I render a lot using Handbrake and I can't tolerate the twice as long time to render while running boinc. I have a 980ti and Fury x and would love to run them in the background while I render even if my render time is say 20% slower.

I realize there was a topic extremely similar to this back in March but no one ever responded to it, here's to hoping this one is different.

In the project preferences, uncheck "Use CPU", make sure "Use NVIDIA GPU" and "Use ATI GPU" are checked. That is it.

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That will prevent you downloading new work for the CPU, which is ideal if you want to keep the CPU permanently clear for rendering. It won't be ideal if you're happy to let the CPU run BOINC projects when you're not working - sadly, you would have to suspend individual tasks or projects to achieve that, because the BOINC developers haven't ever recognised that some people - like you - might be prepared to donate a small amount of CPU time to support a GPU, but not to donate a full-time CPU: they took an absolute 'all or nothing' view.

Due to them already having settings such as "Suspend GPU" and "Use GPU based on preferences" would it really be so hard to add one more stating "Suspend CPU work but not GPU?"

The trouble in this is that no work done on the GPU happens without being executed on the CPU. So with all work done on the GPU, the CPU is used to execute the actual science program.

The CPU program will translate the data of the task something the GPU can execute (kernels), move this data to the GPU's memory, then wait for the GPU to give the OK signal that this data was worked on, before moving it back to the PC's memory, translate it back and store it on disk. So quite a bit of work is still being done by the CPU.

And therefore we have only got the "Suspend GPU" and "Suspend everything" options, as without the CPU you cannot do work on the GPU. It'd be confusing.

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But why can't we get to chose for ourselves? There's a huge difference between running a CPU app full-out (full use of FPU, SIMD registers and all), and the tiny amount of light-weight work that a GPU app will place on it (less than 1% by time, and even less in terms of real work, for a well-chosen GPU app).

But why can't we get to chose for ourselves?

You know the innards of your PC and what does what. The majority doesn't and doesn't care.

So when then given the option to suspend CPU but not GPU, and they check in Windows Task Manager (or similar in other OSes) they find that the CPU is still used and will tell the developers in not too friendly details to fix it, or...

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With an option such as suspend cpu but not gpu wouldn't completely disable the cpu but it would be low enough usage, say 20%, that any ignorant person to computers wouldn't really notice. And for us in the know, we have no problem with it. I certainly hope this feature becomes reality because for now I have to just straight up suspend everything when I render.

A pitty that BOINC power users are limited because of person not knowing how to use a software ...

Maybe time to make a version for standard users and one advanced user version ?