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Memtest86 or Prime95??

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Violator

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2001
Location
Lower Walton, Warrington
Which is more reliable?

The reason I ask. I have 2x512 sticks of TwinMOS 3200 CH-5, which I appear to be struggling to take higher than 205Mhz.

CPU & chipset appear Prime stable (up to 215FSB, with memory lowered to 85% to rule it out).

If I put the memory to 100%, Prime will bail in less than 5 minutes.

Same result if I dropped the FSB down and increased memory to 125%.

However, if I run Memtest at 210FSB, it runs all tests perfect for over an hour before I stop it. Prime will crash out in under 5 minutes (using blend test).

Timings are 11-3-2-2.5, seems to need 2.9v to hit 210 stable in Memtest.

Specs :

Epox 8RDA3+ rev 1.1
XP-M 2500 @2.4Ghz
1Gb TwinMOS 3200
Radeon9800 PRO
 
If either one fails, then you have something unstable. In that sense, then they are both as reliable as anything else.

But either one can point to failures that are not explicitly memory related.

Basically, if either one fails, then you do not have a perfectly stable machine. It could be fine to leave it like this, or you may wish to lower settings or raise voltages to make it stable.

You would want to check each stick individually, as well as rearranging them in the DIMM slots while in dual-channel.

You may need to raise tRP from 2 to 3, or lower clock speeds.
 
1 pass on memtest is all that is needed...it just tests to ensure ram is good. if it has errors...then change timings or test 1 at a time or rma

at least 4-8 hours on prime 95, however...this actually tests performance under load and is a better indicator for stability w/overclocking
 
You need more than 1 pass on memtest, Ive had errors show up only after a bunch of passes. I usually run it for at least an hour.
 
i have the same results as you Violator, my ram will pass memtest for hours/days, but fail prime within minutes... i know its not my cpu cause i lower the oc when im testing mem stability... so i think prime is just a better stab testing program
 
I think it is good practive to run both when testing a new system and/or upgrades. I would side with stan03 on this one: if one of these programs passes and the other fails quickly, I would use the one that fails quickly more often to test/achieve stability since the one failing is "definitely" idendifying problems the other program does not.
 
prime often finds errors even after hours of use. i got errors after 10+ hours of usage, so u mite wanna try leaving it overnight or all day. and use both to identify problems!
 
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