Define Device Profiles

I have recently realised the full importance of defining device profiles for each device you run.  Especially when the projects themselves allow you to set the specs with the project which over rides anything you have set with boinc on your machine.  Though the only project I have really ever see do that is World Community Grid.

I honestly do not remember if I set the default profile for World Community grid, other then specifying the projects I wished to crunch, or if it read the boinc settings on my main machine and used that.  Either way I have 3 different computers with 3 very different concerns, and it wasn't until looking at ways to consider optimizing them, that I realized the issues I had.

First my oldest computer, a laptop that has been on its last legs for 3 years now ( the energizer laptop).  After reinstating it as a WCG only machine with reduced settings, a few months after I posted I was retiring it, I watched after it downloaded a Clean Energy project that should have only taken 14 hours to complete, but things got fishy after it had been running for 20 or so hours one week.  I realized due to it being shut down at night, and stopped and started for other reasons, that it was a computer like this that they post the notice about system requirements about for the Clean Energy Project.  With checkpoints few and far between ( not sure there really are any), even leaving it running for 4 or so hours at a time might not result in a check point, causing all such data to be lost upon shutdown.  So that was my first test ride.

Secondly the Work horse the tower that has next to no other demands on its processor and gpu 90% of the time, and left to crunch away happily, combined with the fact that it is a tower, it remains quite cool.  This one was suffering far to much being restricted to the level of the others, and upon watching it for some time yesterday and today, I realized somehow the settings were rewritten according to the profile that was my Default for WCG.  Quickly solved by a  new device profile, set to Maximum power.  (Lets see how this works in a few days).

Lastly the machine with so many heat issues its not even funny, my main laptop, so this one I need to constantly toy with, and while it has undeniably the most powerful CPU of the three, the heat issues lead me to throttle its crunching power, just so I don't fry all sorts of components.

So far my experience with these device profiles is rather nice.  I am not sure if WCG limits you to four profiles ( Default, Home, Work, School), but should I need to I will look into finding a way to name your own profiles, and set your own settings. 

Happy crunching and keep on processing away!