[OKDXA] FT8 and computer question

[Marcus Sutliff]

On your computer when WSJT is running, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and click "Task
Manager".
Click the "Performance" tab.
You may spot the issue right away as Memory being mostly consumed (4 GB
with Windows 10 just isn't going to have RAM available to do anything else
and it will emulate RAM using a much slower file on the hard disk).  On the
bottom of the Task Manger app, click "Open Resource Monitor".  Click the
"Memory" tab an you will see how much "Free" memory there is and how much
is in use and on standby.

Standby is memory that is being used but eligible to be paged off to the
much slower hard drive fake ram file.  This is a very slow process.  You
need an ample supply of "Free" memory that can be grabbed by WSJT to
process and decode the audio that was downloaded.  It takes some CPU but
WSJT runs on my Raspberry Pi CPU and up to a point it works perfectly fine
if there is enough RAM and not too much to decode for that tiny tic-tac of
processor.  I bet if you changed your other laptop to have only 4 GB RAM
you would see it struggle as well.

Also if your CPU is an issue you can change the frequency/time bandscope to
display less pixels and to aggregate less often and that will free up CPU.

Sincerely,
Marcus Sutliff/N5ZY
Edmond Amateur Radio Society President
License Class Coordinator.
ARRL Volunteer Examiner
http://www.k5eok.org
http://www.qrz.com/db/N5ZY
https://www.youtube.com/user/95PistolPete


On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 11:59 AM John Geiger <af5cc2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think the "acting up" was due to FT8 and the number of stations to
> decode.  It would randomly shut off on its own, due to some sort of
> internal error.  That is why I reset it, I think there was a software issue
> or registry issue, or something like that.  Haven't hooked that laptop back
> up to FT8 yet since the other one seems to work so well. Might just turn it
> into a Chromebook to use while traveling.
>
> 73 John AF5CC
>
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 9:10 AM Mark Beckwith <dad at megansfamily.net>
> wrote:
>
> > > It was acting up the other day
> >
> >
> > If you did this during Field Day, there were substantially more
> > accessible stations on the air to decode.  When did you actually notice
> > this happening?  Is it still happening today?
> >
> > You have just read about all I know about the subject, but proud to be
> > on the Board at WWROF where we were smart enough to establish the
> > Worldwide Digi contest  :-)  I have actually gotten on the air and used
> > the mode.
> >
> > 73 - Mark N5OT
> >
> >
> > On 2021-06-27 1:50 PM, John Geiger wrote:
> > > Since some of us use FT8 for DXing and VHF work, I thought maybe
> someone
> > on
> > > the list might have an answer to this question.  For the past 3 years I
> > > have been running FT8 using WSJT-X on a Lenevo Thinkpad which uses an
> AMD
> > > E1-7500 AMU processor running at 1.4GHZ and has 4GB of RAM.  It was
> > acting
> > > up the other day so I decided to do a full reset on it, wiping the hard
> > > drive and reinstalling Windows 10.  This ended up taking a while so I
> > > hooked up my other laptop to see what was going on on FT8.  It is a HP
> > > Elitebook with an Intel I5-5300U processor running at 2.4GHZ and has 8
> GB
> > > of RAM.  I immediately noticed that the decoded lines filled up the
> > screen
> > > much quicker on the Elitebook.
> > >
> > > So, is having a faster, more powerful processor like the Intel I5
> likely
> > to
> > > lead to more stations decoded on FT8 than I would get with the slower
> > > processor?  I kind of prefer to take the Elitebook traveling with me,
> but
> > > if it will lead to significantly better decoding, I will leave it in
> the
> > > shack running remotely and take the Lenevo with me when traveling.
> > >
> > > 73 John AF5CC
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