Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: process priorities

Author: William Penn

Date: 06:38:57 04/06/04

Go up one level in this thread


On April 06, 2004 at 09:07:30, William Penn wrote:

>On April 05, 2004 at 07:35:43, Murano Lima wrote:
>
>>
>>Hello William,
>>
>>if you have problems only when using 768 MB hash,
>>then its clear that u should reduce the size
>>to get better multi-tasking-performance.
>>
>>If the problem is still there when u use really smaller
>>hash tables, then  you can try the following:
>>
>>start the gui and the engines u want to play or analyze.
>>then press Ctl-Alt-Del, choose the task manager and look for
>>the processes representing the gui and/or engines.
>>By right-clicking the single processes u can set the priority.
>>Lower it and see if the result is what u wanted.
>>
>>(i am not absolutely sure about XP H O M E, but i think it should be there).
>>
>>Hope it helps :-)
>>Regards
>>Murano
>
>As I've said before, the extreme slowdown with the Shredder Classic GUI is not
>related to hash size. Hash size makes a little difference, but not a lot. The
>slowdown I'm experiencing with the Shredder Classic GUI is something more
>fundamental. It is probably an incompatibility with the Windows XP Home
>operating system, either at the coding level or during compilation. How else can
>you explain that it takes a minute or two to simply open another program (for
>example, Outlook Express) while a chess engine (usually Shredder 8) is running
>in the Classic GUI? This problem does not happen with the Shredder 8 CB/native
>GUI.
>
>Another possibility that comes to mind is that there's a difference between my
>Athlon XP 2400+ 2.0GHz processor and other processors such as Pentium 4's with
>hyperthreading. What works well on the latter may not work correctly on the
>former. So if people are writing and testing code on hyperthreaded processors,
>they're leaving the rest of us behind. Just an idea. I don't know.
>
>Thanks for the tip about rightclicking processes in the Task Manager to change
>their priorities. I wasn't aware of that operation, and will give it a try.
>However I uninstalled the Classic GUIs, thinking I would never attempt to use
>them again, so will have to wait til I have some free computer time to reinstall
>and test them again. I've tried both the Classic 6 and new Shredder Classic
>GUI's, and they seem the same in these regards.
>WP

I see that there are these levels of process priorities available:
Realtime
High
AboveNormal
Normal
BelowNormal
Low
I happen to have a longterm (several hours, at least) Infinite Analysis in
progress with the CB GUI and Shredder 8. The priority for the ChessProgram8.exe
process was Normal in Task Manager. I tried changing it to AboveNormal and High,
which caused exactly the same symptoms as if I were using the Classic GUI, i.e.
every other open program slowed down to a snail's pace or stopped responding
normally. I've also tried lowering the priority to BelowNormal and Low, which
improves response of the other programs a bit. I'm not sure yet if it will slow
down the chess engine significantly. After changing the priority to Low, the
kN/s seems to be falling off slightly from 378 to 375 after several minutes, but
that could be a normal fluctuation. If the difference is 1% or less, then I
would prefer the enhanced op system response.

So this might explain why the Classic GUI is causing a problem, if the priority
of those processes is somehow set above Normal by default. I'll have to try it.
I wonder if that's something that could be fixed easily in the coding or the
compilation of the Classic GUI? It would be some trouble to reset the process
priorities every time I start an engine or the GUI!?
-WP







This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.