Yesterday I did a complete reinstall of Win 7 Home Edition 64, having been bitten by malware. After multitudinous Windows Updates I installed BOINC 7.0.64 (x64) and Nvidia driver 320.49, then set GPUGRID running on my GTX660.

The first WU just finished. See here. The run time is normal for me but the elapsed time is more than double.

Below is my GPU Monitor as of now. I have never before seen the GPU and MC loads fluctuate like this. Help!

Thanks for responding, ETA. I forgot to subscribe to the thread!!

Do you still have that problem?

It seems like the work is being paused for short intervals.

Possible reasons: TThrottle being active or setting BOINC to us <100% of CPU time (I don't think this applies to GPUs, but haven't tested this).

Or some other program could grab CPU time so heavily that the GPU gets starved of new work.

Any anomalies in task manager?

Does it help to reduce the number of cores available for BOINC or stop all CPU projects?

That only answers half of the question/suggestion!

Is Boinc set to use less than 100% of the CPU?
- Boinc Manager (Advanced View), processor usage tab, needs to be Use at most 100.00 % CPU time.

yes IIRC the default is only 60%
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XtremeSystems.org - #1 Team in GPUGrid

- Boinc Manager (Advanced View), Tools, Computing preferences..., processor usage tab, needs to be Use at most 100.00 % CPU time.

this "feature" cropped up in one of the v7 boinc clients IIRC
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XtremeSystems.org - #1 Team in GPUGrid

I'm now processing a Nathan long which looks like elapsed time is going to equal run time, as before the opsys rebuild.

What source did you use for reinstall?
It's clear, that something is 'stealing' CPU time on your host, which makes the GPU starve, and it results in longer processing time. This 'something' could be a malicious software like a rootkit.

Are you sure your "elapsed time after reinstall" numbers are correct? Looking at your task list I can not see such WUs. 45ks for a NATHAN_KIDKIXc22 seems about right for a GTX660 and runtime and CPU time agree (give or take a bit).

I had a similar problem. I had an GTX285 with Vistax64 running smooth. I put an GTX660 in it and the trouble began. It took longer to finish a WU than with the 285. Kernel times where high and system slow. After searching and posting here, PC Angel, installed by the system builder, could be an issue. I removed it, booted the system and however some improvement, still bad performance.

I put in a new 660 with the same results. I put in the old 285, and no problems, kernel times low again.
So I did a complete new installation of the OS, with formatting the hard disk. And installed only the minimum software to get BOINC working.
Fast with the 285 and still bad with the 660. A bios update was not possible as XFX is not supporting that anymore.
I even tried a GTX770 and another new installation of the OS but it didn´t help.

Off course your rig did work before with the 660.
Can you check your kernel times, if they are almost as high as CPU-usage then that is an indication of some problem(s). You find these in Task Manager, show kernel times.
I don´t know tomba if you have another GPU, you could try that one. See how it performs.
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Greetings from TJ

Thanks for responding, Retvari.

What source did you use for reinstall?

It's clear, that something is 'stealing' CPU time on your host, which makes the GPU starve, and it results in longer processing time. This 'something' could be a malicious software like a rootkit.

Thank you for responding, TJ,

Can you check your kernel times, if they are almost as high as CPU-usage then that is an indication of some problem(s). You find these in Task Manager, show kernel times.

I don´t know tomba if you have another GPU, you could try that one. See how it performs.

What source did you use for reinstall?

The CD that came with my PC.

Here's a snapshot of my Task Manager:

Here's my GPU Monitor for the current GPUGrid task:

Looks good to me!

I ran Malwarebyte to look for nasties. It found five, which I deleted:
Could one of them be the culprit?

Guys, it seems that "Task run time (sec)" is no-longer an issue. He has fixed the first problem by changing the "CPU Throttle" from 80% to 100%; the NATHAN_KIDKIX are now taking the same amount of time to complete.

His new problem deals with comparing "time the task was sent" to "time the result was received". That means the problem is that either:
a) the task wasn't running non-stop during the duration of that time difference, or
b) a network setting or problem prevented the result from uploading

tomba, Can you please post the contents of your global_prefs.xml and global_prefs_override.xml files? They are found in your data directory, which is listed at the top of the Event Log around line 10, and is often C:\ProgramData\BOINC

I'd be curious what your exact settings are, to see if some network setting is conflicting.

Just found this:



I swiftly changed it to never sleep. Let's see what happens....

I change the power plan so the PC sleeps in one minute. Here's what happened:



Seems the Win 7 default is to sleep after 30 minutes, not good for 24/7 BOINCing!

tomba, Can you please post the contents of your global_prefs.xml and global_prefs_override.xml files? They are found in your data directory, which is listed at the top of the Event Log around line 10, and is often C:\ProgramData\BOINC

tomba for the kernel times you go to the task manager, then the command bar shows you four options: File, Options, View, Help.
Go to View, and then the bottom, Show kernel times. This will show a red line in the graph and is below the green line.
Ideally the red line (kernel times) are low, if they are high (close to the green line) this is an indication of a (hardware) problem.
if its low, the 660 is okay. I guess it is in your case, as you have used it before in this system and many people use this card as well.

Perhaps you could Jacob Klein the files he asked for in the BOINC Data folder. He may help you better than I can.
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Greetings from TJ

Just found this:



I swiftly changed it to never sleep. Let's see what happens....

This could be the source of your problem...

Just to confirm that I'm out of the woods :-)

This morning I completed a Noelia long that had run overnight. Run time was 11h:58min and elapsed time, from sent to reported, was exactly 13 hours (and the credit was a very generous 180k! Perhaps a little payback for the many failed Noelias these past weeks?).

Grateful thanks to all posters for your support.

Tom