I would like to have some way for Boinc/Seti to know when I use Nero to encode video/burn dvd's dont use my cpu's but it can use my gpu and when I use VLC to watch movies on my Tv, Bionc/Seti can use my cpu's but not my(or less of) my gpu.At the very least it would be nice if Bionc/Seti ran at a low priority and would slow down when another cpu/gpu intense program ran.That way I wouldn't have to shut it down all the time.If anybody knows how to set up Bionc and or Seti,like any of the above please point me to how.Thanks Scott

SETI already runs at the lowest priority.

BOINC runs all science applications at the lowest priority supported by the OS so that any application the user runs at a higher priority gets CPU time over the science app. What ends up happening is the OS gives the science app up to 100% CPU usage when nothing of a higher priority is taking precedence, and the OS takes away CPU time when something is running that takes precedence, and this happens automatically.

So when you're not using your computer, the science app gets 100%. When you are browsing the web with only 4% of your CPU used, the science app gets the other 96%. When you're burning a CD/DVD using 25% (it really shouldn't take more than that on modern CPUs), then the science app gets the other 75%. There's no choice about this - the OS handles it automatically so that there's no possibility of a lower priority app taking time away from a higher priority app. If you were to do some video editing using up all 100% of your processor, then the science application wouldn't be given any CPU time by the OS.

To verify what I'm saying, you can open Task Manager and select the running science app in the Processes Tab, right click on the app name and go down to Set Priority and you'll see that it is already set to Low.

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I would like to have some way for Boinc/Seti to know when I use Nero to encode video/burn dvd's dont use my cpu's but it can use my gpu and when I use VLC to watch movies on my Tv, Bionc/Seti can use my cpu's but not my(or less of) my gpu.At the very least it would be nice if Bionc/Seti ran at a low priority and would slow down when another cpu/gpu intense program ran.That way I wouldn't have to shut it down all the time.If anybody knows how to set up Bionc and or Seti,like any of the above please point me to how.Thanks Scott

The projects do run at a the very lowest priority as far as the CPU is concerned and should be able to get out of the way of all but the most CPU intensive applications (games, spreadsheet etc.). The GPU is a different story. The option for suspending GPU use may not be available until the next large increment version, probably V6.7.x+.

In the meantime the best option is probably suspending Boinc for an hour by right clicking the icon the tray next to the clock and selecting snooze.

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Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

BOINC Client Config includes the possibility of setting one or more <exclusive_app>. These will prevent BOINC from running any applications during the period when that exe is in the task list.

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BOINC WIKI

Thanks for all your answers.Ozzfan you may be right,Bionc/Seti may not affect encoding video,etc...much if at all but it used to years ago,so I have a habit of turning it off when doing any cpu intense activity.When Cuda is running on the other hand ,I can not even use my computer(the mouse/graphics too slow).I have it set to stop crunching with mouse movement which works good while using my computer,but while watching movies I have to turn it off or shake the mouse often.I watch maybe 20 hours of shows/movies a week and it seems a shame to waste 2 cpu's.It would be nice to have a gpu snooze.John that's probably what I need to do but I don't have the time or know how,maybe I will tackle that at a later time.Aurora,that is maybe my best bet,I guess I will have to keep shutting it down until and hopefully not too long before it has more control over the gpu suspending/snooze etc.Thanks again Scott

My CUDA FAQ (in my signature) shows how to use the <exclusive_app> option.

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It is not too hard. You create a cc_config.xml file in your BOINC Data directory (the data directory is one of the first messages on a restart of BOINC). In the file, you have the following contents:

<cc_config>
<options>
<exclusive_app>important.exe</exclusive_app>
<exclusive_app>another_important.exe</exclusive_app>
</options>
</cc_config>

Of course, you have to replace "important.exe" with whatever the executable name of the program you wish to stop BOINC from doing any processing. Ditto for "another_important.exe".

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BOINC WIKI