Testing RAM - HCI memtest or MemTest86+?

[itakey]

Last time I overclocked MemTest86+ was what I used, but I see some people like to use HCI memtest instead.

Can someone remind me how to test the memory with these programs? What do I input, or what test do I select, and for how long? If I remember correctly MemTest86+ would tell you which dimm failed? I forget.

Please give me a quick refresher

 

[MadScientist]

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/manual.html

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/support-software/How-to-run-Memtest86-74

 

[Idontcare]

memtest86+ is nice from a turnkey perspective, just load the bootable usb version on a thumbdrive.

But it is not as robust as HCI. I've had dimms that would not fail in memtest86+ but would fail in programs, and only HCI memtest would confirm it was the ram that was the issue.

 

[acefightr]

memtest86+ is the best

 

[itakey]

Thanks Guys, going to give MemTest86+ a run first, then maybe try HCI

 

[richierich1212]

HCI better

 

[Synomenon]

HCI. For me, it's detected errors that MemTest 86+ wasn't able to.

 

[Idontcare]

HCI. For me, it's detected errors that MemTest 86+ wasn't able to.

I was annoyed when I discovered this to be true for myself because memtest86+ is just so much easier to use

With HCI you have to get into windows, you've got to setup multiple instances of HCI (if you want the test to run reasonably fast to get to 1000% coverage) and then you got to dicker with launching/stopping/launching that last instance multiple times to get windows to flush the page file and keep the HCI program resident in memory rather than being paged.

Ugh. But in the end it works and you find out if your ram is really stable or not.

I wish the HCI guys would make a USB thumbdrive bootable version of their program so it was as user friendly as memtest86+.

But yeah, so sad when I had to acknowledge memtest86+ just wasn't cutting it anymore

 

[krose]

To make it easier I wrote a vbs script. It launches an instance of HCI memtest, set the memory amount and starts it. For my 2600k it launches 8 instances of 850MB each to test 8GB of RAM. How do I know if the last one is being paged?

 

[Idontcare]

To make it easier I wrote a vbs script. It launches an instance of HCI memtest, set the memory amount and starts it. For my 2600k it launches 8 instances of 850MB each to test 8GB of RAM. How do I know if the last one is being paged?

In the "run" window on your start bar type in "Res" and the first thing that should pop up is "Resource Monitor", select that.

Take a look at the memory tab, you should see basically everything is reported as "In Use" excepting for a minimal amount allocated "Hardware Reserved" and maybe 1MB of "Free".

Then pop over to the Disk tab. This is where you'll find out if windows is letting HCI test ram or if windows is busy churning the paging file.

Look at the Disk Activity number, it should be small, like 20KB/s or smaller.

To see what it looks like when you are churning the page file just open up an HCI instance and intentionally over-allocate. Assign say 8.5GB of ram for testing when you know you've only got 8GB. Then note the disk activity.

With this feeback loop you can dial in the amount of ram to allocate to that last instance such that you aren't just churning swap file space.

 

[janas19]

In the "run" window on your start bar type in "Res" and the first thing that should pop up is "Resource Monitor", select that.

Take a look at the memory tab, you should see basically everything is reported as "In Use" excepting for a minimal amount allocated "Hardware Reserved" and maybe 1MB of "Free".

Then pop over to the Disk tab. This is where you'll find out if windows is letting HCI test ram or if windows is busy churning the paging file.

Look at the Disk Activity number, it should be small, like 20KB/s or smaller.

To see what it looks like when you are churning the page file just open up an HCI instance and intentionally over-allocate. Assign say 8.5GB of ram for testing when you know you've only got 8GB. Then note the disk activity.

With this feeback loop you can dial in the amount of ram to allocate to that last instance such that you aren't just churning swap file space.

You are awesome.

 

[Soulkeeper]

HCI apparently does make a bootable version ...

"If you need to check every byte, consider purchasing MemTest Deluxe"

you just have to pay for it.

another vote for memtest86+
It's a community oriented project that works well.

 

[janas19]

Hmmm, I guess the "res" command works only for Windows 7.

Is there any native monitor in XP that shows Disk Activity specifically?

Thanks guys

 

[thewhat]

With 8GB of RAM I simply disable the page file. *shrugs*


Regarding HCI: it was able to spot an error (turned out the RAM voltage was too low), while Memtest86+ didn't show anything.

 

[Synomenon]

Yeah, just disable your pagefile before you test with HCI then re-enable it once you're done testing.

 

[Colonel Panick]

Apologies for reviving an old thread, but I felt compelled to contribute after all the grief I've had with my computer.

As much as I appreciate the free nature of Memtest86+, it failed to detect memory errors where the deluxe version of HCI memtest spotted them without a problem. Had I bought the latter earlier, it would have saved me a lot of time and hassle, as the first thing I tried to troubleshoot erroneously appeared to be fine and I went on looking for problems elsewhere.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Apologies for reviving an old thread, but I felt compelled to contribute after all the grief I've had with my computer.

As much as I appreciate the free nature of Memtest86+, it failed to detect memory errors where the deluxe version of HCI memtest spotted them without a problem. Had I bought the latter earlier, it would have saved me a lot of time and hassle, as the first thing I tried to troubleshoot erroneously appeared to be fine and I went on looking for problems elsewhere.

There's a thread I started maybe a month ago because I was having mysterious intermittent problems. I had overclocked my RAM and ran it with CMD=1. All four slots had been filled, and I ran the HCI 1000% "thorough" test from a bootable CD for 5 days without a blink. The errors occurred later with the computer in its idle EIST state. Since I'd been sure the RAM was good, it took me too long to unravel the mystery. It became clear when I set the RAM back to their default spec and the problem just "went away."

But I'll still swear by the program. If I'm building a new machine, I'd just as soon run the tests from the bootable CD than play around with Windows testing of multiple instances.

 

[bryanl]

Are there any reviews comparing Memtest86+, HCI (Windows and DOS vers), and other memory tests?

 

[flexy]

Sorry for necroing, but it's a) actual since I just upgraded memory and b) it's something of interest for anyone

You cannot compare HCI and bootable memtest since they, sort-of, are entirely different. Memtest86 is great if you want to test your computers memory for function, say if you just got new modules and want to test them. This is usually the first thing I do when I upgrade. But it's really not that great for stability testing, especially for overclocking.

This is where you should test your memory with HCI from within Windows. It usually finds errors quicker for where you would need to run the other memtest a lot longer.

On the other hand, if you're not overclocking I think you're fine just using the bootable memtest.

 

[SPBHM]

the Aida64 memory test worked well for me, I had a memory that would pass on most tests (including memtest86) but Aida and HCI would get the error.