Hello everybody!

I have BOINC crunching almost 24/7 on my machine. Also when playing games.
Unfortunately in some cases BOINC is definitely reducing the performance of (hardware-esurient) games.

Of course I could stop BOINC for the time I play but that would be waste of resources as I have an i7 cpu that is not even close to fully utilization when it comes to core/thread usage.
Most games still use just one core/thread, some two and only very few more.
So what I do now is, I check how many cores/threads the game can handle and then set my BOINC to use MAX_AVAILABLE_THREADS MINUS NUMBER_OF_THREADS_GAME_USES.
For example: Before I play EvE Online I go to the BOINC settings and reduce the number of used cores/threads from eight (what is max available at my i7 cpu) to seven in order to have a game-dedicated, free core/thread, but still having BOINC running on the remaining seven cores/threads + I deactivate the gpu-crunching as long as I play.

This settings alteration is of course not a big problem as it is easily accessible. But it is kind of a pain in the ass changing the settings all the time.

Therefore I think it would be a great idea to have predefined profiles that are set up in the settings and are accessible via the tray icon or the menu navigation within the management client software.
This would allow me to setup a couple of profiles that match the hardware requirements for each of my games. Sticking to my example above that would mean, that whenever I want to play EvE Online I just right click the windows tray icon and pick one of my setup profiles which results in an automated setting alteration. Done playing I’d just reset the profile to “Full Throttle” having my settings restored.

Maybe the profile setup even allows to assign them an executable files. So that whenever this exe if found running the according profile becomes active.

I could also imagine of a feature that detects other processes on a computer that are using plenty of cpu over a given amount of time, notifying me about this fact and suggesting an appropriate profile setup.
Even gpu usage could be auto-detected and the BOINC gpu utilization becomes deactivated. AND – vice versa – the client could detect threads/cores that are on idle, suggesting the usage of the same.

It all may sound “useless” in terms of stability, productivity and so on. But it would greatly increase usability and overall user experience + the ease of integration in common pc systems.

Also please have in mind, that the common guy out there is NOT A NERD like most of us are! I’ve heard from a lot of people that are annoyed by the fact that their pcs become slower in games whilst crunching with BOINC and turn it off for good.
My gut feeling tells me, that a little GUI based interface (maybe a wizzard) could significantly increase the client acceptance and understanding of what happens behind the scenes.

It would be great to find a feature like this in one of the upcoming client versions.

Thank you for your time!

I liked your proposal and sent it to the developers, although in a somewhat rewritten form. See, adding more wizards to the Manager is something for a future BOINC Manager. So I asked for the <exclusive_app/> and <exclusive_gpu_app/> functions to be increased wit:

1. Switch BOINC from using --say-- 100% of CPU cores to 50% of CPU cores during the time program X is in memory. As soon as the program leaves memory, switch back to using CPU cores amount as the user has set.
2. Perhaps add the possibility to throttle the other CPU cores during the time this program is in memory? As soon as the program leaves memory, switch back to using CPU time as the user has set.

David has added it to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/PrefsRemodel for the moment, since if they do this, it would be part of a complete redo of the preferences system. Which is also scheduled for a future version.

---

This would be a great feature to have implemented.