Folding Forum

I just had to rebuild one of my computers. I installed a fresh new copy of Windows 7 Professional. This computer has a GeForce 8800 Ultra. I just installed the latest driver from nVidia. The computer has a Core i7 920 with 12GB ram.

I'm folding with 7.1.52 on both CPU and GPU.

The interaction with my desktop is stop and go. Lot of lag between stuff. Typing, waiting. Clicking, waiting.

Where, in preferences or configuration, or elsewhere, can I set the GPU folding to be 'nicer' so it gives up more cycles for typical use of the computer? This is basically my main computer for email and web surfing, etc.

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Had a pretty good month in September.

Monthly Production
Month Points WUs
10.12 240,586 138
09.12 3,639,805 2,707
08.12 2,511,979 1,487
07.12 2,667,656 1,129
06.12 2,203,491 1,302
05.12 1,854,533 704
04.12 563,769 204
03.12 1,765 6

On a side note, I installed Firefox 15. When I went to folding.stanford.edu, the little image in the middle does not present me with a windows download. It also does nothing when I click on Other Platforms. Had to go to IE 9 to download 7.1.52. ... Perplexing. I have the latest Java and Flash installed.

Are you using an Aero theme? There have been reports that helps with lag.

For your Firefox problem have a look at: viewtopic.php?p=213515#p213515

I suggest that you pause the GPU slot when you are using the machine and then un-pause it when you stop.

There is other stuff you can do, such as an Aero Theme; pick the driver version for its anti-lag properties v.260.99 Seems to work better than the most modern version; Adding a second video card, seems to help, even if you fold on it. Still the pause with an un-pause seems to work the best for me.

Hmmm... Aero theme. Dunno. Just whatever is there when you do the initial install. I guess that might be Aero. Actually tho, I don't have this problem on other computers with Windows 7. I don't screw around with themes and colors and such. And when any of my machines go into screensaver... that's just a blank screen. Maybe the 8800 Ultra is showing it's age compared to my GTX 560 Ti's.

But, I thought there were tweaks that could be made to, probably more of a Linux term, make the thing 'nicer' with the cycles.

Ah, maybe the driver downgrade would work. I have had to go to older nVidia drivers in the past for other reasons. I'd prefer not to have to do any Pause if it's avoidable. (maybe that's been fixed, but I recall pausing some time ago and seeing some message that pausing didn't work and the folding just stopped. Don't recall all the details for that.)

I'll try the driver downgrade.

And Bollix, thanks for the link. I clicked on the .css link and that took me to a page of html code. But when I closed that and went directly to folding.stanford.edu, the Windows download part was there now.

Driver versions really haven't affect the lag condition. Stay with the newest version.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/enable-troubleshoot-aero-effects-windows-7/

What Can I Do If It’s Still Not Working?Windows may have issues with your video driver or your system performance is too low to support Aero. Generally, the WEI subscore for your graphics must be 3.0 or higher for Aero to work. Note that my score is 2.7 and Aero still works rather well, however, Aero Peek was disabled by default. In any case, there is an easy to use troubleshooting tool that will track down the issue or fix bugs and automatically enable Windows Aero.

Again, make sure your WEI is updated. Then click > Start and type > Aero into the > search field. From the list click > Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects. In the wizard that pops up click > Next and the tool will work its magic.

There's really no complete cure for the screen-lag introduced by the FAH GPU cores. Aero will help and may reduce it to an acceptable level, depending on your GPU and on the particular WU being folded.

Two suggestions that (at least for the moment) probably won't be useful:
1) On one of my machines I solved it by having two video cards. The screen is connected to an old GPU which does not support FAH and there's no appreciable lag. FAH runs on the other GPU.
2) Dr Pande suggested that they might reintroduce a screensaver client again. (No specific date suggested or implied.) That should suspend GPU folding whenever you're using the GPU for video so lag wouldn't be a problem.

Your CPU and OS provide the ability to switch from one task to another so quickly that you never notice a lag. GPUs do not have that ability.

P.S. Even if you fold on both video cards, having two helps with the lag with no drop in PPD.

http://blog.acsystem.sk/windows-7/how-d ... ion-in-ie9

Have you tried this? In combination with an aero theme, this completely removed the lag I had with GPU folding.

bruce wrote:2) Dr Pande suggested that they might reintroduce a screensaver client again. (No specific date suggested or implied.) That should suspend GPU folding whenever you're using the GPU for video so lag wouldn't be a problem.

No date suggested here, either but at least we know that they are actively working on it: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=22657

JonazzDJ wrote:http://blog.acsystem.sk/windows-7/how-disable-gpu-acceleration-in-ie9

Have you tried this? In combination with an aero theme, this completely removed the lag I had with GPU folding.

Yes, it has been tried and it's a good option if you only use your computer for IE. Unfortunately you also have to configure your video player, each other browser you might use, Windows, itself, etc. etc. ett. Most of them, but not all, do have a way to disable GPU-based screen optimiztions but finding the right menu option is totally non-standardized.

(Consider Windows: I have a system that gets so heavily loaded that with my browser closed, the image of my mouse moving between icons jumps enough that it's difficult just to open/close/stretch the right window.)

Over 50 years ago, users started wanting to do multiple jobs on a CPU, so hardware vendors added Priorities to the CPU hardware and OS vendor added scheduling algorithms to Operating Systems. They are now very good at this.

F@H users now wish we could have lower priority for F@H than for any other task.

Hardware vendors would need to add priorities to each shader.

Driver writers would have to expose these priorities to the OS, and optimize two characteristics (what priority does this process need and how many shaders can it use) Lower priority jobs like F@H get unused shaders.

The OS would need to provide priorities from applications that knew to set it low. (I assume that high will be the default so existing programs work)

I have no knowledge that any of this has been done for GPUs. (It works great for CPUs, as the SMP version exemplifies)

Here is a simplified lesson on Priorities: http://tanmayonrun.blogspot.com/2011/12 ... uling.html