Enhancement to Prime95

[tengai]

Originally Posted by kriesel

How, specifically, would the UI be changed? What would it look like to be modernized to help the user manage their multi-core resources better? What are you willing to yourself contribute to the effort?

To start, I believe the "Worker Windows" and "CPU Setting and Information" dialogs should be merged into one dialog. And based on the "Type of work to get" specific features will be enable or disabled. Having the option to enter "hours per day" and "day time begins" doesn't make much sense or unclear to say the least. The interface should be a radio buttons with options, "Run all day", "Enter start and end time"

For additional core allocation, I'd use a check box to enable and number of cores (to use) with start/end time.

By trade I'm a software engineer and familiar with wxWidgets and I'd be willing to offer time to do a new interface or selected UI changes if that is what is desired. I'd just need assistance navigating the code to begin with.

[ATH]

Originally Posted by tengai

Yes, I use the "stop" feature often as well. There are times during the day I need all the cores in my CPU so stopping P95 from time to time is a requirement. P95 UI needs to be modernized to help the user manage their multi-core resources better. These type of improvements will only lead to more GHz days...

Prime95 runs on idle priority unless you changed it, and I never noticed it slowing down any other application or game that needed CPU resources. Unless it was something I was specifically timing the run time of to a high accuracy.

[LaurV]

This is not to complain, we are quite happy with how P95 handles the stuff, and always find the way around the issues. And we don't very much like OP's tone of "I want to help you but you don't let me". You either want to help, or not... Either way, we are ok.

But.... Many recent (and not so recent) programs run at idle priority too... (one example is Acrobat reader, quite used in technical circles, and discussed here many times, and no, we can not change to foxit reader or else, as the "else" can not handle 3Dpdf formats). And they will slow to half speed when sharing resources with P95 (there is a discussion here somewhere around).

[mackerel]

There is one scenario where having background tasks, even at idle priority, can have a significant (user noticeable) impact. That is on CPUs which have hyper-threading or SMT enabled. This will reduce the remaining resource available on the other thread of the core. The only workaround I know of for this is to disable HT/SMT, assuming it isn't otherwise needed. Then the higher priority process is able to make better use of the cores.

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by mackerel

There is one scenario where having background tasks, even at idle priority, can have a significant (user noticeable) impact. That is on CPUs which have hyper-threading or SMT enabled. This will reduce the remaining resource available on the other thread of the core. The only workaround I know of for this is to disable HT/SMT, assuming it isn't otherwise needed. Then the higher priority process is able to make better use of the cores.

I find the impact much less noticeable with hyperthreading enabled. On my desktop without hyperthreading, I do manually stop mprime as needed.

[irowiki]

Originally Posted by sdbardwick

I'd find a "Pause for XX minutes" option to be useful addition though, as I'll stop P95 to do some task, then forget to resume. (Of course that says more about my advancing age than anything else )

Bumping this to say a "pause for x, y, z minutes menu when you right click the taskbar icon would be wonderful.

Originally Posted by ATH

Prime95 runs on idle priority unless you changed it, and I never noticed it slowing down any other application or game that needed CPU resources. Unless it was something I was specifically timing the run time of to a high accuracy.

Yeah I run it on my gaming machine and I haven't noticed any issues at all.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by irowiki

Bumping this to say a "pause for x, y, z minutes menu when you right click the taskbar icon would be wonderful.
Yeah I run it on my gaming machine and I haven't noticed any issues at all.

+1 for the pause x minutes - the "stop automation for x minutes" in Misfit is extremely useful for example, when we play with files, and we are always too dumb to remember to re-start automation again.

On the other point, gaming is by definition something that does not go "idle priority". My Starcraft 2 also does not slow down if P95 runs (but cudaLucas slows to 40% of the initial speed when I play SC2, and P95 to about 80%). Other programs do use idle priority (see my posts above) and they do slow down when you run them together with P95. Therefore, your idea of having a "pause for x minutes" (same as "stop automation for x minutes" of Misfit), would be, of course, welcomed, and very useful.

[ixfd64]

Here's a relevant suggestion I made a while ago: https://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=14671