prime 95 + ram settings?

[ku]

Okay, I have 2 x 256mb Crucial PC2100. I've always had it at CAS2 at ULTRA timing config. So then I decide to run PRIME95 and It says there is a hardware failure. I go into BIOS and put the ram settings back to CAS2 and NORMAL and PRIME95 runs fine. Now, I bring it back the CAS2 + ULTRA and it runs fine except PRIME95. I've yet to have any problems at these settings. Does it matter what PRIME95 says?

 

[John]

I prefer to have a 100% successful Prime95 run for a few hours. Only then would I consider it 99.9% stable.

 

[Rahminator]

Of course it matters! You're slowly corrupting your hard drive data and you will experience crashes in programs that stress your cpu, like games and such. Set your ram settings to default and run prime95, folding@home and rc5 for 24 hours. If no errors, reboots, crashes pop out, only then your comp is running like it should be. Accept no substitutes or compromises!

[Edit] I though I had a stable system with my XP 1600 1.4 @ 1612 MHz until I tried that death combo. I tried 1601 MHz and it rebooted after running for over 13 hours. I stepped down to 1589 MHz and I ran the combo for over 24 hours. My point is that only a few hours is NOT enough, and neither is running prime95's torture test alone.

 

[ku]

well the thing is, i've ran SETI@HOME for days and weeks at a time with this setting. I ran it for a little over a week @ 150fsb at CAS3 + NORMAL timing config without a problem. I stopped overclocking so I can get a quieter fan and I put it to CAS2 + ULTRA and it was running fine. All my games, S@H, everythign else was perfectly fine. I've had S@H for 3-4 days playing Q3 each day while running S@H.

I'm only having this problem with PRIME95

EDIT:

RAHMINATOR: How does it corrupt my HD data? It's not crashing or anything.

 

[John]

I seriously doubt it is corrupting data. Anyhow I also forgot to mention that I run the RC5 client for Team AnandTech while running Prime95 torture.

 

[Rahminator]

If prime95 gives you errors, then it means you're generating similar errors in all distributed computing effors. If you're in a team, you are raising team standings, but you're not helping team efforts. Read the stress.txt file in prime95 folder. You are also corrupting hard drive data because if processor does some work and that work is written to a file, the file is slowly becoming corrupted with wrong data. This may not kill it, but if you magnify this problem over and over you might end up with a file that is unreadable if a crucial part of the file becomes corrupted.

 

[ku]

I just ran memtest86 at CAS2 + ULTRA settings and it was fine. Memtest86 is known to give problems for my motherboard (ECS K7S5A) but it didn't for me and I got no errors at all... AHH!

 

[ku]

I'm running both prime95 and RC5 @ CAS2 + Fast time config. It is stable (running for about 3 hours along with 2 hours of castle wolfenstein) so far. However, the temperature seems to be lower with prime95 and rc5 together then just prime95.