Poll: What does stability mean to you?

[gururu]

Stability is running warcraft 3 for 5 hours straight, playing the last mission half through and NOT CRASHING
after having forgotten to save...

not prime95, 3dmark, sisoft, final reality, or cpuburn... only time.

 

[Wingznut]

Stability is...

• NOTHING crashing... EVER.
• The PC booting up and shutting down properly.
• NOT having to search for the correct driver.

 

[Barrei]

Running prime for 12 hours while looping 3dmark , if it can take that without crashing it can take anything.

 

[danii8]

Originally posted by: Wingznut PEZ
Stability is...

• NOTHING crashing... EVER.
• The PC booting up and shutting down properly.
• NOT having to search for the correct driver.

 

[Carrot44]

What Wingznut PEZ Said

Only problems I have ever had on my current system is WordPerfect does not like Seti@Home.

Ken

 

[Rainsford]

1) It doesn't have OS/hardware created errors, ever
2) It doesn't crash/reboot/lockup, ever
3) It will run as well on the 40th day of being up as on the 1st

 

[sonoran]

Running for 1.5 *years* without a crash or reboot. Believe it or not, this was a WinNT4 box running SQL Server 6.5. Used every day by people across the country. That's reasonably stable.

 

[CrazySaint]

Um, shouldn't there be a poll somewhere?

 

[BuddyAtBzboyz]

What Wingnutz said!

 

[Egrimm]

I consider my oc's stable if I can run 12+ hours with Seti and whatever I might want to use it for at the same time (games, video-encoding, etc.)

 

[Booster]

Since I went Intel chipset way I forgot what it means when your comp crashes or hangs. It works smooth as silk every time, just like it should. That's what stability means for me. When I was using third party chipsets like ALi, VIA and SiS there was no end to my headaches.

 

[Mikki]

Lot's of different opinions on what to use, but at the end of the day, the definition of stability is what Wingznut PEZ said. If you do it with Prime95 or Lemmings, whatever, if it doesn't crash and boots then it's stable. How's that for a neutral opinion?

 

[Wolfsraider]

wingznut pez hit the nail on the head

stability is also picking your hardware and software wisely
three years ago i bought an ati video card to play games with,the drivers were terrible and i would end up taking the games i bought,back for exchange,in hopes of getting something to play without glitches.wizard works games were a nightmare.
since that time ati's drivers have come a long way.i have only bought ati since then as i didn't like the gforce card i had gotten in a prebuilt computer(gforce 2mx400 with 64mb ram that lists as a 200 2mx).that thing crashed on my p-3 500 so many times i hated nvidia(wrongly lol)for putting out such a pos.

then came the p-4 1.5 and i gave an ati card to my dad but the only card i had left was the nvidia
guess what i learned :Q it runs every game out there without a hitch let's see jedi knight2,sof2,moh.all fine but that doesn't help spiderman(either one both are buggy) and still wizard works software.
now i know what they mean when they say nvidias drivers are top notch

 

[Cat13]

Originally posted by: danii8

Originally posted by: Wingznut PEZ
Stability is...

• NOTHING crashing... EVER.
• The PC booting up and shutting down properly.
• NOT having to search for the correct driver.

Exactly!

 

[BuddyAtBzboyz]

Q]I consider my oc's stable if I can run 12+ hours with Seti and whatever I might want to use it for at the same time (games, video-encoding, etc.)[/quote]

If you can only run seti for 12 hours then its not stable. I run seti 24/7 all the time. I have never had a crash at my overclock, cause I scaled it back till it was stable. What is the point of having a faster computer if it is going to crash on you.

 

[Mikki]

Wolfsraider, very good point, reliability directly affects stability, esp in the long run, and drivers have a direct affect on reliability. Thanks for bringing that up! You could also say that stability should work on any platform, with any hardware.

 

[gururu]

Wingznut PEZ says.

"NOTHING crashing... EVER.
The PC booting up and shutting down properly.
NOT having to search for the correct driver."

lots of people agree. isn't this level of stability unrealistic? particularly for those setups under constant
stress of gaming and computing.

if crashing is not consistent, say with a particular application, can a system still pass as stable?

particularly with this overclocking crowd. Surely, some of these setups overclocked 50-100% wouldn't meet
what wingznut PEZ has defined, yet they are still considered 'rock solid'.

anyway, when i first overclocked my new system, it seemed fine. After three weeks, I've dropped it 6 MHz to a level of instability I cannot detect.

appreciate your opinions!

 

[Mikki]

To be realistic, the only people that will have systems that strictly meet all the above requirements for stability will be people like my mother, who bought a Gateway five years ago, has never upgraded it or installed anything on it, and doesn't mess with settings. And since hasn't had a problem.

I think all of us can meet those requirements, but only for a short time, cause we're constantly messing around with stuff, y'know?

 

[apoppin]

For me "stability" is IDENTICAL performance of O/C'd system to non-O/C'd system (of course, the O/C'd system being faster).

In addition to what Wingznut PEZ wrote.

 

[Duvie]

Exactly...I hadn't had to hit reset or had any boot issues for 4-5 weeks since I nailed down stability at 2.736ghz...HOwever I got new ram and so I tried to tweak things all over again....Without that I would have yet to have to reboot system...

Also I had an ati driver problem due to the picky nature of cleaning up drivers that were there before....


I think wingzut idea is what we all strive for, but as long as we have ATI products (jking don't mean to single them out) and other hardware quite dependent on ppl writing and implementing effective drivers this may be a pipe dream....Cpu may be stable but I have some programs I haven't installed yet that I may that I am sure may have some problems with win xp...

Once you lock down hardware you still have the ugly monster of software to deal with...

 

[Mikki]

Once you lock down hardware you still have the ugly monster of software to deal with...

Yep, whole nother ball-o-wax!

 

[Intelman07]

Stability is having an intel motherboard and staying away from windows 9x. No crashes at all!!

 

[BuddyAtBzboyz]

Ok how bout this: stability is no crashing whatsoever due to the hardware. As in the only reason it should crash is cause you installed something new or fcked with the settings. But if you just run it as is it should not crash.