Extra core options

[Braegnok]

Hello,.. I removed my cpu from the folding slots when I started folding a few months ago,.. and have two gpu's listed in folding slots gpu-1 and gpu-2.

Everything is working fine,.. but I'm wondering if I can add my cpu in the Extra core options to help the gpu's and perhaps speed up Estimated TPF.

Or can I add cpu in folding slots but not fold on it,.. but configure so gpu's can use cpu cores if needed, as my cpu load is only 3% to 7% seems last winter when I was folding my cpu was running at 25% to 30% while folding with both gpu's only and Estimated TPF was much lower.

I'm thinking perhaps I did not set something up correctly or is it just the FahCore 0x17 WU's do not use much cpu load.

Thanks in advance for advice.

[bruce]

Every core is different and the way CPU time is used depends on how NVidia/ATI have written their drivers. There may be an internal setting, but I do not know of any CORE options that allow you to control how the CPUs support the GPUs.

CPU load typically peaks up to all of one CPU when data is being prepared for a checkpoint with a variable amount between checkpoints. FahCore_17 does spend a significant percentage of time idle, but reports indicate that if the CPUs are all busy folding, there's an additional delay which reduces the throughput of the GPUs. Some folks with 2 GPUs share a single CPU; others do not. The recommendation is to leave one CPU free to service each GPU but folding with the others seems like a viable option.

[Braegnok]

Thanks Bruce,.. That makes sense now why my cpu is basically idle when I check it, guess I got everything set-up correctly then.

[7im]

How many CPU cores are in that system? If it has 4, you can configure a CPU slot to use 2 cores and reserve 2 for the GPUs.