Flash and video freezes when folding with GPU

[codysluder]

You guys are talking about at least 2 and probably 3 or 4 issues.
* Screen lag is a byproduct of FAH using the GPU heavily and other GPU activities having to wait in line. It may be fixed someday by improved drivers, by intentionally making FAH inefficient, or by the screensaver hiding the problem.
* Flash+FF has nothing to do with FAH except if it's the screen lag problem.
* System "freeze" or "hang" isn't the same as "screen lag." How long can the screen lag before you call it a freeze?

[stev]

@Codysluder

Thanks for the heads up on the 2 or 3 issues.

My issue is that the GPU client takes up so much processing power, that I need to pause the F@H. If I run only the CPU SMP, there is no lag. I would like to run both the SMP and GPU combined all the time without the GPU lagging the system. There is no GPU slider (yet?) for F@H. Is there a way to trim back the GPU F@H to allow the lag or 3-5 second freeze and unfreeze cycles with the computer to go away?

[P5-133XL]

Currently no options like that exist. Aero seems to help; The driver version matters with some being better with lag than others; Dual GPU's seems to help.

[bruce]

@Codysluder

Thanks for the heads up on the 2 or 3 issues.

My issue is that the GPU client takes up so much processing power, that I need to pause the F@H. If I run only the CPU SMP, there is no lag. I would like to run both the SMP and GPU combined all the time without the GPU lagging the system. There is no GPU slider (yet?) for F@H. Is there a way to trim back the GPU F@H to allow the lag or 3-5 second freeze and unfreeze cycles with the computer to go away?

Development plans to reintroduce the slider though there is no estimate for when that might happen. Please don't expect miracles, however.

The FahCore divides up the processing into compute blocks (mini-jobs) for the GPU to process. The duration of those blocks depends on several factors including which GPU you happen to have. Unlike your Operating System, GPUs have no inherent method of interrupting a block nor a priority scheme which can designate work from one source to take priority over work from another source. Capabilities like that may someday be added by AMD/NV/Intel/etc. but they're not available today so FAH can't use them.

To be efficient, the FahCore must plan ahead by transferring data for one block while working on other blocks rather than waiting for the (SLOW) pci-e to transfer the data while the GPU is idle. In other words, an efficient design makes inserting work from another source rather difficult. Adding the GPU slider will help, of course, but you'll still have to wait for the appropriate opportunity to insert your processing into the First-Come-First-Served sequence.

There has been talk of reintroducing a screen-saver. This is probably the only real alternative because the inherent pauses won't happen when you're trying to do something else by automating the FAH to pause when you're watching a video (etc.). Nevertheless, I'd like to see the ability to automatically pause GPU folding while certain programs are running.

[stev]

My computer is running the Quadro 4000 using the Fermi core. If the F@H GPU is not paused, my system is nearly useless to use to do even email or open a simple PDF file. The computer is a 12-core CPU system with only 4-cores running SMP. To bad I can't ask the F@H to allow only a certain amount of Cuda cores to be used and the rest I could use.

Other than a screen saver, can the F@H client allow only the GPU to run between X-time start and X-time end while allowing the CPU to keep crunching? This way during the day, the GPU is off while the CPUs keep running, then when I'm not busy with it later in the day, the GPU and CPUs can crunch all they like. Right now, pause pauses both the GPU and the CPUs. That doesn't help since I have so much CPU power.

[bollix47]

You can right click on the GPU slot and just pause it without pausing the CPU slot.

[Joe_H]

You do need to be in either Advanced or Expert mode of FAHControl though to get the ability to select individual slots and pause or fold them.

[Humanoid1]

There are currently compatibility issues with Flash 11.3 and FireFox

I personally had is so bad that 90% of flash videos would crash out, was getting really frustrating.
I Followed info on this:

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/flash-113-crashes

page.

I Downgraded to Flash 10.3 and no more crashes

Folding@home had no relation to my crashes, but I find that most flash videos like youtube and some sites autoplay videos like the www.tomshardware.com one with the two presenters - all reduce my 5850's Clock rate down to 400.

To Get speed back up I need to close the Tab, browser or move to a new page with no active flash video.
Or... (as I usually have a Lot of tabs open) use Task Manager to the "plugin-container.exe" process allowing the same page to remain open - obviously crashes all open Flash adds etc in all tabs

(or with Flash 11.3 running ok you can close individual Flash processes a little more surgically)

[bollix47]

FWIW

The current version of flash that I have running is 11.4.402.278. I use Firefox(15.0.1) and have had no problems so far.

[Humanoid1]

might give that a try - had to stop it auto updating to stay a version behind...

But works fine with this version for all but one random site I have been to so far.
Thanks too