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Any stability tests that don't heat up the CPU?

Prime 95 wont heat up the CPU too much if you stop it after 20s, one could do 20s runs interrupted by 40s idling, this would get the CPU at 1/3 of its max TDP on average over whatever testing period, the test would still be valuable to some point.
 
The Intel Extreme Tuning Utility stress test does not heat up my 4790K anywhere near as bad.

Plus it gives a lot of info and a lot of control.
 
As CPU's become hotter they require more voltage to be stable, if you don't heat up a CPU during a stress test the information gained from that test is useless unless you can guarantee the CPU will never run over that temp during its lifetime.

Why are you even looking for this type of stress test?
 
... What? Do you even know what a stress test is? It sounds like you're just in denial over the fact that your CPU is unstable.
 
The only way somewhat useful is what The Stilt recommended when stressing FX chips:

As the power consumption output of stress testing programs becomes to much for the socket infraestructure (on FX at least) or the temps become to high for the the CPU itself (on recent Intel i5-i7 HEDT Core line), the best way to stress test is to disable cores and run stress testing with reduced cooling capacity (to somewhat replicate the actual heat output of the otherwise fully enabled CPU) for prolongued periods of time. This actually takes at least as x2 much time as the normal method would take, but it is useful as it will paint a better picture.

For example: Prime95 made my FX scream with both core and socket temps but it was "stable", but then on real world renderers I always needed +0.015 to 0.025V to make my CPU fully stable. This is why I recommend to always test with both an stress tester and a real world workload (obviously strenous enough on the CPU).

Stress testing software is usually more of a "thermal/power consumption checker" than an stability measure on itself, because of the tendency to repeat specific workloads under particular instruction sets. Real workloads are more of a mixed bag and usually what was stable on a stress tester (that even made your CPU produce more heat/consume more power!) can or cannot be sable on the former. I would also recommend doing real workloads you are accostumed to do on your PC (but if gaming is your 1# activity I would really check a x264 encoder soft or a renderer to act as your real world stress testing software, they are really rough for the CPUs!)

Stress testing done right takes a while, there is no shortcuts here, but the endgame is worth it, specially if you are of the tinker type (I would consider anyone going for a X5690 at this point to fall under this category). GL :biggrin:
 
Cinebench can cause a crash if the CPU is unstable and does not create too much heat. I use it before I run any stabiloty test
Cinebench isn't a proper stability test so it only gives you a vague idea of stability
If I only had light benchmarking tools for OC'ing, I'd probably go insane.
GTA V, GTA IV, ARMA 3, Watch_Dogs, and probably Battlefield would also be a stress test without generating too much heat. Still isn't a proper test imo.
Edit: anandtech mobile is bad; very bad.
 
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Puppies04 said:
As CPU's become hotter they require more voltage to be stable, if you don't heat up a CPU during a stress test the information gained from that test is useless unless you can guarantee the CPU will never run over that temp during its lifetime.

Why are you even looking for this type of stress test?
Click to expand...


Because when I game my temps never get over 60*C I don't have any other reason to get my chip to it's max or beyond it's maximum heat.
 
PPB said:
The only way somewhat useful is what The Stilt recommended when stressing FX chips:

As the power consumption output of stress testing programs becomes to much for the socket infraestructure (on FX at least) or the temps become to high for the the CPU itself (on recent Intel i5-i7 HEDT Core line), the best way to stress test is to disable cores and run stress testing with reduced cooling capacity (to somewhat replicate the actual heat output of the otherwise fully enabled CPU) for prolongued periods of time. This actually takes at least as x2 much time as the normal method would take, but it is useful as it will paint a better picture.

For example: Prime95 made my FX scream with both core and socket temps but it was "stable", but then on real world renderers I always needed +0.015 to 0.025V to make my CPU fully stable. This is why I recommend to always test with both an stress tester and a real world workload (obviously strenous enough on the CPU).

Stress testing software is usually more of a "thermal/power consumption checker" than an stability measure on itself, because of the tendency to repeat specific workloads under particular instruction sets. Real workloads are more of a mixed bag and usually what was stable on a stress tester (that even made your CPU produce more heat/consume more power!) can or cannot be sable on the former. I would also recommend doing real workloads you are accostumed to do on your PC (but if gaming is your 1# activity I would really check a x264 encoder soft or a renderer to act as your real world stress testing software, they are really rough for the CPUs!)

Stress testing done right takes a while, there is no shortcuts here, but the endgame is worth it, specially if you are of the tinker type (I would consider anyone going for a X5690 at this point to fall under this category). GL :biggrin:
Click to expand...


Dude,,, Fantastic explanation! Thank you so much!
 
BF4 was one of the best tests for stability that I found. My 5650 would run P95 for hours but it needed a tick more voltage not to blue screen in battlefield.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
x264 stability test. I have had overclocks which passed 100-passes of Intel Burn Test + a couple of hours of Prime95 (SSE2 version), but failed the x264 test.
This correlated with those overclocks BSODing during Handbrake encodes.

Does not raise core temps nearly as much as either IBT or P95 :

http://www.overclock.net/t/1487922/going-deeper-on-the-x264-v2-stress-test
Click to expand...
Now you can test using a Handbrake nightly build and x265. x265 algorithms are way more computationally complex than x264. Encoding will use AVX2 heavily if your CPU supports it. Takes forever, though, so use a short AVC video clip if you're just testing for stability.
 
jkauff said:
Now you can test using a Handbrake nightly build and x265. x265 algorithms are way more computationally complex than x264. Encoding will use AVX2 heavily if your CPU supports it. Takes forever, though, so use a short AVC video clip if you're just testing for stability.
Click to expand...
Any link to the latest nightly build, also does it support quicksync for hardware acceleration atm ?
 
That's almost like asking "any fake stability tests out there?"

Any "stability" test is going to put load on the CPU which means heat.

If your criteria is "my games don't heat it up that much so I have no reason to test that way" then run your games and see if they crash. Doesn't mean your CPU is "stable" but if that's all you're concerned with than maybe it's stable enough for you. There's obviously no guarantee that you're going to be able to avoid silent data corruption.
 
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I occasionally use Dolphin (emulator) for this. I find it crashes long before Prime95 or IBT throw errors, while also not loading the CPU nearly as much.
 
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