What means TRULY stable? SuperPI, Prime95.....

[fbrdphreak]

So I'm seeing mixed results, some people rely on 12+ hours of Prime95 and others use SuperPI 32M?

Well, I agree that 12+ hours of Prime95 is the better bet, but here's the catch. Last night I had just setup my new 170 & DFI Ultra-D setup and wanted to run Prime95 overnight to kind of break things in a little. Well, it had been going for somewhere between 6-8 hours and I STILL got an error with everything bone stock. I didn't change a single setting and temps weren't breaking 35C.

So I'm curious: just because Prime95 fails @ 2.7GHz all the way up to 1.61V, does that mean it actually isn't stable for actual usage? I know that if it can't pass prime, it technically isn't 100% stable, but if it doesn't actually affect me in any major way does it REALLY matter.....?

 

[Markfw]

I just use F@H. If it goes for a week or two, with no bad units, its stable.

 

[Furen]

If anything fails the system is not stable, period. If you have everything at stock and you still fail prime then you either have some weird incompatibility (I would suspect the ram before everything else) or some bios setting is messing you up. That said, as long as you can do everything you normally do without problems then you're good, but don't be surprised if some obscure application you only need to use once a year crashes all of a sudden.

 

[thilanliyan]

I use S&M. my comp can pass Primw95, superpi, and memtest but if there's something unstable, it'll fail S&M for sure.

I can run 2.7GHz at 1.55v without failing Prime95 or superpi, but then if I run S&M it fails the FPU test. I can however pass S&M at 1.6v at 2.7GHz, but then I don't want the volts that high for everyday usage.

Oh and one thing I notice is that when I run Prime95, I can still do other stuff on the somp without being bogged down. But when I run S&M, it bogs down like crazy, which means it's doing its job.

Summing, up, I prefer S&M for a stability test. It really puts a load on the system, even putting the vid card to use.

 

[coomar]

you can change the priority in prime, default is 1 (which means if you do anything else, prime isn't getting any clock cycles)

 

[thilanliyan]

ahhhh....didn't know that. anyway, what i said before stands, I find out instabilities using S&M.

 

[fbrdphreak]

I might give that S&M program a try.

Is it possible for RAM to somehow impact small FFT Prime95 testing? Some of the default settings the DFI Ultra-D chose for my Corsair XMS 3200C2 (2-3-2-1T default) I think were too aggressive, even for 200MHz. I've also heard DFI boards don't like Corsair RAM much.

Any other opinions?

 

[theMan]

just try memtest if you think your ram is unstable. i think s&m is the best for stressing.

 

[Chesebert]

S&M generates about 3C higher temp for me vs prime95..loaded on 2 cores. I actually use both prime95+S&M at the same time... although S&M tend to finish in around half hour, I have consiered looping S&M...but I can't use my system if I do that and that kinda sucks.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I just use F@H. If it goes for a week or two, with no bad units, its stable.

I used to have GROMACs crash systems that were P95 TT nuke-proofed.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: theman
just try memtest if you think your ram is unstable. i think s&m is the best for stressing.

Yeah I know all about memtest, I just figured the default settings would be stable. I've got a stable mem OC now, but I just reloaded all the BIOS defaults and am looping memtest. We'll see if that's why prime95 failed @ default!

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I just use F@H. If it goes for a week or two, with no bad units, its stable.

I used to have GROMACs crash systems that were P95 TT nuke-proofed.

crash the system ? or just early unit end ? Never had F@H actually crash any system.

Edit: I think you are a F@H fan dapunisher, note ,my X2's have brought my average up to over 2000 a day !

 

[Hacp]

I always to CPU intensive for P95, and rely on memtest to see if the memory is stable. After I know both are stable, SuperPi 32 to top it off

 

[Leper Messiah]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I just use F@H. If it goes for a week or two, with no bad units, its stable.

I used to have GROMACs crash systems that were P95 TT nuke-proofed.

crash the system ? or just early unit end ? Never had F@H actually crash any system.

Edit: I think you are a F@H fan dapunisher, note ,my X2's have brought my average up to over 2000 a day !

yeah, if F@H EWUs I lower the OC. and my X2 does around 600+ PPD as long as I'm getting 1140s and 1479s.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I just use F@H. If it goes for a week or two, with no bad units, its stable.

I used to have GROMACs crash systems that were P95 TT nuke-proofed.

crash the system ? or just early unit end ? Never had F@H actually crash any system.

Edit: I think you are a F@H fan dapunisher, note ,my X2's have brought my average up to over 2000 a day !

My bad, I worded that poorly. Yep, early end with the message including causes such as potentially being unstable overclock. I haven't folded in a long time. Help run DC teams for another site, wher I do Einstein@Home now. Definitely kicking butt with X2@2.5ghz vs 2x242@1.725ghz

Need to buy a good cooler so I can push it up to 2.6ghz+ it does this speed on 1.36v. Load temp 2xE@H is 52-54c depending on time a day, that is about as high as I'm comfortable with.

 

[KoolDrew]

Nothing beats FAH for stability testing.

 

[11427]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
I might give that S&M program a try.

Is it possible for RAM to somehow impact small FFT Prime95 testing? Some of the default settings the DFI Ultra-D chose for my Corsair XMS 3200C2 (2-3-2-1T default) I think were too aggressive, even for 200MHz. I've also heard DFI boards don't like Corsair RAM much.
Any other opinions?

Yes, very possible it your mem timings,.... XMS 3200C2 has 2-3-3-6 1T timings right? The DFI's seem to be especially picky when it comes to Corsair. Might want to take a trip over to DFI Street and see what kind of timings others with XMS are using.

 

[fbrdphreak]

I loaded BIOS defaults and let Memtest86 loop for an hour and a half; zero errors I guess P95 small FFT could error if memtest doesn't?

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
..... but if it doesn't actually affect me in any major way does it REALLY matter.....?

That's really all there is to it.. If you can do what you need to do, your stable...

If you' run P95 or SuperPi for a living, well ... You get the picture..

 

[xtknight]

I don't know about the CPU but for the graphics card you'll want to run 3dmark05 GPU and RTHDRIBL as it stresses components that 3Dmark05 does not. For CPU I'd say the 3Dmark05 CPU tests are good. And then do Prime95 small FFT. Then game in something intensive like Battlefield 2, Quake 4, Civ 4, FEAR, anything modern really, for at least an hour. If it doesn't crash within that hour I'd say you're safe, at least for what you'll be doing if nothing else. Just make sure your temps stay under 50C or so and that'll reinforce the stability.

 

[mrkun]

I'm really skeptical of Memtest. I've had RAM pass 10 hours of Memtest and then be unable to pass Prime for more than 30 minutes (CPU passed 18 hours individually so it wasn't that).

 

[onn2000]

From my experience, Prime stable is not necessarily system stable. For example, I could run two instances of prime on my system for 8 hours, but the system can have a BSOD at any time when I don't stress it. It seems that when running the CPU at 100%, it is stable, but not when it is idle.

Weird.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: onn2000
From my experience, Prime stable is not necessarily system stable. For example, I could run two instances of prime on my system for 8 hours, but the system can have a BSOD at any time when I don't stress it. It seems that when running the CPU at 100%, it is stable, but not when it is idle.

Weird.

I've encountered that, invariably it was the RAM/memory settings

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Diogenes2

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
..... but if it doesn't actually affect me in any major way does it REALLY matter.....?

That's really all there is to it.. If you can do what you need to do, your stable...

If you' run P95 or SuperPi for a living, well ... You get the picture..

I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have my system freeze up or crash when I'm doing what I need it to do. If your system can pass these stability tests you can pretty much rule out hardware instability and instead focus on cleaning up something on your system such as a virus or bad drivers.