It is not neccessary to run two instances of Prime95 with an Athlon 64 processor in order to get a maximum stress on the chip, for our stability testing purposes.
However, two instances of Prime95, or any CPU stress test for that matter, are *always* neccessary for Intel processors with Hyperthreading.
The reason for this is that Intel chips typically won't use HT with only one "thread" running, (I.E. a game like Doom 3) only when there are multiple, heavy-load "threads" running simultaniously (I.E. two instances of Prime95).
Intel users need to be aware of this, because HT stability is often affected by overclocking - an overclock on an Intel chip that appears stable in single "thread" stress testing, will often be unstable when using HT, and multiple "threads".
I should add that it is sometimes claimed that in order to use two instances of Prime95 effectively on a machine with HT, you need to do some tweaking of the stress test run-options, because both instances will try to use all your system's available memory, causing problems. This is not the case; the newest version of Prime95 should run fine in two instances with the default stress-test settings, and priority ten, if your processor and RAM are stable.
Absolutely a great guide, and you are very well articulated in your writing; great use of english; it was very easy to read and understand everything.
Thanks, it's really great to hear that
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I'm really glad you found the guide useful, and easy to read
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You've got a really nice high-end setup to work with there; you're going to have a lot of fun playing with it, especially once that Vapo is hooked up
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