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What different tricks do you guys use to optimize your system performance?

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Chris
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Message 47149 - Posted: 7 Apr 2011, 18:54:13 UTC
Last modified: 7 Apr 2011, 19:18:59 UTC

In doing stuff like this with a PC it is obvious we all would want the most bang for our buck. Some things I have done to optimize my system so far.

I use GameGain from PGWare, well for games. Not sure how well it works in comparison to not using it. Would be interesting for a tech house to do some benchmarkings. I was considering purchasing their PC boost as well. I talked to some of their techs through email a few years ago and they seemed like straight up people.

http://www.pgware.com/

Also it was recommended to me to use BlackVipers website to optimize system performance by shutting down unused services that run by default.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/winxp.htm

I used the 'safe' setting and it really opened up some memory for me and my system boots even faster now. Now am cautiously working through the 'tweaked' setup and seeing how that goes.

What do you guys think?

yeah I keep getting confused whether optimize has two 'o's or two i's. lol
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Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR Memory
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Message 47154 - Posted: 7 Apr 2011, 19:16:23 UTC
Last modified: 7 Apr 2011, 19:19:14 UTC

Also forgive my ignorance, but in one of the recent threads, 'optimized apps' I see some stuff I am not sure if it applies to me. I am using BOINC version 6.10.58. Should I be looking into any of these apps on the thread provided?
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Message 47159 - Posted: 7 Apr 2011, 22:48:56 UTC

I sent an email to PGWare discussing their products and whether it would be of any benefit to distributed computing. And how they would work with their other products.(GameGain etc)

Here is the response from a PGWare tech:

I will try to address your questions directly.

1. It depends on the project really, most of these distributed computing
projects use service applications or a program with no windows at all,
PCBoost directly effects programs with an actual window - it tries to find
the most active window/program running (typically video editing, photo
editing, games) and raises the cpu priority for the main thread and all
subsequent threads within the application - this instructs the cpu to give
preference to this application no matter what else is running. PCBoost also
on multi-core machines instructs and moves the program over onto a new core
once a particular core has been overutilized; for instance if PCBoost sees
you have 4 cores and core 1, is using 50% cpu then PCBoost will check to see
what core 2, 3 and 4's cpu utilization is at; whichever core is at the least
utilization PCBoost will move the application over to use that core, it does
this every two minutes and constantly insures the application is being used
on the least utilized core - this behavior allows the program the most
processing power available so other applications running wont have to share
that core's power. Now back to the first point; if theres no visible
window that actually does the number crunching for the distributing app then
PCBoost has no way to accelerate the application, you may try opening your
MilkyWay application and seeing how many processes are running under
taskmanager; if the application spawns a window and does the processing in
the same executable then PCBoost should work on it; if the gui/window is a
separate process from the actual work process than PCBoost has no effect at
all.

2. All of our products are fully compatible with each other. GameGain just
makes several registry changes to Windows; whereas PCBoost constantly runs
on the system to maintain that the currently active program/window is
optimized. The order does not matter in which you run them; they do
different things and do not negatively effect each other.

You can pass along a coupon code to use if any of your members are
interested in purchasing, just purchase from our store at
http://www.pgware.com/store/?product=pcboost&type=esellerate&coupon=TWENTYOF
F , use coupon code TWENTYOFF if it is not already applied and you will
receive 20% off your order.


32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR Memory
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Message 47164 - Posted: 8 Apr 2011, 1:45:26 UTC

So what they mean is the program will not do anything with any of the BOINC projects as they do not keep an actual window open.
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Message 47476 - Posted: 10 Apr 2011, 13:11:05 UTC
Last modified: 10 Apr 2011, 13:15:28 UTC

I use "Process Lasso" when messing with my system...

You can assign CPU affinity and process priorities to suit.

I.E. I have four GPU WU's serviced by 4 HT cores.

And four MW CPU WU's serviced by 4 different HT cores on my PC.

HTH

dunx

P.S. Also allowing one core to be busy will enable turbo-boost/speedstep on an i7 cpu for example.
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Chris
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Message 49081 - Posted: 27 May 2011, 20:59:06 UTC - in response to Message 47164.  
Last modified: 27 May 2011, 21:01:32 UTC

So what they mean is the program will not do anything with any of the BOINC projects as they do not keep an actual window open.


Thinking about this, it might not help BOINC directly, but indirectly it may well help. If you are running other programs that use an actual window the program may shift them to unused CPU cores thus freeing up the core that uses BOINC.
32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR Memory
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Message boards : Number crunching : What different tricks do you guys use to optimize your system performance?

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