testing ram stability

[bigKr33]

Whats a really good program to test ram stability. Like when i'm messing with ram timings and stuff, i don't really know what programs to run and how long to run them.

I think someone told me before that when you bump your fsb like 3mhz, that you should run memtest86 X amount of times till its stabile, and safe to bump up the mhz even more.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Get the latest version of Memtest and that's all you need.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: bigKr33
i don't really know what programs to run and how long to run them.

12-24 hrs. I've had my ram fail right at the 24th hour :|

When OCing I usually just run memtest overnight. Its rare when I can keep the gaming machine down for a whole 24 hrs.

Fern

 

[5t3v0]

memtest on its own is not enough. I could pass memtest quite happily but fail Prime95 blend test within the hour when I had this ram at CL 2.5. Perhaps I didnt run it long enough but what's the point in locking up the pc for days on end doing stability testing when Prime95 will find a fault much quicker than memtest will?

What I do now when trying a new memory overclock is boot memtest from the floppy & run 1 pass of all 8 tests. This reduces the risk of the HDDs becoming corrupted. If that doesnt error, I load Windows & run Prime95 blend test for at least 8 hours. If you like, you can run memtest for longer but do not rely on it as your only test.

I also found that 3dmark05 was a quicker indicator of memory instability than memtest.

 

[professor1942]

Yeah 3dMark06 is the first thing to crash for me when I push it too far.

 

[bigKr33]

But what kind of tests should i do when i'm just bumping up a couple of mhz. Because running prime95 for 8hrs, and bumping up the mhz a few and running for another 8hrs seems to be overkill.

What kind of test should you run to test stability for ram under prime95? blend test, large ffts, or small ffts. Or does it not matter?

 

[5t3v0]

A few MHz can be the difference between stability & a BSOD. You should do the full test regime each time you change anything. however, if you want a quick indicator, run memtest #5 & #8, followed by 3dmark05. For Prime95, as I said before, use blend test for memory stability - its the one that says "lots of ram tested".

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: bigKr33
But what kind of tests should i do when i'm just bumping up a couple of mhz. Because running prime95 for 8hrs, and bumping up the mhz a few and running for another 8hrs seems to be overkill.

What kind of test should you run to test stability for ram under prime95? blend test, large ffts, or small ffts. Or does it not matter?

Yes, this method is very time consuming.

When first OCing I followed this method, but later modified it to save time. Depending on how close I felt I was to the "ceiling" I would either raise the mhz in larger increments, or contiune raising by just 3mhz, but only memtest & P95 for an hour or so. When I gotinstability I would back off a little bit and then run the tests for a longer time.

In otherwords, I looked to more quickly find the point at which I was "unstable" and then spend more "backing down".

Fern

 

[5t3v0]

Good recommendation Fern. Although bear in mind its not worth sacrificing too much cpu speed just to get a high memory overclock. My modus operandi is very similar. I like to go in high & back out slowly so if I've got an OC in mind, I just go for it imediately. On this setup I immediately tried 1:1 at 280MHz & ran my 1 pass of memtest. Got red lines on test 5 so loosened timings in many iterations but still failed test 5 each time. I then dropped 5MHz & set timings to default & repeated the execise, but same result each time. Since I wasnt prepared to drop the cpu to 270MHz just to OC the ram, I set the 166 divider, the timings back to default & ran 1 pass of memtest & then 1 hour of Prime95. This passed so I started tightening timings in iterations until instability returned. I would then return the timing to its lasty known good setting & move onto the next. Even with 1 pass of memtest & 1 hour of Prime95, this is very time consuming. To finish up there were a few iterations of Prime95 overnight to fine tune. The whole process must have taken over a fortnight!