My system has six CPU cores and a GPU. When the machine is idle, I let BOINC use five cores and the GPU, but it seems that the only automatic throttling option when the machine is in use is to suspend everything.

What I would like to do is continue to run BOINC tasks, but only on three or four cores and no GPU while I'm working on the PC, i.e. reduce the impact but not disable it completely.

Is there a utility or alternative BOINC manager that will do something like this? Surely I can't be the first person to wish to throttle rather than suspend when active?

The only way to do this now is scripting this with creating multiple versions of the global_prefs_override.xml and have that script copy over the proper file and read in with boinccmd. Past discussions at WCG forums have been concluded as this being a successful approach.

Like there is a memory while working / idle, a wish to control CPU cores and even now GPU [when e.g. all GPUs and when the secondary card(s) to use] idle/use has been issued many times. To me it's all about allowance to maximize host utilization. E.g. Gaming on a certain core with a certain GPU, whilst crunching continues on other cores and GPUs, but as of now there's only an all or nothing.

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

Thanks. Now I just need to find a way to automatically run a script when my machine goes idle and when I return to it. I wonder if I can hook into the screen saver invocation process somehow...

Scripting is way over my head, but I've wondered the same thing. I'm fine (most of the time) for BOINC to run in the background using less CPUsage when I'm on the computer, and a higher percentage when I'm not. Is there a wish list of features somewhere that this could be added to?