eFMer Priority

[fred]

Priority is a TThrottle spin-off.

Before version 1.73, this was an integral part of TThrottle, as the cuda tab. Because this feature didn't quite belong in the TThrottle program, I removed it.
Priority is quite similar, and has only one purpose, the modification of the priority of a list of processes (programs) and all of its threads.

Program / Process is where you put in the complete name of the program. The name will match any running program, that has this name in it.
Press v Add v to put the program in the list.

Below the list is a priority selection, use high priorities with extreme care. Set high may cause system instabilities.

Every (refresh rate) seconds, the computer is scanned, for the running processes that are in the list.
A setting of 10-20 should be ideal.

There is a graph, that can give you some more information.

http://efmer.eu/download/boinc/priority/Priority_1_2.zip Version 1.2

V 1.2:

Added: Idle and Lowest thread priority.
Fixed: The about box wasn't shown.

[Beyond]

I've been using this lately and it works great for tweaking the priorities of various projects.  A problem I'm having though is that if I try to set projects to different priorities they all change at once to the last one set.  For instance, if I set project 1 to "Above" then set Project 2 to "Below", both will change to "Below".  If I then highlight Project 1 and then select "Above", both change to "Above".  Am I doing something wrong?

[fred]

I've been using this lately and it works great for tweaking the priorities of various projects.  A problem I'm having though is that if I try to set projects to different priorities they all change at once to the last one set.  For instance, if I set project 1 to "Above" then set Project 2 to "Below", both will change to "Below".  If I then highlight Project 1 and then select "Above", both change to "Above".  Am I doing something wrong?

There is no way to set priorities of different projects as far as I know.
You can rename the exe and run the program twice and add the project exe name more explicit.

[Beyond]

I've been using this lately and it works great for tweaking the priorities of various projects.  A problem I'm having though is that if I try to set projects to different priorities they all change at once to the last one set.  For instance, if I set project 1 to "Above" then set Project 2 to "Below", both will change to "Below".  If I then highlight Project 1 and then select "Above", both change to "Above".  Am I doing something wrong?

There is no way to set priorities of different projects as far as I know.
You can rename the exe and run the program twice and add the project exe name more explicit.

Named the second exe to Priority64-2.exe and it worked just fine.  One project is running at "Above" and the other at "Below".  Thanks for the great suggestion 

[Terror Australis]

Hi Fred
As per this thread on the SAH forums,
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=62978

I tried to use Priority to control the CUDA exe and VMWare Player. As per your advice above I ran 2 instances of Priority, one for each program. I set the CUDA exe (Lunatics x32f) variously to Normal, Above and High and for VMWare I tried Normal and Below.

Whatever combinations of settings I use on the 2 running instances of Priority, I still run into the problem that when VMWare is maximised it grabs all the CPU and leaves CUDA with nothing. It stays like this till I go into Task Manager and manually set the priority back to "Low".

When VMWare is running minimised or only in a partial window the system works as I want, it's only when fully maximised that the priority of the VM is raised back to "Normal". VMWare seems to be able to change it's pririty at will

System is Q9650 + 2 x GTX285's, 4GB Mem, Win XP-Pro 32, VMWare Player V3.00, BOINC V6.10.56 + Lunatics X32f.

Regards
T.A.

[Pepo]

[...] I set the CUDA exe (Lunatics x32f) variously to Normal, Above and High and for VMWare I tried Normal and Below.

Whatever combinations of settings I use on the 2 running instances of Priority, I still run into the problem that when VMWare is maximised it grabs all the CPU and leaves CUDA with nothing. It stays like this till I go into Task Manager and manually set the priority back to "Low".

When VMWare is running minimised or only in a partial window the system works as I want, it's only when fully maximised that the priority of the VM is raised back to "Normal". VMWare seems to be able to change it's pririty at will

I remember that for a virtual machine, running under VMware, you could set its priority separately for background and foreground state (I think that it did not distinguish between a topmost and full-screen window).

Try to set it to "Low" for the raised state too. (Or am I missing something?)

[Beyond]

Feature request:  allow "Priority" to set the process priority to "low".

[fred]

Feature request:  allow "Priority" to set the process priority to "low".

Why, because it does nothing at all.
A process is a collection of threads, so a process itself is nothing....
The thread priority is set by the priority program.
The process priority stetting is intended for new threads, when a new thread is created thread it sometimes inhereds the process priority, but not always.
But the program will set all threads to the selected priority, at a regular interval.

[Beyond]

I'm not understanding.  In task manager I can change the priority to low, below normal, normal, above normal, high and realtime.  In "Priority" there is no choice for "low", only below, normal, above and high.

[Pepo]

Feature request:  allow "Priority" to set the process priority to "low".

Why, because it does nothing at all.
[...]
The process priority stetting is intended for new threads, when a new thread is created thread it sometimes inhereds the process priority, but not always.

This is not very true. If you lower a process' priority (usually, I assume which threads' priorities are defined relative to its process' priority), all its existing (not just future) threads' priorities (both base and dynamic) will be lowered accordingly too. Maybe an exception would be threads, which define their priority explicitly to some value (like BOINC tasks' threads priorities). Or which threads' priorities are set externally by e.g. "eFMer Priority"?

But I (thus) agree that setting threads' priorities directly overrides their process' priority. 

One empirical test with eFMer Priority - setting one process' threads' priorities to Below shifted also the whole process' priority to Below.

Maybe Beyond should just formulate his request differently? He just writes:

I'm not understanding.  In task manager I can change the priority to low, below normal, normal, above normal, high and realtime.  In "Priority" there is no choice for "low", only below, normal, above and high.

• Feature request:  allow "Priority" to set the priorities also to "Low".

In the list, there is "Below normal", but "Low" is missing.
And, what about adding also "Idle"?

[Beyond]

Maybe Beyond should just formulate his request differently? He just writes:

I'm not understanding.  In task manager I can change the priority to low, below normal, normal, above normal, high and realtime.  In "Priority" there is no choice for "low", only below, normal, above and high.

• Feature request:  allow "Priority" to set the priorities also to "Low".

In the list, there is "Below normal", but "Low" is missing.  And, what about adding also "Idle"?

+1 Exactly!  Thought that's what I was asking, maybe mis-phrased it

[fred]

Added V 1.2:

Process: Idle -- Thread: Idle
Process: Below normal -- Thread: Lowest

There is no Lowest setting for a process, only for the thread.

Some program call idle -> lowest

For testing I use Process Explorer.

[fred]

Nice, thanks!  Where to DL it?

Scroll to the top of this topic.

[Beyond]

Just saw that.  First tried to DL it here:

http://www.efmer.eu/boinc/download.html

Time to update it to 1.2! 

[fred]

Just saw that.  First tried to DL it here:

http://www.efmer.eu/boinc/download.html

Time to update it to 1.2! 

I was looking for that one.