prime64 causing severe unresponsiveness

[Freightyard]

I have discovered extreme slowness and unresponsiveness when running heavy applications (Photoshop) while ntprime64 is running as a service. I tested and experienced the same problem with Prime64 (Windows application).

ntprime64 running: Opening 600 MB image and launching Photoshop takes over one minute. This occurs even with Prime64's CPU priority set to lowest (4 - idle) with Process Explorer (sysinternals.com).

ntprime64 suspended (using Process Explorer): Opening same image takes 3 seconds.

Software: Prime64 version 25.9b4, nsprime64 version 25.11, Photoshop CS4 64-bit
System: Intel i7 965, Win7 x64, 6GB, no overclock

OS and applications are all installed on a pair of RAID0 Intel X25E SSDs.
Data file is stored on separate pair of RAID1 HDDs.

Launching Photoshop with no image results in long delays and unresponsiveness as well.

I will have to manually start/stop Prime64 during periods of computer use/nonuse as it is not feasible to endure this issue. I will also attempt testing with older versions of P95.

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by Freightyard

I will have to manually start/stop Prime64 during periods of computer use/nonuse as it is not feasible to endure this issue. I will also attempt testing with older versions of P95.

Consider this parm from undoc.txt:

In rare cases, users have reported the program can interfere with the
performance of some programs such as disk defragmenters and some games.
You can pause the program automatically when these programs are running by
adding this line to prime.txt:
PauseWhileRunning=prog1[n1],prog2[n2],etc
The [n1], [n2] values are optional and indicate the number of worker threads
to pause when prog1 and prog2 are running. The default value for n1 and n2
is to pause all worker threads. Note that the program will pause if the program
name matches any part of the running program's file name. That is "foobar"
will match "c:\foobar.exe", "C:\FOOBAR\name.exe", and even "C:\myfoobarprog.exe".
Also, if prog1 is "*" the program will pause no matter what. Examples:
PauseWhileRunning=*[1] during 6-7/2:00-3:00
PauseWhileRunning=* during 23:00-24:00 else decomp[1],mygame[2]
The first example pauses one worker thread on Saturday and Sunday between
2AM and 3AM. The second example pauses all workers between 11PM and 12AM and
pauses 1 worker if decomp is running and 2 if mygame is running.

[Freightyard]

Thanks, good info. Unfortunately it's not just a Photoshop issue. It seems to be affecting everything. I don't recall thread priority interfering in the past. It seems like P95 always yielded to other programs. I've even run intense games concurrently.

[Uncwilly]

Are you doing P-1 testing?

[Freightyard]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

Are you doing P-1 testing?

LL

Today, I realized ntprime64 was running and I only experienced a "freeze" one time. Something's odd. The other day the freezes were very clearly connected to when P95 was executing.

I'm going off for a few days and I'm going to leave the Windows service running. I'm very disappointed as I was just about to break the Top 100 after many years with this project. Now I've lost a few ranks since I've been idle for about a week.

I think I might have an Intel Matrix RAID issue as I've had freezes that coincide with hearing the drives spin up. I disabled power management for my hard drives and regressed my drivers to an official release and the major freezing went away. But my P95 problems were after I dealt with that issue...

Will post back with any developments. Thx!

[joblack]

Originally Posted by Freightyard

LL

Today, I realized ntprime64 was running and I only experienced a "freeze" one time. Something's odd. The other day the freezes were very clearly connected to when P95 was executing.

I'm going off for a few days and I'm going to leave the Windows service running. I'm very disappointed as I was just about to break the Top 100 after many years with this project. Now I've lost a few ranks since I've been idle for about a week.

I think I might have an Intel Matrix RAID issue as I've had freezes that coincide with hearing the drives spin up. I disabled power management for my hard drives and regressed my drivers to an official release and the major freezing went away. But my P95 problems were after I dealt with that issue...

Will post back with any developments. Thx!

Prime95 normally doesn't affect the PC. If you play or work with Photoshop it shouldn't slow down that much. If it still occures Prime95 is an indicator that something else isn't working very well on your machine. Try to update the BIOS, drivers, check the memory ...

[Prime95]

It sounds like there was severe swapping going on due to P-1 prior to an LL test. Make sure the memory settings are reasonable -- you can even set it to 8MB so that you never run stage 2 of P-1.

Of course, I could be completely wrong.

[kladner]

I am moving my comments here from a less related thread. Here is what I wrote over there:

Until yesterday, I had been running with the onboard ATI graphics on an Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 board, PhenomII 1090T, 8GB RAM, etc. I had not encountered the problem mentioned above with PS CS5 in Win7 Pro (edit) 64bit.

Yesterday, I got a Gigabyte GV-N460OC-1GI graphics card, put it in, and disabled the onboard video, uninstalled the driver, etc. Now, with Prime64 running, Photoshop acts really crippled, taking forever to open a file, and even to fully draw the window elements such as borders. This doesn't happen if P64 is stopped. This is with version 26.6.

I have not yet experimented with throttling, though I will. If it resolves the issue I'd rather go that route than shutting P64 off on one core. So far, I have just stopped P64 before starting Photoshop.

I'll post again when I have more to report.

EDIT: I just saw the thread which points out the "PauseWhileRunning=" line for Prime.txt. This seems to be the best solution overall.

I have since been experimenting with "PauseWhileRunning=" with mixed results. In general, it works if Photoshop CS5 is launched directly. However, sometimes CS5 remains as a Process even after the program seems to have shut down, causing P64 to remain paused. It will resume if CS5 is terminated in Task Manager.

Also, P64 does not pause if Pshop is launched from Bridge via Camera Raw. I'm not sure what happens if Bridge feed a file to Pshop directly, without going through Camera Raw.

Further, I have not been able to get P64 to pause for Bridge. This is true even if the full path is included in "PauseWhileRunning=". There are still some permutations I have not tried, such as putting Bridge before Pshop after the = sign. I did try with and without a Space following the Comma after the first program listed in the "Pause" line.

At this point, the only thing which works is to launch Pshop first, then Bridge.

Does anyone have suggestions?

[Christenson]

Yes...
a) as P95 suggested, restrict memory usage under options/CPU (I think) to just a few hundred megabytes to prevent swapping when running photoshop...if you want to do this really well, do this for daytime, but leave the settings high for night time, which is whenever you aren't photoshopping.

Also, scan your undoc.txt for a maxCPU= parameter, which you want to set to 90% or so...so if something like PS is trying to lower its priority a little too hard, causing a priority inversion, it doesn't get locked out completely.

Finally, do use task manager to ensure that the P95' task's priority is indeed set at the minimum allowed, (whoops, that's actually on P95's menus!) if you haven't already.

[kladner]

Thanks, Christenson,

I'm going to be away from the computer for a couple of days. But I'll dig into that when I get back.

[Christenson]

That parameter isn't called MaxCPU...it's called Throttle=.