I have an Geforce 9300M GS. (new Laptop)

I startet the CUDA things and it worked good for several days. There was a little impact on the speed of the Windows GUI build up - it was a tiny bit slower, but nothing to worry, I even watched HD without any problem with GPU/CUDA working.

But now I got new WUs and this and the last one (starting with 20no08ad.11660.) slows down the laptop immense. Everything feels like glued down. Icons, website parts - they all appear one by one. And watching video is not possible.

Is that more or less normal? Is my 9300 too "small" (the WU seem to be bigger, so perhaps more data at the same time?) or what is happening?

Is there a way to stop CUDA for single WUs?

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Hello there.

You can stop single WUs by stopping or aborting them in the BOINC-Manager. But recently I discoveres the same problems, that you have. I use WinVista and the windows take ages to build up. For instance applications written for .NET take over a minute to load.

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On my Vista Quad processor system, I've noticed similar slow down when running 1 x CUDA WU and 1 to 3 AP WUs.
Strangely the number of AP WU's running doesn't seem to have much influence.

Using Windows Task Manager, the "Priority" for the seti processes is shown as "Low" for the AP WUs but "Normal" for the CUDA WU.

(As an aside this doesn't seem to change when BOINC says it is running a CUDA WU at "High Priority").

When I've changed the CUDA WU process to a "Low" priority all the delays and slow running have gone.

Although the CUDA WU is using little CPU, it does use a lot of store -
I'm on thin ice here, but it could be that the priority setting influences not just the CPU priority, but also the availability of memory to that process.

"Strangely the number of AP WU's running doesn't seem to have much influence."

Not strangley, it was always so. I just have to stop the CUDA WUs (pause SETI) and everything is fine.

Chris: I will try the low priority if I get new ones. The old were done overnight by the GPU while the CPUs were busy encoding h.264 ^^

I use XP pro btw, so its not Vista this time ;)

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"Strangely the number of AP WU's running doesn't seem to have much influence."

Not strangley, it was always so. I just have to stop the CUDA WUs (pause SETI) and everything is fine.

Chris: I will try the low priority if I get new ones. The old were done overnight by the GPU while the CPUs were busy encoding h.264 ^^

I use XP pro btw, so its not Vista this time ;)

Hi,
It's just a guess since your pc's are hidden and we can't see the tasks, but it's possible the tasks you are seeing with this behaviour, are Very Low Angle Range, or VLAR tasks, that up till recently, CUDA wasn't even able to do. They tend to take longer, and some have noticed a similar effect you are seeing. Once you start doing tasks in another angle range you should notice a difference.

There is an CUDA application in the Modified SETI MB CUDA + opt AP package for full GPU utilization thread that will stop the VLAR tasks from running if it becomes a problem for you.
Edit: while you're at it you should probably check out this thread too.

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Hi,
It's just a guess since your pc's are hidden and we can't see the tasks, but it's possible the tasks you are seeing with this behaviour, are Very Low Angle Range, or VLAR tasks,

The tasks numbers are
Task ID 1138330960
Name 20no08ad.11660.210696.12.8.98_1
Workunit 402576759

Task ID 1138314917
Name 20no08ad.11660.208242.12.8.144_1
Workunit 402568631

got new CUDA WUs and they are working better.
Setting priority in the task manager to idle like the CPU-WUs doesn't seem to have a big effect [Except that now 1 core was idle until I paused only that WU, and another WU started], but as they don't disturb much thats nothing useful.

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Hi,
It's just a guess since your pc's are hidden and we can't see the tasks, but it's possible the tasks you are seeing with this behaviour, are Very Low Angle Range, or VLAR tasks,

The tasks numbers are
Task ID 1138330960
Name 20no08ad.11660.210696.12.8.98_1
Workunit 402576759

Task ID 1138314917
Name 20no08ad.11660.208242.12.8.144_1
Workunit 402568631

got new CUDA WUs and they are working better.
Setting priority in the task manager to idle like the CPU-WUs doesn't seem to have a big effect [Except that now 1 core was idle until I paused only that WU, and another WU started], but as they don't disturb much thats nothing useful.

The tasks you mentioned are VLAR tasks, so when you stop doing those angle ranges', they get easier for you card to do. As I mentioned the modified CUDA app will keep those from running so your pc wouldn't suffer the same effects as much.

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