Prime95 Problems???

[KillerBob]

Guys,

I have put a second computer together from parts:

Soyo Dragon+ MoBo, w. Athlon XP1900+
3x256Mb Crucial PC2100 RAM
ATi 8500 AGP
2xIBM HDs in Raid0
Pioneer DVD and Sony CD RW

I have installed WinXP and it seems to work, except I get application locks from time to time. So, I installed Prime95 to test the components.

With all three sticks of RAM I get an error on test 1 in "Torture Test". However, with the sticks indivdually, it just sits at "Test 1, 400 Lucas-Lehmer iterations..." for a long time, without anything happening. The computer grinds to a halt, but it doens not reboot, BSOD, or lock up completely.

I have tried with one or two sticks, and the same happens, and when I try all three, it fails. What is going on? Is there something wrong with Prime95, or is it normal to sit for 10-15 minutes (My P4 C 3G runs test 1 in 10 seconds) without failing?

Finally, is there another package to test the components with?

 

[yodayoda]

wow, i have never encountered that problem. did you uninstall and reinstall Prime95? there are several other ways to test this systems stability. try putting 1, 2, or 3 memory sticks with MemTest86. you have to boot from floppy or CDROM to try it--it will torture your memory bus to see how stable it is. for overall system stability, other than Prime95, you can try SETI@home, Folding, or another distributed computing project (like Prime95) that uses 100% CPU. there is also the Sandra Burn-in Wizard which is useful as a backup.

my ultimate benchmark of stability is InstantCopy. compressing DVD-9 dics to DVD-R is something i actually do that is very taxing on the system. it can take several hours depending on the movie. do a batch job with several films and you will know if you have a rock-solid stable system =)