Re: Performance hit?
Originally posted by shakespeare
I know that in the FAQ's it explains that Folding is a low-priority process, but even so, I'd like to know if there's even a slight performance hit when running the process. Am I able to do anything just as well if it's not running? Because it sure feels like some things just aren't as smooth (iTunes visuals are particularly obvious).
It depends on a lot of factors. But lets look at what it means for a process to have a low priority.
At work, I've got a 1.4 GHz Intel machine running folding at the lowest priority. For a test, I just made a program that loops continuously, hogging the processer. This program runs at normal priority. When I run folding and my test program simulteneously, the folding CPU usage goes down to zero and the test programs usage goes up to nearly 100%. However, folding will occasionally "rob" a few stray CPU cycles causing its CPU usage to temporarily jump to 3-7%. Likely these are cycles that my test program is dropping, but thats not certain.
From this test, I conclude that folding may "sip" some CPU usage, even when the processor is being pegged out by other processes. I have found the results to be slightly more pronounced on OS X.
We must also take into account memory usage. Folding gets loaded into memory when it starts, using some RAM. Also, it is always running, meaning that it is likely to be swapped back into memory very shortly after it is swapped out. This can be a problem on machines with little memory. This could slow a system down some.
Just some considerations you may want to take into account.
Taft