Memory stress/burn-in programs

[M4D]

This is a short guide in response to the number of questions asked about Memory stress/burn-in programs.

Why do it?

The burn-in process can be used twofold. The primary reason to stress test a machine is to ensure its stability under extreme circumstances (e.g. that really important Quake3 Arena deathmatch). Sometimes, there's also a burn-in effect whereby a machine actually becomes more stable after being subjected to prolonged stress testing. Initially, the machines would be unstable when overclocked to certain speeds, needing additional cooling or voltage to achieve marginal stability. After strenuously stress testing the machines for several days (or sometimes weeks), the machine can become stable at its stock voltage without extreme cooling.

What to use?

There are several programs available, a list of which follows.....(if I have missed one, let me know, and I'll add it!)

• Memtest86 A memory test tool, with burn-in feature
  
• Prime95 is a quest to find large (and I mean 10 million digit+) Prime numbers. This program is heavily memory intensive, and considered one of the more stressful burn-in programs
  
• CPUburn will heavily stress your whole system, giving a good indicator of stability
  
• SiSoft Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. There are 58 modules in the standard(free) version, one of which is a Memory Bandwidth benchmark, and a Burn-In Wizard
  

Of course, this list is by no means all the programs available, and neither I or the owners of this site accept any responsibility if your system does indeed "burn" after using one of these programs........

Nice thread i can't believe i missed this one

 

[disk11]

What priority do you guys use for P95? I set my system to realtime via taskmgr and I get an instant hard lock. I use torture test and the blend setting before I touch the priority. Nothing else I have done so far has caused a problem.

 

[Sophisticated]

alot of things you put to Realtime will lock your system up..just use the one be4 real time and that should give u a good stress

 

[disk11]

Cool thanks a bunch.

 

[www.darkblau.de]

Another good memory burn-in/diagnostic program is one that's actually made by MS. It's called 'Windows Memory Diagnostic', and is available from the following MS 'Online Crash Analysis' site...

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

all u need is the ULTIMATE BOOT CD
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
(~45MB, ISO image)

contains everything you need for burning and benchmarking!

 

[aNTiChRisT]

Seems like the dude has some sound backup to support the fact that burning in, but i have to say that it seemed to help me... 3.0ghz stable, after some burning in it was good for 3.2

Wierd... If not for anything else it helps settle the AS5 ;-)

~t0m

 

[unreal]

thx for the help in this thread,, really helped me get my whole system tuned and stable,, found out i had some errors in the ram.

 

[Dukemurmur]

i have had good results also with burn in. My ram woudn't go over 165 i burned in 4 a few days and i got 172 at the same voltage stable. I have heard that burn in makes osme transistors worse by about 25% but other better by about 35% in the end this will make the average transistor count better thus allow 4 a higher oc.

 

[Dukemurmur]

update if any one carse i just finished a new burn in and now i can run 182 at 2-2-3-11 at .1 volt less and tighter timmings then at 172

 

[PCGUY112887]

What is this CIV thing that a few people are talking about... and why on earth did you lock the CD in a safe?

 

[jaybee2003]

What is this CIV thing that a few people are talking about... and why on earth did you lock the CD in a safe?

hehe when he said CIV in that old post he was talking about an old (addictive) video game called Civilization 3.

 

[envy]

and i dont think he actually locked it in a safe...or maybe he did

 

[pauldriver]

and i dont think he actually locked it in a safe...or maybe he did

Oh no, it's actually in the safe, in a lockbox.

Anything to make it harder to start Civilization (2 or 3) up.

Civ takes about 12 to 16 hours to finish, and is eternally varible, and I get so [expletive deleted] at the AI, I want to start screaming!! (and I do, much to the consternation of my housemates and dog).

[pusher]You really should try Civilization some time, really, it's good, it wont hurt you, so you lose some time, maybe some sleep, big deal, think of the pleasure you get from dominating the world, it's fun, really [/pusher]

 

[AA666]

The best program for CPU burning and memory testing is S&M
http://testmem.nm.ru/snm.zip

 

[RotKT]

been looking for this.
thanks

 

[Artyboy]

I'm having problems with memtest86. I made a floppy and all that does is makes numbers pop up on the side of the screen. I let it run for 2 days and it never actually made it to the test. Then I tried making a bootable cd. It just got me to dos and I can't figure out how to get it to run from there. What am I doing wrong here? The memtest website doesn't give any troubleshooting help at all. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[HousERaT]

I'm having problems with memtest86. I made a floppy and all that does is makes numbers pop up on the side of the screen. I let it run for 2 days and it never actually made it to the test. Then I tried making a bootable cd. It just got me to dos and I can't figure out how to get it to run from there. What am I doing wrong here? The memtest website doesn't give any troubleshooting help at all. Any advice would be appreciated.

If you made the boot cd as an image file (which is how it's supposed to be done) then it should boot up right into memtest. I used nero and just burned the image... no problem...... btw, memtest is a dos file.

 

[Artyboy]

Here are the steps that I took

Open Nero
Make Data Disc
Add the Boot.cat and memtest.img to the project
Proceed to burn the cd
Restart computer when the disc is done

Then it goes through all of the "starting caldera dos" crap
After that loads I get this command prompt
[DR-DOS] A:\>

When I try to do a disc image or saved project then the memtest.img file doesn't show up when I browse for it.
What am I doing wrong?

 

[HousERaT]

Here are the steps that I took

Open Nero
Make Data Disc
Add the Boot.cat and memtest.img to the project
Proceed to burn the cd
Restart computer when the disc is done

Then it goes through all of the "starting caldera dos" crap
After that loads I get this command prompt
[DR-DOS] A:\>

What am I doing wrong?

The problem is you're not making a data disk..... go up to the tab that says recorder.... pull it down then goto "burn image".... select the speed then burn it. I'd suggest you use a RW since you're kinda new at this.... then you'll have the image burned and will boot up when you leave it in the cd drive.... make sure your system is set up to boot from a cd before the harddrive.

Edit: download the iso and follow the steps above.....

 

[Artyboy]

I did what you said. The problem is that when I download the .ISO it's a winrar file. Nero can't find it when I click the burn disc image option no matter what file types I tell it to look for. I unpack it and it unpacks into another winrar file. I unpack that and it unpacks into the boot.cat and memtest.img file. Nero doesn't detect any of these under the burn disc image option. When I try to change the file to something that it will detect I get a corrupt file error. Do I click on the burn data disc option after I switch the bar on top to image recorder (cdr/rw)? If I do then do I add both files to be burned?