Project Mercury - CPU Priority Booster for heavy multitaskers

fuck it...figured i give some feedback....ran svpmark with wps writer, mpc playing movie,chrome all minimized and got surprising results

Mercury auto:
mercury%20ON_zpsa3wf7749.png
[/URL][/IMG]
Mercury off:


Hell it seems to work at least;)
i have to assume it was on auto setting cause with win10 there's no way to change settings, and it not the first app i couldn't change settings while in system tray, so its not really the apps fault.

edit: ill have to try running 3dmark or something while encoding bluerays to dvd5 and see how that does
 
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Sorry idont have win10 i might install it on my laptop for dualboot to run experiments.
under normal win7 conditions the programs does it magic as soon as it started. or more correctly after 3 secs. it wait 3 secs so if you have it auto-started it doesnt use cpu time while all the other programs are starting up.

Thank you for the feed back. not any miracles there :)
How high where you cpu utilization in for the background stuff ?

-- edit--
side not
if you are using handbrake for the conversion my program can only do very little since handbrake as default already runs the encoding in "below normal" CPU priority
 
Just bumping because this weekend i have no long time duties to do. So I'm hoping to get some feedback or ideas form you guys that i can use to improve this.

Here are some thing I'm tinkering with in my head ( better names probbaly needs to be found)

FastReact
Disabled windows animation/menu delays etc etc. to give a more responsive system.
nothing more than a regeditry hack but i need to figure out how to make windows update it live ( no need for reboot)

MegaBoost:
When this is enabled you foreground application gets "High" priority.
I'm torn about this as "High priority" can make you game conflict/fight with the networks drive for CPU resource and might introduce network lag. might end up beeing more dementrial for most people

Gentle memory cleaning:
Only make the few hig memmory using programs swap out thier memory.
again torn as i don't really like memory cleaning features. its mostly snake oil. and i dont want to add in coding and increase memory footprint for snake oil.

Excessive mode
Will look for non foreground applications with high CPU usage (80%+) and give then "Below normal" CPU priority. Im a bit worried about cpu usage while doing these kinds of scans as i don't want to introduce microstutter on the foregrounds application/game.
This is how Process lasso works. and its giving me a bit of a challange to implant

Child Awareness
This mode/features will boost child process from you foreground application as well. it will only work for known programs that has this behavier. e.g. like firefox
With this enabled having firefox as foreground application would also increase CPU priority for flash player. i came up with this idea as I saw youtube player struggling while I was doing some CPU heavy compression.
This will be unneeded if I can get excessive mode to work though, and is mostly a patchwork solutions for specific cases



TLDR: Give me some good suggestion i can tinker on this weekend please :)
 
New link please! I want to download Mercury. It would help me with an Excel workbook that has over 420,000 lines. :)
 
Beyond just CPU priority, have you considered I/O priority? I've found on my spinning disk systems that assigning below normal I/O priority to some tasks greatly improves my perceived performance. I don't know how it would affect benchmark perf, but it might be worth checking looking into.
 
Earlier this week a thought I had was for the ability to sick Mercury on (1) a very specific PID, (2) multiple specific PIDs only, (3) multiple specific PDIs only but prioritizing on the one with the greatest demands, (4) normal Mercury operation but applying only to any process that has a matching keyword from a list (perhaps I want Mercury to apply to only processes of a specific name rather than PID, that way it doesn't accidentally boost priority on a task that might come up -- ex I am multitasking by browsing the internet while process X is doing its thing).
 
Anyone try this on a Surface Pro? Seems like it might help squeeze a little power / battery out of it. If Microsoft doesn't do this already for those, I can't remember.
SvenBent said:
Just bumping because this weekend i have no long time duties to do. So I'm hoping to get some feedback or ideas form you guys that i can use to improve this.

Here are some thing I'm tinkering with in my head ( better names probbaly needs to be found)

FastReact
Disabled windows animation/menu delays etc etc. to give a more responsive system.
nothing more than a regeditry hack but i need to figure out how to make windows update it live ( no need for reboot)


:)
Click to expand...

To update those settings live, you should be able to reload explorer.exe. I'm sure there's probably a command to do it without that, but that's the quick and dirty way to force a lot of reg changes.


It's a good concept. Reminds me of the governors on Android which dictate what gets priority. It's something that should really be built into the OS, but they don't. I used to do it manually when doing CPU intensive stuff like 3d rendering or encoding.
 
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I;m finally having excessive mode in a somehow running way in its own little utility.
It will find any running process that takes more than 90% of the CPU time and adjsut it to bee less of a CPU time stealer.
However im in doubt of which method to use here

Lower priorty to below normal
Pro: You system will be running at full utilization since all cores are still available for all processes
Con: might not really do that big of a difference since active program has incresed priority anyway

Remove access to a core
Pro: This will make sure that any active program/games has at least one core for itself, that any background task cant "steal".
Con: if your active program is CPU light (web browsing), you are not utilization the full CPU as the reserved core would not really do any work.
 
SvenBent said:
New versions

V1.0.1.0
- Automatic CPU slice mode implanted

This features check if the keyboard/mouse has been idle for 6 or more minutes. If so it changes the CPU slice mode to "Server" for enhanced CPU efficiency. When keyboard/mouse activity resumes, the CPU slice mode will be set "Desktop"


Upcoming planes are still excessive mode and a features to block computer sleep if there is high CPU activity
Click to expand...

Be careful with those types of assumptions, since you also need to consider Joypad/Gamepad supported titles. It might be simpler just to check for a screensaver/low power mode instead.

V1.0.3.0
- Implanted "No multicore stutter" feature. Active program only runs on Core0
Click to expand...

While forcing the program on one thread makes sense, you might want to make this configurable via either .ini or registry, since I could forsee some performance loss if a CPU heavy thread on core 0 and Mercury fight for time, especially if data needs to be loaded from the CPU cache every time they get swapped.
 
Point 1:
You are correct. My explanation was not technical correct. i check with windows "idle time" timer the same timer windows use to activate low power mode and screensavers. so unless windows does not take joy/gamepads into account my program should be fine. But i will test this just to be sure. i never liked to play with joypad but luckily my wife can only play that way, so i have easy access to test it :)

Point 2:
I'm not sure i understand your point.
This features is on on/off toggle in the systray icon menu. And its only the active program that gets moved to core 0 aka the game that has multicore stutter issues. So backgrounds programs are free to roam around on all cores.
The only way i can foresee this cause cache thrashing, is when it gets move to core0 because it might be running on a randome core before it gets activated, but that should be only happen once ,unless you alt-tab out of the game and back in which it will do it once more.
Compared to windows constant swapping threads around on cores, cache trashing should be minimized on the active program.
Mercury does not run on a specific core btw.
Did i understand your point correctly ?
 
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Went to try this out for my slow work laptop and Symantec thinks it's suspicious file. Also ran it through Virustotal and it says Avira thinks your site is a Malware site, fyi

edit: guessing this was compiled for 64bit? Damn, I really need to get my work laptop reimaged with 64bit
 
@Danith. Ty fo the info the oroblem lie with internal compression (like UPX) Since itcan potentiality ake it harder forAVenginesto detect malare Laz AVprogramers just mark the file suspecious assoon as they enconter nternal compression, instead of creating a propper decompress an then scan routine.
This will be the 4th tmie im contactin avira around this issue. Can you give me theversion of norton you are using so i can get them to fix their scan engine too

And yes it is64bit compiled.
64 bit is aprox. 15% faster codeexecution so it has less cpu usage.
Alos 64 bt code is more secure as NX bit is enabled for all 64 bit software .

I can compilea 32bit version ifyou need.
 
SvenBent said:
@Danith. Ty fo the info the oroblem lie with internal compression (like UPX) Since itcan potentiality ake it harder forAVenginesto detect malare Laz AVprogramers just mark the file suspecious assoon as they enconter nternal compression, instead of creating a propper decompress an then scan routine.
This will be the 4th tmie im contactin avira around this issue. Can you give me theversion of norton you are using so i can get them to fix their scan engine too

And yes it is64bit compiled.
64 bit is aprox. 15% faster codeexecution so it has less cpu usage.
Alos 64 bt code is more secure as NX bit is enabled for all 64 bit software .

I can compilea 32bit version ifyou need.
Click to expand...

Would appreciate it if you can run this message through a spellchecker.;)
 
SvenBent said:
Point 1:
You are correct. My explanation was not technical correct. i check with windows "idle time" timer the same timer windows use to activate low power mode and screensavers. so unless windows does not take joy/gamepads into account my program should be fine. But i will test this just to be sure. i never liked to play with joypad but luckily my wife can only play that way, so i have easy access to test it :)
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes sense then.

Point 2:
I'm not sure i understand your point.
This features is on on/off toggle in the systray icon menu. And its only the active program that gets moved to core 0 aka the game that has multicore stutter issues. So backgrounds programs are free to roam around on all cores.
The only way i can foresee this cause cache thrashing, is when it gets move to core0 because it might be running on a randome core before it gets activated, but that should be only happen once ,unless you alt-tab out of the game and back in which it will do it once more.
Compared to windows constant swapping threads around on cores, cache trashing should be minimized on the active program.
Mercury does not run on a specific core btw.
Did i understand your point correctly ?
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes a bit more sense then.

Kinda goes to show though, MSFT does a decent enough job with their thread scheduler, but it would be nice if MSFT would try and come up with some way to take thread workload into account, to try an prevent the bumping of high workload threads at all. Especially on systems with more then two cores.
 
It shouldnt be used with other software that does the same job, they could fight each other and you wouldnt have a guaranteed result.
Either that or one of them would be redundant.
 
@diggi i dont see any immediately danger by combining those to but. but as Nenu said i would no recommends it in general.

Project mercury increase your active application. and process lasso i believe lowers you backgrounds applications once they hit a certain CPU threshold

in most of the cases there will be no different as having above vs normal is the same as above vs below. You don't get a even higher share of the cake from being two levels higher in priority than you do with one. Which is also why i have no impleanted the options to se active programs to high or Realtime. ( also high and real-time can give mouse/kb lag and freeze like states).

Its basically two way to archive the same. however there are two situations each have a advantage

1 -background music:
if you are running background music like Pandora from you web browser and you start compression with 7-zip ( highly CPU heavy and multihtreaded.
Project mercury will give 7-zip increased priority and the music will lag (Some music players will play fine due to them auto-setting themselves to above priority. e.g. winamp)
Process lasso will not make a change since no background task is using high CPU resource.
In this case process lasso has the better results. until you just minimize or leave the 7-zip compression window.

2-Multiple heavy CPU processes:
In this case you have at least a dozen heavy CPU process running in the background and start your favorite game:
Project Mercury will adjust you game to Above Normal CPU priority. you game will receive and increased amount of CPU resources and better FPS.
Process lasso will not do anything since no background task has a high enough CPU utilization (They are all below 33% on a quadcore)

So even though they work almost the same there are some specific situations they react differently.


and this gave me an idea for a setting to only boost games aka full screen applications :)
 
A quick discovery. in regards to windows10
If you run applications in administrator mode, Project mercury cannot adjust its priority. To fix this start Project Mercury in administrator mode as well.
 
Replying to show continued support. I'm subscribed to this thread and check it every time it gets an update. Just want you to know, SvenBent. :)
 
Mercury download link is broken. I should host a copy of it on my site. =(
 
I'll fix the server tonight.
Software is freely to be distributed in non modified form.
 
V 1.2.0.0 on the way

This weekend v1.2.0.0. should hope fully be done.

The main upgrade is in heavily reduced CPU usage when i monitor mode.
Project Mercury already had lower CPU usage than both Process lasso and process tamer. but was slightly higher than TopWinPrio.
The new version should reduce CPU usage from about 0.003-0.004% on a Core2Duo Q6600 to approximately 0% ( with a precision of 8 digits after the comma i was still unable to measure any CPU usage).
So lesser CPU usage than any know "competitor"

Next version also have improved response time to change priority.
The old version had a worst case of up to ~500ms from switching program/window to priority adjustment started. The new version it should be reduced to near 0ms.
For comparison TopWinPrio has ~ 2000ms worst case scenario and it can be lowered to ~1000ms worst case scenario.


I've also done a bunch of benchmark on different machines between Project Mercuy, Process lasso and Process tamer.
Both Process Lass and Process Tamer falls flat during heavy multitasking. Their default work method is inherently flawed as they look for a program that uses to much CPU. Rhats a SINGLE program that uses to much CPU. If you are running a multiple of CPU heavy programs they dont detect any bad programs and fails to resolve the stuttering and lag.
More about it when the benchmarks get uploaded


TLDR:
New version on the way with reduced CPU usage and faster response time
 
SvenBent said:
Project Mercury si apparently also hosted at softpedia now.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/CPU-Tweak/Project-Mercury.shtml
Click to expand...
Some people will not be comfortable with Softpedia. In the past there has been adware/malware/spyware problems regarding Softpedia.

On another note, this is one reason why checksum verification is important!

I just downloaded Mercury.exe from Post #1 and got these checksums:

MD5
a899b7852974170a02ae1ba43101b5c3

SHA1
f60bf4ba0227b1ca6dcba1ee000c1fdc4fda3832

CRC32
4ad42a63

Could you confirm that these are valid checksums of the latest binary?

EDIT: Mirrored @

http://hlrse.net/Mercury.exe

http://hlrse.net/Mercury.txt

http://hlrse.net/Mercury.crc32
http://hlrse.net/Mercury.md5
http://hlrse.net/Mercury.sha1
 
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Hash/checksums from my original file at home

SHA1
f60bf4ba0227b1ca6dcba1ee000c1fdc4fda3832

MD5
a899b7852974170a02ae1ba43101b5c3

CRC32
4ad42a63

Size
493,056 bytes
 
V 1.2.0.0 is released

Rewrote the code structure to no longer used a loop with timed interval. Insed its now based on a windows hook.
This results in a dramatic reduce in it already low CPU usage as there is no more CPU resources wasted in check rinse and repeat loops. Instead Windows will send a message as soon as a new window has received focus and call Project Mercury

Overall CPU usage has dropped from 0.003-0.004% to below 0.0000000000000001% on a Core2 Quad Q6600

Since there is no delay between checks, it also means Project Mercury now react as fast as possible and no longer up to a 05sec delay in a worst case scenario.

Due to this new structure i had to remove the code for automatic CPU slice mode due to incompatibilities. I need to look into a total rewrite of the code before i can re implant this feature


www.TechCenter.dk/Mercury.exe
 
Please confirm these checksums.

MD5
dfdaa29255a80d32845b153de1033e06

SHA1
d4703f4211915ef6b43a4aef1e7122b41b7639d4

CRC32
9831b39a

2/14/2016
 
Hash info

MD5 : DFDAA29255A80D32845B153DE1033E06
SHA-1 : D4703F4211915EF6B43A4AEF1E7122B41B7639D4
SHA-256 : CA3CD4F43174B22ADC0125CC166F6185AF180D538CC75B32238524630D0B51D4
SHA-512 : BBCD5F912F2DD05028D3B6D02837739DBC2B32B04192BF690B5AE2A59E29C1C30EF1B4E4D592F3C8C13DE52557270745870D413BB7CF1E0FF3E7023E702D8F2D
 
Found a little bug.
When you pause the programs it actually starts to consume around 0.04% CPU ressource on a Core 2 Quad Q6600.
There is no other known side-effect besides this lightly elevated CPU usage when paused.
I will trace the code this week and hopefully iron it out soon.
 
lol, go Sven!
I dont have a need for your utility any more but I am impressed with what you have achieved.
 
Glaring bug i the new 1.2 .0.0 Windows hook structure. will be fixed this weekend

It seems that the windows hook react differently in windows 10 than in windows 7. so current 1.2.0.0 version does NOT work under windows 7. Priorities are not getting adjustet at all.

Since I don't have win8 i would love feedback from a user. Priority on process can be seen in taskmanager but you have to add in the "base priority" collumn
 
V 1.2.0.1 is up on www.techcenter.dk. Softpedia should be updated over the weekend.

- Fixed Windows 7 incompatibility with new Windows hook
- Fixed to high CPU usage when Paused.
- Slight improvement in paging (Pages out at Pause)

Some new features are in the design process

- Additional clear(execute) process waiting in idle task queue. useful to run before running a benchmark for more consistent results
- Selection of increased priority level (donation version only)
- FastReact v1. Increase windows overall feel.
 
Mirror
https://choggi.org/files/Mercury.exe

I didn't see Mercury.exe on your site
if you want I could make an ftp account to say mercury.choggi.org if you want another file host



On another note, good ol' Autohotkey :)
I also have a script to manage my processes, but no fancy automagical priority changing just reading from a list
 
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Another Mirror would not be bad. I'm hitting bed now but today i got some speed enhancemetns done a miniscule cpu ressoruce optimizations ( reorganized one if setting). but also FastReact option is almost fully done just a small little thing teasing me but if i havent fixed it tomorrow I will release the new version with out that last bit of FastReact and just put it in later. as an upgrade to FastReact
 
Alrighty, when you have the time send me an email, then we can figure out user/pass.
 
Beta version from this weekend is being tested as we speak. some benchmark of internal routines needs to be done to make sure FastReact act;s as fast as possible. The entire FastReact features is up and running

Should I toss in a CPU limiter ? so you can decide percentage wise how fast you want you CPU to run from 5-100%. its a bit arbitrary values as its finally gonna be determine by the different P-states of your CPU
 
V 1.2.2.0

New version is released and on my Home site. Softpedia Should update withing 24 hours


- Clear Memory now works intelligently, greatly increasing its speed

- Project Mercury's own page out routine improved to double speed

- Optimized some IF settings for minuscule reduced CPU usage

- Removed nonworking priority settings menu (was leftover from experiment)

- Implanted "Windows FastReact" features that speeds up windows

- Implanted "Save Settings" feature


Notice that "Windows FastReact" feature has a nag screen That is gone in the donator edition
If the new donations model violates any forum rules about advertisement a mod can hit me up in a PM or in this thread


www.TechCenter.dk/Mercury.exe
 
Didn't get as much done as I was hoping for but got at least some small stuff done.

V1.2.3.0
- Windows FastReact settings are now saved when choosing save settings
- Implanted "No Standby on CPU load" feature
- InfoBox now has a link to www.Techcenter.dk


The No standby features is still very new and lacks customization. But it does prevent going to standby if CPU load is above 8% on a 10second average tested aprox. twice a min.
The CPU usage from this feature is far below WinOFF but does take around 0.014% on my Core I7 2500k @4.6GHz ( WINoff takes around 0.09%
The is 0% CPU load if the features is not enabled (default)

www.TechCenter.dk is Updated
Softpedia should be updated within 24h
 
V 1.2.4.0

Now also in 32bit version

- New Settings GUI
- Increased CPU priority level can now be adjusted and saved
- Fixed typo Ballon to Balloon


www.TechCenter.dk is updated
Softpedia Should be updated within 24 hours
 
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