I just woke up in the middle of the night because my GPU's fan was screaming along at its highest speed. Is there a reason we don't have the option to cap the GPU usage in the same way we can CPU usage? I'd like to allow my GPU to help out, but not at full bore while I'm trying to sleep haha.

For ATI, ability to control the GPU load percentage is given by adjusting the parameters in the app_info.xml file of the manually downloaded ATI 0.20b version. Adjusting the w parameter to values above 1 will do this. Some also raise the f parameter above its default value, but I do not use this method.

However since the recent server change the manually downloaded ATI 0.20b version may give trouble with work fetch due to BOINC debt and scheduling issues. Hopefully this will be addressed in future server tweaks and it can once again be treated as a GPU application as it was before the automatically downloaded version was introduced.

Whichever application version is used when processing ATI tasks, reducing the GPU memory speed to a low level when possible is probably one of the most effective ways of reducing GPU high temperature and the resulting increase in fan speed. This does not result in a decrease in performance on the majority of ATI cards. My 5870 is at a memory speed of 500MHz for MilkyWay.

If it is NVIDIA you are talking about, I know nothing, but I strongly suspect that adjustment is not available other than hardware adjustment of core and shader clockspeed.

I understand very well about noisy GPUs crunching MilkyWay affecting sleep. My 4890 was fitted with a Twin Turbo Pro cooler and was virtually silent but ran quite hot. My 5870 has a Vapor-X cooler which cools extremely well but makes an annoying noise when it gets above 65°C. I use a floor fan blowing on it to keep the temperature at or below 65°C and the noise at a much more acceptable level.

1. Move your box into someone else's bedroom. :)
2. buy earplugs. :)
3. You can pause MW before going to bed and resume it in the morning. You lose a night's crunching but you sleep better.
If you just need it quiet for half an hour to get to sleep then you can script the pause/resume in a batch file by calling boincmgr. Once you start scripting the sky's the limit - you can set it to a duty cycle of run for 10mins, pause for 5, or any other combination that you prefer.

I chose option #1. I live alone so there is no-one in that bedroom to complain about the noise. It is also the only airconditioned room in the house, handy in today's 39C.

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Cheers,

PeterV

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You can also crunch Collatz Conjecture at night and MilkyWay in the day if you wish. Collatz ATI puts much less load on the GPU and usually runs a bit cooler than MilkyWay ATI.

In theory I prefer astrophysics over mathematics, but I choose to contribute to both ATI projects as I feel it helps in the development of ATI applications. Plus the support from the administrator and developers at Collatz is outstanding.

You can use TThrottle. It is a BOINC add-on and very easy to use. I use it on most of my rigs. You can set a temperature maxiumum for the CPU and the GPU. When that temperature is reached, the program throttles it a bit or a bit more. When it's cooled it speeds up again and so on.

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Greetings from,
TJ