• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Memtest 86

ElFenix

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
whats your opinion of this little program? it boots off a floppy and checks your ram by writing and reading various patterns from it, far more thorough than the BIOS test. it can take quite a while to do so. it also checks bandwidth.

heres the figures it gets from my athlon xp 1466 (1700+) with 133 MHz DDR on KT266A:
L1 cache 8992 MB/s
L2 cache 2985 MB/s
Memory 506 MB/s

heres its page
 
It has helped me diagnose problems with a few computers at work before. I had to fuss with Gateway to get them to replace the motherboard on one computer because the cache was bad. They kept wanting me to run good ole GWSCAN (hard drive utility) that of course wouldn't find a thing wrong. The computer kept developing corrupt data and it would lock up. They finally replaced the motherboard and it worked great.
 
basically, helped me understand why I was getting errors in WinXP for no apparent reason after OC'ing... apparently my RAM timings were too fast 😱.

It helped me tweak them till they were as fast as possible without getting any errors, a nice little program

-Ice
 
has saved me no end of problems in trying to work out if a stick of ram was dodgy or just not particularly happy on my mobo. I now have 3x sticks of 128 pc100 that could be used in a secondary ssytem and i sold stick of 256 pc133 i was told was bust by the hardware shop i had bought other components from to my dad for his system!

it takes a while but its mighty thorough in what it does, gets my vote!
 
It's quite good at determining if your having issues with your DRAM because of faulty DRAM or your timings are too high.
It's cache benchmarks are of dubious worth however as despite the fact that it purports to be measuring the speed of your processors L1/L2 cache the program it too large to operate entirely within the cache in some instances and hence the score can be diluted by unrealistic wait-states.
 
You should see the L1 and L2 cache bandwidth on the P4... mine was like ~18000 MB/s and 12000MB/s - Just think of DRAM were that fast 🙂
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top