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[Happy Birthday] Gooiool (9-28) » « TSC & WCG Milestones and Climbers for 09/27
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HiVolt
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[WCG] 8 Core Xeon not crunching at full capacity

Usage when first started
Usage after 5 seconds running
How long it takes per WU
CPU Benchmark
Machine Specs

I've got a new 8 Core 2.8 Xeon Mac Pro here at work for a week or so now. Of course I loaded BOINC on it, and I expected it to crunch like a horse... However, something's not right...

Whenever I start Boinc, the CPU usage spikes to full on all 8 cores, but 5 seconds later it drops and settles to 84-85%. I've deleted, reinstalled BOINC, and it continues to do this. The work units take a very long time per core. There is no other process eating up any CPU time. I have another Mac Pro except it'a 4-core, and it purrs along fine at full cpu load.

Attached are some screenshots.

Any help would be appreciated.
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· 2008-09-16 13:23:16 ·

lilhurricane
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I'd like to say maybe the project assumes you have a strong beast of a computer & so is sending you the hardest work units to find cures...but I'm sure that's not it

I'm not familiar w/ Macs so I can't help..maybe we have a member that uses one that can assist?

Congrats on your new machine, Martin

I'm sure there's a reason & you'll find it.

... can always ask at WCG forums as well (in Boinc Support), if no one here figures it out

»www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forum···forum=83

Edit: maybe ajeb

can help?

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· 2008-09-16 13:45:30 ·

Ray422
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reply to HiVolt
Sounds like some kinda throttling, yes?

Just some food for thought...

Does the cpu speed reduce simultaneously with the cpu percentage? Any change in temperature? Any change in multiplier?
--Disable intel speedstep?

I know nothing about a mac, does it have an internal bios throttle like...
Biostar has....cool & quiet
Gigabyte has....C1e (enhanced halt)
Asus has....Same, I think (I would have to look)

I think TD member Ajeb has that same machine, perhaps he can help?

EDIT: Another thought. Could that machine have defaulted to a boinc setting that allows a lesser cpu percentage. I have had that happen to me before. You might check the maximum CPU percentage usage setting in wcg/boinc?
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· 2008-09-16 14:00:50 ·

HiVolt
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The Mac has no configurable options like PC boards do... I have done a video encoding test and all 8 cores are fully utilized, so it's not something related to the machine.

I have checked BOINC throttling in the options, and it's set to use 100% cpu and all the processor cores.
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· 2008-09-16 14:20:57 ·

HiVolt
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I've PM'd ajeb

, hopefully he has a couple of minutes to take a look.

Thanks!
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· 2008-09-16 14:23:42 ·

Dersgniw
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reply to HiVolt

said by HiVolt

:

I have checked BOINC throttling in the options, and it's set to use 100% cpu and all the processor cores.

Checked it on the client options (not the website), right?
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· 2008-09-16 14:53:25 ·

HiVolt
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said by Dersgniw

:

said by HiVolt

:

I have checked BOINC throttling in the options, and it's set to use 100% cpu and all the processor cores.

Checked it on the client options (not the website), right?

Yep! I'm somehow thinking the BOINC version for Mac is not that 8-core friendly... on the 4-core Mac running the exact same OS it works perfectly.
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· 2008-09-16 15:31:46 ·

glennaxl
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reply to HiVolt
Have you checked this?
System Prefs
->Energy Saver
->Options
->Processor Performance

It should be set to "Highest".

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· 2008-09-16 15:51:38 ·

HiVolt
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said by glennaxl

:

Have you checked this?
System Prefs
->Energy Saver
->Options
->Processor Performance

It should be set to "Highest".

Pretty sure I did, but I don't think there is such an option on a Mac Pro, only on the laptops or imacs/minis.

I'll double check tomorrow though.
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· 2008-09-16 19:46:58 ·

ajeb
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reply to HiVolt
Hey,
I've had my MAC PRO for about a month.

I'm running near 100% on all eight cores.

Check your energy saving panel. WCG runs at a very low priority. Just running BOINC in not enough to keep the computer from going to sleep, so make sure the computer is in "never" going to sleep and uncheck "Put hard drives to sleep.."

The hard drive thing was slowing me down when I started up.

I'm also running a different version of BOINC than you. I'm still on 5.10.45, I always wait a bit to upgrade to make sure the bugs are worked out.

Hope that helps. FYI..Getting about a 4300 RAC on the machine and that spec is still climbing.

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· 2008-09-17 10:54:54 ·

lilhurricane
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reply to HiVolt
Great suggestions everyone!

And thanks glennaxl

& ajeb

..your "things to check" on Macs are now added to our FAQ

»Team Discovery WCG BOINC FAQ »[Macs] How to Make Sure You're Running at Peak Efficiency

Edit: Let me know if there's anything else

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· 2008-09-17 11:25:01 ·

HiVolt
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reply to ajeb

Thanks... I already had the sleep settings disabled, and it doesn't seem to make a difference if they are on or off here.

Anyway, I just ran Activity Monitor and it seems that at the exact time the CPU load drops to from 100 to 85, the System percentage goes up. I dont know what that means though.

Attached is the graph. Green is User %, Red is System %.
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· 2008-09-17 11:55:25 ·

Dogfather
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I'm assuming you've shown yourself "all processes" and not just "my processes" to see if something else is taking up the other 15%.

Also what happens if you open a 9th crunching instance (if you can do such a thing)?

There is also uncertainty principle in monitoring this usage but it shouldn't be anywhere near 15%. In my quad activity monitor for example takes 1.5% typically.

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· 2008-09-17 12:29:20 ·

ajeb
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Skeedatl is right...that 15% is going somewhere into the system. You should be able to find in all processes. There was a huge system update just released..is it downloading in background? Though I can't see that taking up that much cpu.

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· 2008-09-17 13:08:07 ·

HiVolt
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This happened before the 10.5.5 also. I have looked under All Processes, and I don't see it. Here's a screenshot.
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· 2008-09-17 14:48:34 ·

HiVolt
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And here's output from "top" in terminal.

Processes:  73 total, 10 running, 2 stuck, 61 sleeping... 303 threads                                                          14:50:10
Load Avg:  7.25,  7.23,  7.46    CPU usage: 22.09% user, 65.45% sys, 12.46% idle
SharedLibs: num =    8, resident =   84M code,  248K data, 5192K linkedit.
MemRegions: num =  8399, resident =  483M +   18M private,  158M shared.
PhysMem:  519M wired,  847M active,   63M inactive, 1451M used, 4693M free.
VM: 8203M + 371M   64983(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts
 
  PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
 2682 top          5.5%  0:06.96   1    18     29 1964K   188K  2560K    18M
 2673 bash         0.0%  0:00.01   1    14     19  268K   184K   916K    18M
 2672 login        0.0%  0:00.02   1    17     55  284K   228K  1056K    19M
 2671 Terminal     1.2%  0:03.65   3   100    175 3148K    17M    13M   367M 
 2648 Preview      0.0%  0:00.84  13   141    259 8364K    21M    14M   390M
 2597 cupsd        0.0%  0:00.03   2    30     30  484K   228K  1400K    19M
 2571 mdworker     0.0%  0:00.44   4    72     52 1092K  8468K  4084K    34M
 2570 mdworker     0.0%  0:00.16   3    51     32  700K  9724K  2580K    33M
 2097 LKDCHelper   0.0%  0:00.01   1    18     23  204K   184K   860K    19M
 1330 wcg_hcc1_i  84.8%  2:31:52   2    15     92   37M+ 2076K    37M+   57M 
 1329 wcg_hcc1_i  84.6%  2:31:42   2    15    100   38M+ 2076K    39M+   59M+
 1328 wcg_hcc1_i  85.0%  2:31:46   2    15    112   41M- 2076K    42M+   62M+
 1327 wcg_hcc1_i  84.6%  2:31:46   2    15    128   45M+ 2076K    46M+   66M+
 1326 wcg_hcc1_i  84.5%  2:31:37   2    15    128   45M  2076K    46M+   66M 
 1325 wcg_hcc1_i  85.0%  2:31:41   2    15    128   45M- 2076K    46M+   66M 
 1324 wcg_hcc1_i  84.8%  2:31:50   2    15    128   45M- 2076K    46M-   66M-
 1323 wcg_hcc1_i  84.9%  2:31:51   2    15    128   45M- 2076K    46M+   66M+
 1319 boinc        0.1%  0:16.97   1    19     42 3924K   252K  6348K    21M
 1317 BOINCManag   0.5%  1:05.53   1    77    170 7432K    23M    17M   373M 
  153 AppleSpell   0.0%  0:00.06   1    29     31  592K  8600K  2948K    34M
  149 BBNotifica   0.0%  0:00.40   9    92    149 2452K    14M  6216K   328M
  143 TeamViewer   0.1%  0:19.02   5    88    151 3928K    11M    11M   355M
  141 Mail         0.1%  5:44.25  30   291    609   23M    43M    54M   454M 
  138 usbmuxd      0.0%  0:00.00   2    21     26  204K   184K   700K    19M
  137 Stickies     0.0%  0:01.34   1    77    163 2684K    16M  7372K   351M
  136 iTunesHelp   0.0%  0:00.04   2    53     47  540K  3156K  2360K   281M
  133 Google Upd   0.0%  0:00.07   1    56     38  500K  7260K  2444K   290M
  128 pboard       0.0%  0:00.00   1    15     23  152K   184K   588K    19M
  126 Finder       0.0%  0:07.75   6   183    255 5504K    31M    16M   386M 
  125 SystemUISe   0.3%  0:38.68  13   282    387 6100K    20M    12M   366M
  124 ATSServer    0.0%  0:05.66   2    98    952 1420K  7664K  7584K   130M 
  123 Dock         0.0%  0:06.38   3   131    353 3684K    45M    15M   398M
  122 coreaudiod   0.0%  0:00.32   2   140     51 1124K  1268K  2152K    20M
  119 UserEventA   0.0%  0:00.18   2   153     84  708K  2896K  2172K    21M
  118 Spotlight    0.0%  0:00.27   8    85     96 3092K  9896K  6080K   296M
  116 AppleVNCSe   0.0%  0:00.17   2    60     40 2120K  5244K  3960K   282M
  113 AirPort Ba   0.0%  0:00.19   1    58    114 2144K    10M  4512K   323M
  112 GoogleSoft   0.0%  0:00.20   1    58     52 2192K  9812K  4760K   291M
  108 launchd      0.0%  0:02.42   3   182     25  212K   296K   548K    18M
  105 VNCPrivile   0.0%  0:00.00   1    16     24  148K   188K   624K    19M
   92 pvsnatd      0.0%  0:01.69   3    26     28  200K   184K   528K    21M
   79 llipd        0.0%  0:05.15   1     8     17   84K   184K   220K    18M
   71 racoon       0.0%  0:00.06   1    14     27  228K   224K  1036K    18M
   66 blued        0.0%  0:00.12   1    49     34  540K  5216K  1964K    28M
   64 ioupsd       0.0%  0:00.88   1    30     23  404K   184K  1056K    18M
   63 WindowServ   0.9%  3:16.49  11   250    897 5228K    42M    53M   406M 
   58 coreservic   0.0%  0:01.94   2   165    129 1760K    19M    18M    41M
   51 krb5kdc      0.0%  0:00.02   1    17     43  476K   188K  1424K    18M
   46 socketfilt   0.0%  0:00.47   3    35     25  608K   224K  1572K    18M
   45 autofsd      0.0%  0:00.00   1    21     18  148K   184K   672K    18M
   41 diskarbitr   0.0%  0:00.47   1   129     18  376K   184K  1000K    18M
   39 dynamic_pa   0.0%  0:00.02   1    17     20  176K   184K   712K    18M
   37 fseventsd    0.0%  0:01.26  10    77     51 1012K   184K  1540K    23M
   36 hidd         0.0%  0:00.00   2    28     20  124K   192K   604K    18M
   34 kdcmond      0.0%  0:01.31   2    24     19  264K   184K  1024K    18M
   33 KernelEven   0.0%  0:00.00   2    20     19  160K   184K   652K    18M
   32 loginwindo   0.0%  0:00.48   3   200    125 1660K    16M  5648K   299M
   31 mds          0.0%  0:13.37  17   268    252   14M  8600K    16M    75M 
   30 RFBRegiste   0.0%  0:00.01   1    16     22  208K   184K  1060K    19M
   26 SystemStar   0.0%  0:00.00   1    20     18  152K   184K   668K    18M
   25 update       0.0%  0:07.21   1    13     17   76K   184K   284K    17M
   24 ntpd         0.0%  0:01.25   1    15     19  196K   184K   836K    18M
   21 securityd    0.0%  0:00.30   3   103     37  748K   224K  2040K    20M
   18 launchd      0.0%  0:02.00   3    25     24  132K   296K   464K    18M
   16 mDNSRespon   0.0%  0:01.24   2    41     30 1396K   224K  2368K    20M
   15 distnoted    0.0%  0:01.93   1    52     18  296K   184K   776K    18M
   14 configd      0.0%  0:09.79   3   169     71  640K   256K  1868K    19M
   13 syslogd      0.0%  0:01.81   4    37     28  224K   188K   516K    19M
   12 notifyd      0.0%  0:00.33   2   150     20  224K   188K   480K    18M
   11 DirectoryS   0.0%  0:02.32   5    65     36 1724K   188K  3400K    21M 
   10 kextd        0.0%  0:00.46   2    32     19  644K   184K  1252K    18M
    1 launchd      0.0%  0:02.35   3   103     25  236K   296K   568K    19M
    0 kernel_tas   0.8%  6:47.01  65     2    750   18M      0   124M   358M

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· 2008-09-17 14:52:32 ·

bbarrera
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Next time run "top -o cpu" to sort highest CPU processes first.

Might want to check the 'nice' level of BOINC client and renice if possible. I've never understood the Mac OS X process scheduler, and there is a website with some good info (believe it is Amit Singh of Google).

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· 2008-09-17 15:15:16 ·

HiVolt
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said by bbarrera

:

Might want to check the 'nice' level of BOINC client and renice if possible. I've never understood the Mac OS X process scheduler, and there is a website with some good info (believe it is Amit Singh of Google).

Can you explain how do I go about doing that?
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· 2008-09-17 16:42:06 ·

Dogfather
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»www.macosxhints.com/article.php?···85034927

I've also see a few utilities in my Google search like BeNicer »www.versiontracker.com/dyn/morei···sx/16534 that claim to make the process a bit quicker.

EDIT - Just toyed with BeNicer and it may not like Leo...I get some errors and VT showed it only supported Tiger and earlier.

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· 2008-09-17 16:54:49 ·

ajeb
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This can't be this hard...lol.

I'm running 99.3% to 100% on all eight cores. My process list looks the same as yours. The only thing seems to be that I'm using an older version of BOINC.

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· 2008-09-17 20:53:03 ·

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