What program do YOU use to stress test a new system?

[freakflag]

I'm just curious to find out what the most popular program among ATer's is.
I have used the Q3 demo loop and the burn-in wizard in Sandra but I'm curious to know what other programs people use.

 

[Brutuskend]

I mess with it a lot.

 

[Mallow]

Prime95

 

[fatbaby]

Originally posted by: Mallow
Prime95

that and sis cpu benchmark

 

[Brutuskend]

Ok actually I use sysoft sandra.

 

[toant103]

Originally posted by: Mallow
Prime95

 

[freakflag]

Originally posted by: fatbaby

Originally posted by: Mallow
Prime95

that and sis cpu benchmark

I've heard of Prime95...that's actually a distributed computing program right?

 

[Nothinman]

Since I never put together a completely new system, just replace the parts I think need replacing I usually do things that are specific to what I just upgraded. Like when I get a new drive I run bonnie++ on it for a full day before I put any data on it and when I get a new video card I'll play q3 for a bit but that's more of a driver test than anything since I know the hardware will be good (it's coming from a known good source). The only parts that really scare me are hard drives, especially IDE ones. I've seen so many die at work I avoid IDE disks whenever possible and when I have to use them I run them through the loops before trusting them.

Once I get my opterons I'll probably just use it, I know my software is stable so if any new problem crop up it'll have to be one of those parts.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I just put together my half-new-half-old system yesterday, and what I did to see how high I could get the cpu temps (mainly, since it has bad ventilation and needs to be reliable) was to simply do a yes > /dev/null (and with an &, about 5 times over for good measure). This is an amazingly simple way to peg your cpu at 100%, I just let it go for a while and then checked the temp afterwards. For testing the system overall (just to make sure it's not obviously crashy or anything), I forkbomb it to death: while true; do (grep -ir foo / &); done - I find this has a nice mix of overall system usage, including memory and disk, not just cpu. If you really wanted, you could run a few bzip's at the same time for good measure. This got the load up to I think 167. Takes a little longer than usual to log in, but it's easy to just log in as root and kill bash on whatever terminal the bomb is running on. You can't, however, do this as a normal user, because the system usually won't be able to fork to open a shell for you (but it will be able to for root). Fun stuff

 

[ComradeXavier]

I usually compile a couple of big packages (I recommend OpenOffice, if you're brave ) with gcc or especially g++. This maxes out the cpu the ram (a couple of times I've had bad ram that nothing detected except gcc would segfault) and will also do quite a bit of both read and write disk accesses.

 

[Spyro]

What program do YOU use to stress test a new system?

Setiathome, compiling large packages, and launching kde.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Prime95 is generally the best CPU-intensive program, but for full-system tests, i Use sandra's burn-in testing, and I used to run UT2003 flyby's and botmatches when I owned the game... For testing cpu temps alone, i would say definitely prime95

 

[Redviffer]

CPU intensive: SETI & SiSoft Sandra burn-in
Graphics: 3DMark2001 & 3DMark2003 looping

Plus just leave the computer on for about a week straight. I usually don't get many customers returning computers for "unknown" reasons (as opposed to the "known" reasons: they broke it).

 

[zodder]

I run SETI and loop 3DMark2003 about 5 times. If it passes those, it'll do everything I built it do.

 

[mk]

SETI@home is pretty good for burning in a new system although it might be a good idea to leave it on at least for a year or two just to make sure that the system is really stable.

 

[zodder]

Originally posted by: Mk4
SETI@home is pretty good for burning in a new system although it might be a good idea to leave it on at least for a year or two just to make sure that the system is really stable.

I concur!

 

[MainFramed]

to Stress test? well I play UT2003 for about 30 minutes at the highest res. possible. If it's stable im good...i also use Sandra

 

[vexingv]

prime95 and loop 3dmark03

 

[igowerf]

I just use my system. If it doesn't crash, then it's stable enough for me.

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: igowerf
I just use my system. If it doesn't crash, then it's stable enough for me.

Thats all well and good until it crashes under an abnormal load

 

[krackato]

Prime95 and then I run Seti 24/7 for a couple of years.

 

[JackBurton]

I first run Prime95. If it passes that test, I then encode a DivX movie (about 5-8 hrs). If it passes that test, it is pretty damn stable. I've run QIII loops and 3DMark loops successfully, but had UT (when it first came out) crash on me.

 

[bignateyk]

for burn in / error testing (after overclocking,etc..) I run prime95 for a day, then run memtest86 for a while. Between those two, its pretty easy to catch any errors...

 

[crisscross]

what do you do if you comp passes every conceivable test-Prime95, Sisoft, Memtest86 and still gives you a random BSOD

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Tornado54
what do you do if you comp passes every conceivable test-Prime95, Sisoft, Memtest86 and still gives you a random BSOD

Get rid of your via motherboard