How do you know it's stable?

[Fat Tony]

What's the best kind of test to run to push your computer so that you can know whether it can sustain the settings I am running it at? And for how long should you run them before you can say you have a stable system? I have a Duron 750 in an A7V at 950 (9.5x100), 186 voltage setting and I would like to go to 1 Ghz but don't know if I should. I ran 3Dmark2001 four times and the temperature never got above 48 Cworking and 44 C idle (brought my 3D Mark up over 400 points). I find it strange that when I had it running at 750 with a chrome orb the temps were around 52 C while working and now I'm using a Cooler Master DP5-6131A-A1 and it's running cooler at an extra 200 Mhz. I never would have thought the Chrome Orb sucked that bad. It's great to be able to come to a forum like this full of intelligent people with great advice. It's really helped me alot but I still have questions. I'm using MBM5 for monitoring. I had problems with false results from AsusProbe. What's the best monitor program to use and just how accurate are they? How high can the FSB settings go safely? So many questions. I'm sorry if they've been answered elsewhere I'm new here and I've read many posts but haven't yet come across these answers yet.

Thanks


Asus A7V
Duron 750 @ 950 (100x9.5) W/Cooler Master DP5-6131A-A1
256 Megs Micron PC133 RAM
Radeon 64Meg DDR VIVO
Plexy 8/4/32A
Toshiba M1212 DVD
Zoltrix 56K modem
30 Gig Ultra 100 Quantum AS
Iomega Zip 100
Soundblaster Live
Key Mouse 250W power supply


Thanks

[WillysNut]

There are quite a few progies people use. One is Prime95 (http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm). There is some information on what Prime95 is abouthere (http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm)

But...the real fun is the fact that Overclockers.com has a Folding @ Home Team and a Seti@Home team. Both programs are great for burning in your CPU but there are many additional benefits. Check my sig for more info on Folding.

I'm currently using MBM4 on my 133a chipset mobo. You should try checking your temps in the BIOS first....and then use the "compensation" tab to match up the temps.

I'm running a 750 Duron @ 1000 (133x7.5) at 1.85v on a board similar to yours. Give it a shot!:) Just watch your temps okay! Good Luck!!

[Fat Tony]

Thanks. I'm going to check it out.

[Wega!]

I think 3D Mark 2001 is very good at testing gameing stability. Often I think my computer is stable, but then I run "d Mark, and it locks or quit's, and then I know it isn't stable when playing games.
Else I use F@H to test my stability.

[JAWS]

I agree, 3d mark 2001 is great. It just took about 2 hours to
download, with my good'ol 56k modem! LOL!

[Josh]

I don't really use Prime95 anymore because this program called CPU Stability Test (http://www.tweakfiles.com/diagnostic/cpustabilitytest.html) would fail when Prime95 would run fine. The author recommends running it for twelve hours to test overclocking. I also run 3dmark2001 for 100 loops to determine if my graphics overclock will be stable.

Josh

[Josh]

Originally posted by Would71

For "torture-testing", I usually just leave Folding@Home running, plus whatever other apps I happen to be using. I try 3DMark 2k1 occasionally, but I've never really used it with the intent of being a torture test. Mostly just to see my score, and see if it makes it all the way through one run.

I don't know for sure since I not running Folding/Seti, but I don't think they have error checking built into them. So an overclock might apparantly run the app stable but be giving bad results. Think I remember reading an article on this a while back.

Josh