What can make Prime95 fail?

JavaMomma

Senior member
Oct 19, 2000
701
0
71
Stress testing a new system I am building for my moms business, its not overclocked at all.
Just Win2K SP3 + other updates & Prime95 no other software.
Duron 1300
Generic PC2100 (running as PC1600)
Asus A7N266VM

I thought it was the garbage Generic memory but I swapped it out with for some Samsung PC2700 I know runs Prime95 and i still get a hardware failure detected after 1 or so hours.
So what next? CPU?
Any BIOS settings? Drivers? I've flashed the latest BIOS on the mobo, using almost the latest NForce drivers, I think i read some where there were some new NForce drivers released today or something? Maybe I'll give them a try.
I have all the leagacy ports disabled as well.

Damn weird how the system feels stable, but Prime tells me otherwise.

Thanks.
 

John

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
33,944
1
0
You can try:

[*]Move memory to a different slot.
[*]Set your memory timings to SPD or the slowest settings.
[*]Raise the CPU core voltage .25v if possible.
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
102,365
8,475
126
Originally posted by: John
You can try:

[*]Move memory to a different slot.
[*]Set your memory timings to SPD or the slowest settings.
[*]Raise the CPU core voltage .25v if possible.

don't you mean .025 or .05? a quarter of a volt is quite a bit.
 

JavaMomma

Senior member
Oct 19, 2000
701
0
71
Temps are sitting in low 40s under full load.

What about the Power Supply?
Memory settings are as low as they will go
And I cant adjust the voltage.

I'm testing the other memory slot now.
 

Shockwave

Banned
Sep 16, 2000
9,059
0
0
SP3.

No no, I'm just mad cause my install went south during an upgrade on SP3. Damned new mobo, cpu and ram and guess what? Software fails. Always something. :disgust:
 

Drewpy

Senior member
Jun 1, 2002
209
0
0
The memory settings are latencies, or wait times between the requests to read and write to the memory. You should set them at their highest to test if your memory is causing your problems.

If the numbers 2-2-2-5-1 look familiar these are the fastest timings for your memory, you want to increase them to 3-3-3-6-2 (?) or some such setting to increase the latency.

The voltage adjustments can't be done through the BIOS they have to be done by the motherboard jumpers.
 

JavaMomma

Senior member
Oct 19, 2000
701
0
71
When I say as low as they will go I mean
"Normal"

This board is not a very feature filled board. Its a MicroATX Asus NForce1 board.
Memory selection is: Normal or Turbo, Cas 2 or Cas 2.5
I have it at Normal, Cas2.5
There is no way to adjust CPU/DRAM/AGP in either the BIOS or with Jumpers
heck the only FSBs this thing supports is 100 or 133.

Another Note: I tried the other memory slot (there are only 2)

This is the message I recieved
FATAL ERROR: Final result was 1367BC2, expected: 1CA6048E
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
Torture Test ran 1 hours, 19 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
 

bocamojo

Senior member
Aug 24, 2001
818
0
0
Probably an issue with the PSU not supplying enough juice to the processor. I had a similar issue with my ASUS and P4. I had to up the vCore voltage a bit to fix the problem. If it runs for an hour, then you don't have a "serious" issue, as your Mom's business is probably never going to tax it to the limits like a stress test will do. If I were you, I wouldn't sweat it.
 

Mark R

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
8,513
16
81
If it runs for an hour, then you don't have a "serious" issue, as your Mom's business is probably never going to tax it to the limits like a stress test will do

Failing Prime95 is not really to do with stress - it is to do with doing sums and getting the answer wrong. If it takes an hour before it fails, then your CPU is getting most of the calculations right - however, if this is a business computer, are you willing to trust your accounts and tax return to a machine which you *know* is getting calculations wrong?

You need to identify the faulty component - if you've already swapped in good RAM, then try a different CPU, motherboard or PSU. Unfortunately, it's a matter of swapping bits out until you find the problem. If you've got a program like Motherboard monitor (you can keep an eye on the PSU voltages) - Don't worry about the actual voltage (these are not always accurate) - however, large fluctuations are abnormal and suggest an inadequate power supply.

While heat could be a problem, it has to be extremely hot for AMD chips to mind - they are quite happy at 60-65 C.
 

JavaMomma

Senior member
Oct 19, 2000
701
0
71
I've figured out which component is causing the Prime95 to fail.

It is the Duron 1300
Swapped in my 1800+ Tbred and the system ran without any problems in Prime95.

Thanks for all the suggestions & help guys.

Guess I'll have to RMA the CPU back :(