Is it normal to use your computer while still having tests go on?

[birtwistlecaleb]

I am just wondering, i do it also.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by birtwistlecaleb

I am just wondering, i do it also.

Yes. The programs used by different test types, especially P95, work at a very low priority, which means they will "give way" to any other program** which needs the resources, and will only work if nobody needs the resources (which is, the most of the time on your PC, unless you do video editing, complicate CAD projects, or cryptocoin mining, heavy gaming, or similar). When you use word, excel, daily work, net browsing, wasting the time on facebook or youtube, your processor does mostly nothing, beside staying cool. Is is those cycles that P95 and other similar programs are "stealing", making your room warmer and your electricity bill higher. If you are ok with that, run P95 and use your computer in the normal way, in the same time, no restriction.


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**there are exceptions, mainly other programs which also work at very low priority (for example acrobat reader xi is a notorious example), which will "slow down visibly", sharing cycles wit P95, etc, but there are solutions to avoid those cases. Office applications run at a much higher priority, like 6 or 7, and your screensaver runs at 4 or 5, so if you have a screensaver, that will "steal" cycles from P95. Therefore, complicate screensavers should be avoided (P95 will not make much progress if other programs don't give any cycles to it, it will only wait for those cycles). There are more things in the documentation of P95, for who can be bothered to read it.

[retina]

Originally Posted by birtwistlecaleb

Is it normal ...?

Normal? Who cares. Just do what you want and don't worry about what others are doing.

Just IMO.



I'm fairly sure that just running P95 is not normal for most people. So if you have already done one unnormal thing today then you already don't care, right?

[Uncwilly]

Doing so right now. Prime95 is running all the time. I am only stealing time from it a few hours a day.

[kriesel]

Within the GIMPS group, yes. It's also common to run multiple GIMPS programs on the same system.
Try to avoid heavy or fluctuating use coinciding with benchmarking, affecting benchmark results, especially on a GPU driving a display.