt; we want to actually watch the graphics, we better get the best above board
&gt; video hardware we can afford.
&gt;

While I'm not an expert at such things, it doesn't seem like CPDN's Graphics are so complex as to require that much GPU horsepower. Am I way off in thinking this?

I'll fool with BIOS settings on various cards too and see what happens. Good idea...

what seems to take all the CPU/GPU time is the render 2d "mipmap" that is done for each level of the view, so especially on the "spheres" for the snow &amp; clouds. Also BOINC does a 30 frames-per-second refresh rate which is probably overkill (so 30 times a second it is rendering the "new" mipmap for each layer etc). The actual computations, i.e. 7008 grid points and scaling etc doesn't seem to take as much time.

EDIT&gt;

No effect on the p4 3.0 still crunching at 99 running small graphics...
&gt; P4 3.0 512cache
&gt; P4 1.8 512cache
&gt; Gainward FX5900u 256
&gt; Visiontek gf4 4600 128
&gt; 160 gig
&gt; 20 gig
&gt; Dx9b
&gt; 1gig pc3200
&gt; 1gig pc2100
&gt; on dsl
&gt; XP pro
&gt; BOINC Ver 4.05
&gt; M7 <b>CPDN@h, Berkeley's Staff, Friends Club ©</b>
&gt;

Rechecked my system with the graphics at full screen and it was a 50 50 split
When Asking for help, please post the following;
Type of PC
How much memory
Type of Operating System
Type of connection to Internet
Projects You are Running
Version of BOINC

M7 <b>CPDN@h, Berkeley's Staff, Friends Club ©</b>

Carl,

In the SETI account xml file their graphics program was designed to take some interesting parameters:

max fps 30 /max fps
max cpu 50 /max cup
and
starfield size 2000
starfield speed 40

Of couse, adding the ability to set the fps and cpu % would mean rebuilding the CPDN graphics code. Not a high priority at this time, but it would be nice as a custom option for a client to maximize performance.

-P



&gt; what seems to take all the CPU/GPU time is the render 2d "mipmap" that is done
&gt; for each level of the view, so especially on the "spheres" for the snow &amp;
&gt; clouds. Also BOINC does a 30 frames-per-second refresh rate which is probably
&gt; overkill (so 30 times a second it is rendering the "new" mipmap for each layer
&gt; etc). The actual computations, i.e. 7008 grid points and scaling etc doesn't
&gt; seem to take as much time.
&gt;
&gt;
&gt;