I've come to accept the fact that you can't play graphics intensive PC games while crunching CUDA without having a graphics driver crash and a WU error. I can't give you a specific error code because I don't run CUDA while playing games anymore. The same thing used to happen on my old duel core rig.

I don't mind too much shutting down BOINC while playing games and I'm too paranoid that one of my cards will overheat and be permanently damaged.

Can anyone play graphics intensive games while crunching CUDA or is it just a fact of CUDA life that you can't do that?

It's a fact of life that you can't play games while running CUDA at the same time.

In fact, PC processors can only do one thing at a time too. It is up to the operating system to manage multitasking by dividing up time slices of each process to a given processor or core. This happens so fast that it gives the appearance of multiple programs running at once.

If GPU processing had a similar management system, such as a micro-OS built into the driver, doing many things on your GPU at once would be completely possible. Until then, it's one thing at a time.

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It's a fact of life that you can't play games while running CUDA at the same time.

In fact, PC processors can only do one thing at a time too. It is up to the operating system to manage multitasking by dividing up time slices of each process to a given processor or core. This happens so fast that it gives the appearance of multiple programs running at once.

If GPU processing had a similar management system, such as a micro-OS built into the driver, doing many things on your GPU at once would be completely possible. Until then, it's one thing at a time.

Thanks OzzFan.

I'm glad it's not another problem with my computer.

Thanks for the other interesting facts too. You would think that after making a program (CUDA) to run science apps on graphics cards, they would also assume people would like to use those same cards to do other things (That the cards where designed for in the first place, games etc.) simultaneously. But I guess with CUDA in it's infancy we can't expect too much from right now.

Sorry for hijacking this thread, but what happens to the CUDA app when it is suspended? Does it obey the "Leave suspended applications in memory" setting or does it always release or keep the video memory regardless of that setting?
Is pausing BOINC via the tray icon equivalent to the "Use CPU/GPU only when..." setting?

I'm currently trying to attain a configuration where I can get most out of BOINC and my games without having to deal with BOINC every time I want to start a game. The games I've been playing so far work very well even while the CUDA app is running, but I'm almost certain that CUDA won't run with more recent games.

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Sorry for hijacking this thread, but what happens to the CUDA app when it is suspended? Does it obey the "Leave suspended applications in memory" setting or does it always release or keep the video memory regardless of that setting?
Is pausing BOINC via the tray icon equivalent to the "Use CPU/GPU only when..." setting?

I'm currently trying to attain a configuration where I can get most out of BOINC and my games without having to deal with BOINC every time I want to start a game. The games I've been playing so far work very well even while the CUDA app is running, but I'm almost certain that CUDA won't run with more recent games.

Boinc always releases the GPU memory (since 6.6.37), otherwise the very next Seti Cuda wu will run in CPU-fallback mode, which is very very slow, slower than even the Stock CPU app,
and normally just causes the wu's to error out.

Claggy