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Topic: a miner/program that can limit GPU resources bitcoin can use? (Read 4563 times)

legendary
Activity: 1022
Merit: 1000
BitMinter
cgminer works very well... best miner imo
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Crash is likely due to intensity.

Intensity determines how many hashes the GPU runs in a batch.  While GPU is in a batch it can't be stopped or idled and will appear nonresponsive to any other application trying to use it.  If the other app isn't expecting that you will get a crash.  If the OS isn't expecting that you will get a driver crash or BSOD.

I would try using cgminer w/ intensity set to dynamic.  I have played HD flash movies while mining without a problem.  If you have multiple GPU you can connect all your monitors to a single GPU set that one dynamic and set all the other ones to high intensity.  My workstation is 3x5970s.  One GPU is set to dynamic intensity the other 5 are set to I=9.  All 3 monitors are connected to the outputs on a single card w/ dynamic intensity.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Just keep trying to set lower and lower intensities. Phoenix miner doesn't seem to be affected by negative aggression (though looking at the kernel I don't see why it wouldn't..), but at AGGRESSION=0 and a 3.6 GHz OC'd Intel Q9550, I'm seeing about 70% GPU usage, but also there is a huge hit to performance, seeing only 100 mhash on 900MHz core 5830 instead of about 290 mhash at AGGRESSION=10 and about 260 at AGGRESSION=4

If true that is horrible way to go. 

If you are seeing 70% GPU load and only getting 100/290 = 0.34% effective output that is very inefficient.

legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 1004
Just use something like hwinfo to monitor gpu usage and keep adjusting aggression or -s flags or whatever your "intensity" flag may be until you get the desirable gpu rate. Higher CPU speeds -may- cause it very difficult to bring gpu usage below ~60% at low intensities since I think the cpu becomes a limiting factor then; What happens is at lower intensities the miner sends less work per round and higher intensities it sends work in bigger chunks. Thats why computer seems to lag at very high intensities; It's sending a huge amount of work to do and it requires up to several seconds to do, often locking out other GPU duties until it finishes work. Sending very tiny work requests though leaves the GPU more responsive, and the CPU needs to send work more often. Latencies and whatnot become the limiter.

Anywho, I'm rambling. Just keep trying to set lower and lower intensities. Phoenix miner doesn't seem to be affected by negative aggression (though looking at the kernel I don't see why it wouldn't..), but at AGGRESSION=0 and a 3.6 GHz OC'd Intel Q9550, I'm seeing about 70% GPU usage, but also there is a huge hit to performance, seeing only 100 mhash on 900MHz core 5830 instead of about 290 mhash at AGGRESSION=10 and about 260 at AGGRESSION=4
sr. member
Activity: 361
Merit: 250
i use GUIMINER and openCL....I use the flag -s 000.8 (play around with this number, including the decimal point, I cant quite remember my settings)to limit the usage of my cards sometimes.
jr. member
Activity: 39
Merit: 1
Hi,

any novelty on this topic? Is any of the standard miner capable of limiting the GPU usage?
I just don't won't my gpu to work under high stress when I'm around . It gets the cooling started which creates a hell of acoustic smok.

Tried to play around with phoenix's AGGRESSION or poclbm's getwork-rate but I guess that's not the way to go. Would process priority under linux make sense?

Bye
qed
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
I'm curious if theres a miner or program that can limit the usage of the GPU to maybe percentages? or maybe just a generalized program that anyone knows of that can limit on a per program basis? I'm mining on my main machine as its the most  powerful and I can't count the number of times I've crash on my hands. thanks in advance for any advice!

I'm having a similair problem.  I've lurked around in the main forums and I noticed some individuals have their miner set on a low CPU priority.  I'm going to give that a shot today.

http://techblissonline.com/run-program-process-cpu-priority-windows-vista-xp/

I'll post back on my findings when I do give it a shot.

Edit:  Computer froze upon opening up windows media player and playing a simple 30 second video.  Sad

Changing process priority is not a good thing under windows. Change the cpu affinity.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
I'm curious if theres a miner or program that can limit the usage of the GPU to maybe percentages? or maybe just a generalized program that anyone knows of that can limit on a per program basis? I'm mining on my main machine as its the most  powerful and I can't count the number of times I've crash on my hands. thanks in advance for any advice!

I'm having a similair problem.  I've lurked around in the main forums and I noticed some individuals have their miner set on a low CPU priority.  I'm going to give that a shot today.

http://techblissonline.com/run-program-process-cpu-priority-windows-vista-xp/

I'll post back on my findings when I do give it a shot.

Edit:  Computer froze upon opening up windows media player and playing a simple 30 second video.  Sad
newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
I'm curious if theres a miner or program that can limit the usage of the GPU to maybe percentages? or maybe just a generalized program that anyone knows of that can limit on a per program basis? I'm mining on my main machine as its the most  powerful and I can't count the number of times I've crash on my hands. thanks in advance for any advice!
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