correct Prime95 usage?

[DoubleJ8]

I notice that Prime95 has 3 settings for it's tourture test:





Small FTT's (maximum FPU stress, Data fits in L2 cache, RAM not much tested)

In-place large FTT's (max heat, power consumption, some RAM tested)

Blend (tests some of everything, lots of RAM tested)







I'm wondering what one I should use and what they do? What one does everyone here use to get the temps that they post?


Thanks again

 

[wizard james]

use the one with max heat....becuase thats what u want.

sometimes i use the small ftt's.......but for some odd idea i forgot what fpu means.....


so um what does FPU mean?

 

[eg1441]

Hi

I either use

a) maximum heat, for stressing the cpu

b) "custom", in which I set RAM usage to about 750mb so I can still browse without using swap space. This is for stressing the RAM to see if it's stable at high fsb/low timings, but using memtest86 is also advisable.

 

[boffin2163]

Alot of people including myself just set it to blend and let it run overnight when you wont really be using the pc

 

[OBLIVIONLORD]

I run 2 instances simultaneously. 1 as FPU for max CPU even though it only does 50% and the second as Blend so it fills the rest of the CPU making it 100% and maxes the vmem along with the physical mem. While all this is going on you'll definitely draw your max heat so this setup is the best IMO. Don't expect to be able to do anything witht he pc while doing this plus if you can pass the tests without either program giving an error then you got it made.

 

[aftermath]

fpu is Floting Point Unit this is maths with decimals.
conversly there is also interger maths with whole numbers.
edit: think this is done by the alu /edit

Since page file is so so slow(40mb/s is less then the 2.1+gb/s memory can provide) shouldnt both instances be set up to use a little less than 1/2 the free memory. Im not sure but i think that the cpu would be stessed less if it has to wiat for the instructions from the page file longer.
iv not used prime for a bit but does it not use 75% memory by defult so 150% usage is a lot of page file (50+% of what ever your phisical memory is in my case 500mb!) good for a disk stress too but... its a cpu stess test program.