Reliability of stress tests

[Elcs]

Looking at my Barton now.... 215x11... 1.8V actual.

Prime stopped after 2 minutes..... SuperPi errors on 8M..... PiFast runs fine.... Memtest pops up with quite a few errors after 10 passes....

Yet.... I have used the PC as I normally would ie. IE, Games, MS Office etc... and Ive never seen any instability in games or been able to crash something without using one of the above useful utilities.

What would you 'believe'? Would you say that 'as long as it works for what you do, its stable'? or do you say that 'it fails stress tests, therefore its not stable'?

Input welcome.

 

[THUGSROOK]

there is no program that can tell you if you are 100% stable.
however ~ there are alot of programs that can tell you if you are not.

prime95 is one of them

 

[First]

If it's stable for the programs you run you should be fine. Just keep track of your voltages and temperatures and any unusual noises coming from your system.

Of course, there may be an intermittent instability waiting to rear it's head in a week, and if you don't stress test it now it may pop up while you're working on something important, which means you could lose data, or worse case damage your hardware. Try looping SPECviewperf 7.1.1 for a couple hours, that's a great overall stress test.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
there is no program that can tell you if you are 100% stable.
however ~ there are alot of programs that can tell you if you are not.

prime95 is one of them

Very true, and Prime95 and Memtest86 are the two best, in my opinion. If you never use your computer for anything important, then as long as it's not crashing while you're playing games, then that's fine. However, if you are using it for things like distributed computing projects, or ripping/editing dvd's (or any video, really), then you want your system to be Prime and Memtest stable.

 

[StageLeft]

If it runs what you want you could possibly keep it at current speeds, but technically it's a failed overclock, since it can't run P95. I'd scale it back personally, although if you're never going to run p95 again you may never notice that your CPU isn't totally competent at 215.

 

[lookin4dlz]

If it's stable for the programs you run you should be fine. Just keep track of your voltages and temperatures and any unusual noises coming from your system.

What he said...

I believe my system gives P95 errors after an hour or so, but I can run some intensive, proprietary stock option software, eDonkey with 25+ files downloading, an active NAV scan, email open, web browsing with multiple open windows & CivIII simultaneously without a problem...

 

[WobbleWobble]

I'd prefer to torture my overclocked system with as many tests as possible and make sure it doesn't fail. Putting my computer through these heavy tests gives me that piece of mind that it most likely won't crash when I'm working on something important for work or school.

I am one that says if it fails stress tests, it's not stable. But I also say, if it passes stress tests, it's not stable either. But I put a lot more confidence in my systems if they are able to pass at least Prime95 and Memtest86+