I want to help this project by providing some feedback about an issue I experienced:
Movies that I play while BOINC processes MalariaControl WUs seem to skip -- they freeze for 1-2 seconds, then continue. This happens about every minute, which is very annoying. It didn\'t happen back when I was only running WorldCommunityGrid WUs.
Also, as BOINC splits the resources 50%-50% between WCG and MalariaControl, I can tell that it only happens when malaria WUs are being processed, and not when WCG WUs.
I noticed that these pauses coincide with \"dents\" in the CPU load (as observed in the Task Manager), and heavy disk activity. I assume these are when MC switches WUs, and / or saves state or records progress. A file monitor tells me that the \"client_state*.xml\" files, the slot directory and the malariacontrol directory are written at these times -- except not at ONCE, but in 100 little pieces, 1kb at a time!! I thought defragmenting the drive would solve this, but apparently it doesn\'t.
In comparison, WCG seems to write just as much, but much less frequently, and without interrupting movie playback.
Does anyone else experience this? I\'m talking about the Windows version. I have an Athlon64, XP, plenty of RAM, system is stable otherwise. The issue is observed with several media players, including Windows Media and MPlayer.
Is this happening because this project is still in beta?
I really want to contribute to this project, but as it is, it decreases the usability of my computer a lot.
On the other hand, I really like that MC consumes much less memory than WCG. Great job on that!
Thanks for any input on the issue!
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I want to help this project by providing some feedback about an issue I experienced:
Movies that I play while BOINC processes MalariaControl WUs seem to skip -- they freeze for 1-2 seconds, then continue. This happens about every minute, which is very annoying. It didn\'t happen back when I was only running WorldCommunityGrid WUs.
Also, as BOINC splits the resources 50%-50% between WCG and MalariaControl, I can tell that it only happens when malaria WUs are being processed, and not when WCG WUs.
I noticed that these pauses coincide with \"dents\" in the CPU load (as observed in the Task Manager), and heavy disk activity. I assume these are when MC switches WUs, and / or saves state or records progress. A file monitor tells me that the \"client_state*.xml\" files, the slot directory and the malariacontrol directory are written at these times -- except not at ONCE, but in 100 little pieces, 1kb at a time!! I thought defragmenting the drive would solve this, but apparently it doesn\'t.
In comparison, WCG seems to write just as much, but much less frequently, and without interrupting movie playback.
Does anyone else experience this? I\'m talking about the Windows version. I have an Athlon64, XP, plenty of RAM, system is stable otherwise. The issue is observed with several media players, including Windows Media and MPlayer.
Is this happening because this project is still in beta?
I really want to contribute to this project, but as it is, it decreases the usability of my computer a lot.
On the other hand, I really like that MC consumes much less memory than WCG. Great job on that!
Thanks for any input on the issue!
Never crunched for WCG but under your account, general preferences, you can set how often Boinc saves the data to the hard drive. It is currently set at 60 seconds, which coincides with what you are seeing. You can change this to a longer time frame if your system does not crash.
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/ Thanks for the tip! That seemed to decrease the impact on my movie watching experience. I missed this configuration entry among the forest of settings.
/ Thanks for the tip! That seemed to decrease the impact on my movie watching experience. I missed this configuration entry among the forest of settings.
The only glitch would be if your machine crashes, it will have to redo more of the current workunit because it is now longer between saves. That is why I said \"if your system does not crash\".
But I am glad it helped.
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/ If a computer crashes so often that an extra 1-2 dozen minutes of interval between saves actually matters -- well, I don\'t think it\'s very useful for Malariacontrol. Or for any other work... :-)
/ If a computer crashes so often that an extra 1-2 dozen minutes of interval between saves actually matters -- well, I don\'t think it\'s very useful for Malariacontrol. Or for any other work... :-)
Very true.
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