Memtest86 or Memtest86+

This is kind of confusing. Memtest86+ apparently started when Memtest86 wasn't being updated anymore.

Currently Memtest86 is being updated as much as Memtest86+, yet both still remain separate programs, with different version numbers, written by different people.

Searching this question doesn't yield much information as the info is old now and comments favoring Memtest86+ were based on Memtest86 not being updated, which it now is.

Leave one to wonder what the differences are and which one (if any) is actually better.


If one wanted both, how would you put both iso's on a CD and have the option to use one or the other?

i think you could probably load it on the ultimate boot cd for yourself.

I really doubt that one is actually "better" than the other. I have and use both Memtest86 v3.5 and Memtest86+ v2.11, and they both work equally well. More often than not I choose the Plus version just out of habit, since the original Memtest86 hadn't been updated until just recently (Jan/09) from v3.4a back in Dec/07.

MemTest+ vers. 1.7x and 2.xx have never indicated the presense of errors when I ran them on ECS GeForce 6100SM-M and nForce6M-A mobos. OTOH MemTest86+ vers. 3.2 and 3.3 did find errors with the same memory modules. I wasn't able to get ver. 3.4 to work with those mobos (froze, characters looked wierd), but ver. 3.5 did run, although I couldn't test it on dud memory modules.

Similarly, Gold Memory 6.xx found no errors while ver. 5.07 did.

Therefore I think the only safe thing to do is try several diagnostics.

Memtest+ without a doubt on x58. Memtest will not recognize the chipset or timings. Memtest+ v2.11 works great on x58 and definitely detects memory faults. It will not see turbo enabled however so if you enable the 21x multi on i7 920 for instance it won't recognize it and will assume 20x. Test 5 still seems to be the most brutal.

TimoneX said:

Memtest+ without a doubt on x58. Memtest will not recognize the chipset or timings. Memtest+ v2.11 works great on x58 and definitely detects memory faults. It will not see turbo enabled however so if you enable the 21x multi on i7 920 for instance it won't recognize it and will assume 20x. Test 5 still seems to be the most brutal.

Click to expand...

Agreed, I run it off a usb disk no problems with my X58.