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Message boards : Number crunching : "Remaining (estimated)" Times Somewhat Awry

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tomba
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Message 34486 - Posted: 27 Dec 2013 | 15:35:34 UTC


Each of my two GTX 660s completes a SANTI in about 12 hours. Today the remaining times are all over the floor.

The first one, above, will complete in less than an hour yet the remaining time is 3.5 hours. The second will complete in about eight hours yet the forecast is almost 26 hours!

Not seen that before,,,
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Profile Retvari Zoltan
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Message 34508 - Posted: 29 Dec 2013 | 20:40:04 UTC - in response to Message 34486.

Don't worry, the estimation will normalize after a couple of completed workuntis.

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Message 46176 - Posted: 14 Jan 2017 | 18:46:17 UTC

(Sorry for not creating a new thread about this.)
Now that I've read (again) the wiki about the application configuration in BOINC, I've 'discovered' a fairly new option (introduced in v7.3.13), which makes the BOINC manager to "base estimates of remaining time solely on the fraction done reported by the app". This estimate fluctuates 0~15 seconds at the beginning, but it won't over/underestimate the remaining time by hours when a new batch shows up. This option is called "<fraction_done_exact/>" and it should be placed in the app_config.xml for each application (acemdbeta, acemdlong, acemdshort)

---------------- How to do that (on Windows): -------------------
The app_config.xml file should be placed to the project's home directory (by default it's at c:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\www.gpugrid.net\)
Copy the following to the clipboard:

notepad c:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\www.gpugrid.net\app_config.xml
Press Windows key + R, then paste and press [enter].
If you see an empty file then copy & paste the following text:

<app_config> <app> <name>acemdlong</name> <fraction_done_exact/> <gpu_versions> <gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage> <cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage> </gpu_versions> </app> <app> <name>acemdshort</name> <fraction_done_exact/> <gpu_versions> <gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage> <cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage> </gpu_versions> </app> <app> <name>acemdbeta</name> <fraction_done_exact/> <gpu_versions> <gpu_usage>0.5</gpu_usage> <cpu_usage>1.0</cpu_usage> </gpu_versions> </app> </app_config>

This app_config.xml is for running two GPUGrid tasks on each GPU simultaneously (recommended for fast GPUs on Windows Vista or newer), if you want to run only 1 per GPU (recommended for Windows XP, or slow GPUs) you should change the <gpu_usage> to 1.0 in all 3 applications like this:
<gpu_usage>1.0</gpu_usage>

If you already have an app_config.xml, then you should only insert the line
<fraction_done_exact/>
after each line containing the name of the application.

Click file -> save and click [save].
Open the BOINC manager, click Options -> read config files.

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Message 46177 - Posted: 14 Jan 2017 | 20:29:33 UTC - in response to Message 46176.
Last modified: 14 Jan 2017 | 20:32:11 UTC

On Windows XP the default location of the BOINC data directory is different, so on Windows XP you should use the following command to edit/create the app_config.xml:

notepad "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\BOINC\projects\www.gpugrid.net\app_config.xml"

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Message boards : Number crunching : "Remaining (estimated)" Times Somewhat Awry

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