Folding causing system to hang/freeze

[Whiskey8]

Hi, hope I'm posting in the right place about this. I have a slight problem with my computer and folding and was hoping someone on here might have the answer.
First, my system specs:
Intel core i7 930 @2.80Ghz
Asus P6T
12Gb 1333mhz ram 7-7-7-24 @1.5v
2x Nvidia GTX 470 GPU's
Corsair AX1200 PSU

Right, my problem is that when the two graphics cards are folding, my system seems to stick or hang, it freezes but ONLY when doing something such as viewing YouTube videos, using windows live mail (I actually think it does it with all windows live applications) and when it does it, it does it in periodic intervals (every 2-3 seconds) the mouse will freeze along with everything else on screen for no more than a second or so, then will run smoothly for two or three seconds before repeating. If anything requests admin privileges, prompting windows UAC to dim the screen and pop up, the system will hang and make that process painfully longer and tedious as well. This only happens when both graphics cards are folding, if just the CPU, or the CPU and one GPU client are running, everything is fine. I thought it was hardware related and it may be, however I found that, after having read around for a LONG time, if I disable hardware acceleration in flash for YouTube videos, I can suddenly watch YouTube videos without any problems while folding. I was wondering if it is therefore a known issue that I have somehow not stumbled upon, that while two graphics cards are folding, hardware accelerated graphics don't run well. Also, is there a way to stop windows from allowing hardware accelerated graphics to be used while folding is active, and if so, would this affect any other aspects of the computers usability/performance? Many thanks if anyone can provide insight, this one has been baffling me for a while now.

 

[jamesriley94]

Well folding stresses the cpu and graphics out as much as possible. It cant be that much of a surprise that your system lags a little when being stressed at 100%, then trying to do more things as well? It's like stress testing overclocks and stuff. Especially with Intel Burn Test, where it can only leave at some instances 200mb of RAM to allow you to run windows with, which obviously it doesnt really like and so other programs do lag.
Just dont fold while you're using the PC? I'm pretty sure other folders dont try to use their PCs when they fold.

 

[Josh Weston]

Well, I fold 24/7, and only pause if i'm playing a game. I'm only folding on a CPU (integrated graphics, y0) so perhaps the GPU folding is what's making Windows lag out for you. I have no issues using the PC when folding...

 

[hmmblah]

With gpu (browser) acceleration and UAC disabled, I have no slowdowns while folding. I have always run with UAC off though so never noticed what you are describing. If turning off UAC isn't an option, maybe disabling aero effects will help.

I had sli 470's before and saw exactly the same thing with flash videos while folding on both GPUs. Makes sense though.

I fold 24/7 on my rig and use it while folding. The only time I pause folding is when gaming or running vms. I know when my wife uses Lightroom she has to pause CPU folding or gets painfully slow.

 

[Whiskey8]

I have seen on other threads people strongly advising to keep aero features on when GPU folding. I too only really pause clients if I'm going on a game and even then it depends on the game, most games I can run on just one GPU so I fold on one while the other is free to render the game. I wonder if it is the GTX 470 specifically... I can't quite remember if I saw this problem when running on my 8800GTX's ... I will try disabling UAC, not sure how to disable hardware acceleration in my browser, though as I said before its not the browser itself, only flash content such as YouTube which I already seem to have worked around... Now if only I could find out if it were possible to disable hardware acceleration for windows live mail and similar applications, as they're the only other things I see this behaviour in.