Folding with the GPU seems to be a bit too stressful on the GPU. Is there a way I can throttle the GPU usage back about 10% so I can at least watch VLC Player, browse the internet, or open folders on the hard drive without short freezes?
The priority setting is on lowest by default, make sure it's set to that. You should also manually turn up your fan speed, the default HSFs on these things are no good.
That priority setting is for the CPU, not the GPU. All the settings in the folding configuration menu are all for the CPU as well, even though I'm running the GPU client. The fan speed cannot be adjusted on this card; the temperature doesn't go above 52 C on this card when stressed by folding, so there's nothing to worry about with the fan.
Ah my bad, I forgot it's just the CPU since the GPU usage seems to automatically drop low enough to allow whatever other program is running to have enough resources, in my case anyway. As for the fan, it can be adjusted on any card, but of course 52c is fine.
You can use Environment Variable to remove the desktop lagging. Here is an article that can help you (The last paragraph is a possible solution): (http://en.fah-addict.net/articles/articles-1-3+gpu-environment-variables.php)
Well, I've had two Asus cards that wouldn't let me adjust the fan speed. The first, being a 8500 GT, would reset to automatic fan speed no matter what fan speed I set it to in any overclocking program. Even low level fan settings in Rivatuner resulted in in resetting to automatic. For my current 9600 GT, I am using the low power version created by Asus that I overclocked above a normal 9600 GT. However, the fan speed settings can't even be adjusted. Either the setting is greyed out, or it immediately goes back to 35% fan speed depending on which overclock progam I use. I find it to be rather strange, but fortunately, temperature is fairly low on this card. There is a massive heat sink and fan, but the fan speed is static. The temperature maxes out at 62 C if I use a real stress test application. Thanks for the assistance with the variable. I'll give a try once I finish upgrading Linux.