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Memory stress/burn-in programs

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I never leave my computer on, when i dont need it. Its only on when i do something with it like gaming, surfing the net, working or benching/overclocking. So i never performed a stress test but memtest for 20 minutes or so. And guess what: When i overclock too far then my system wont boot. When i am right at the limit a quick 3DMark2001 run will make it crash. And when i am below the limit the system never crashes. I just havent felt the need of a 12 hour stress test with my computer working all night.

I know this is an overclockers forum, so things like stress tests are highly important i guess. But my system has never failed me without them, so far.

Edit: Canadatron, just unzip the file, execute the memtest install file and it will tell you what to do. After that you reboot your computer (your floppy drive must be set as boot drive in BIOS) and load memtest from the floppy disk.
 
Crash893 said:
usually 24 hours is good i think

reason for that
the house will go threw its full thermal cycle
Click to expand...

Wouldn't it be ok to simply test at the hottest part of the day?
 
The hottest part of the day in Indianapolis is when you turn on the lights ;)

Although, I'm not sure about the validity of the "Thermal Cycle" argument, simply because most people's homes are temprature regulated. What good will a periodic change of temp by about 1C do?
 
What is the best way to install and run MEMTEST86? I have tried to create a bootable CD as per the install readme, but can't seem to run it. What am I doing wrong?

bump for the Sticky
 
I just used Memtest86+ 1.50 recently... Basically a version of the old Memtest86 that some guys have kept working on (x86-secret, they're french I think), they have ready-made ISOs that make creating a bootable CD a snap (just point your burning program towards the ISO and you're done). They also have the source files and whatnot in case anyone wants to do it manually... This version (Memtest86+) has improved support for some of the newer chipsets as well as some particular A64 tweaks. It also seems to be updated more frequently, dunno.

In any case, it worked great for me and singled out some RAM timing issues that Prime didn't, here's the link:

http://www.memtest.org/
 
Could you elaborate on the issues?

If you mean Memtest shows errors while Prime doesn't, it would be helpful to know how you concluded the errors were not due to a memtest compatibility issue?
 
Hey there was a question on the 1st page that no one answered.. what is the best way to burn in? at stock Voltage and speeds or overclocked and higher voltage or what.. i have no idea.. i got new ram that is only stable at 2.7v at stock settings! that is crap man. i need to burn it in, maybe it will help!
 
Burning in should be done at stock everything, as far as I'm concerned. And burn in your ram one DIMM at a time. Twenty four hours on each. If there's ever a problem where you can't even get the standard timings, burn in one dimm overnight, or 24 hours... then take it out and burn in the other dimm.

Also, if you're using arctic silver ... you may want to let it burn for 72 hours, so it has a chance to set properly.
 
A good test that you can run from a working MS Windows install is RightMark Memory Analyser.

Hit the "Express Info" tab and run both the Quick Test and the Stability Test.

Memtest though, is a great diagnostic for those times when you get bluescreens while booting Windows, you can run it from a Boot CD or a flash drive.
 
Actraiser said:
Imo memtest86 for memory and chipset error detection is the best pre os loaded. In windows, nothing has really topped prime 95 for finding "cpu" instability.

If for example, you can run prime 95 all day but as soon as you run 3dmark2001 or play games and your system still crashes, your problem does not lie with the cpu speed. Chances are your FSB is set too high causing problems with AGP or PCI dividers being too far out of spec. If your still having problems with games / 3dmark crashing and your on an Nvidia Nforce 2 or Intel based system that locks the pci / agp your problem lies with AGP having side band addressing enabled or 8X agp enabled. These types of things wont show up with Prime95.


The Trick with benchmarking for stability is to utilize several tests in conjunction with your hardware. There really is no be all end all benchmark, because computers consist of multiple parts that cannot be stress %100 at the same time is basically what im getting at.

my 2 cents..
Click to expand...


I agree. Memetest for mem. Prime for CPU.

Edit- OCCT, linpack are also great utilities for detecting errors in CPUs.
 
Last edited:
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.
 
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