Am I stable?

[Merlin5]

No, not me, my cpu Hey guys, I increased my vcore to 1.5v (but left all other voltages at stock) and ran intel burntest on maximum stress. The guy who wrote the app suggests 5 runs to a max of 20.

Then I downloaded LinX. Someone said (to someone else on some forum I read) to run LinX for 10 runs using all memory. Although I've since read the readme which suggests 50+ runs. I ran it for 10 runs having pressed the 'All' button for all memory and it passed all 10. It took just under 47 minutes and created 2c more temps than intel burntest. CPU was running at 45c for the whole test and cores at *48c max for the whole test (*was 28c on hw monitor and so I always add 20c to that because temp readings have always been too low) where intel burntest today was at 43c cpu and 46c cores. Here's my screenshot of LinX.

Here's intelburntest

Would you say from this LinX bench, which seems to be the most intensive from a heat perspective, and my intel burntest, that my 3.8ghz clock is pretty stable and that I can now move it up to 3.9 or even straight to my perhaps overly optimistic magic target of 4Ghz? Are the gflops about right for my cpu?

 

[sithlord]

Nope... Id say a mixture of Prime 95 & Linx. I say 12 hours of Prime 95 and 20-50 runs of Linx.

Ive had my overclock fail around the 8hour mark on Prime 95.

 

[simbady]

Also try playing a few games, I've had systems that are stable under stress tests but when I run a game / 3dmark it will crash. The best way to test for stability is to use the system as you would day to day.

EDIT : As long as it passes atleast a few passes of a stress test first.

 

[Merlin5]

I have both prime and orthos. Would you say prime is better or are they much of a much?

 

[j.col]

personally i run 20 runs of Intel burn test
and then an overnight run of prime95 blend test.

but in my own expierence, i have noticed that if a 20 run of IBT passes, then i am stable.

 

[sithlord]

I only trust Prime 95 & Linx. Linx for heat and Prime for doing longevity stability testing.

Ive had stuff pass Linx and fail Prime, the 7 to 10 hour seems a critical time period for me.

 

[SeeKified]

Prime is ancient, stick to Linx I'd say. I ran 100 rounds of Linx on my unlocked 555 the other day, that tells me it's stable if nothing else.

 

[FrancesoNoir]

I tend to do tests to check for short term stability, then just use it day to day for a couple of weeks. If no crashes, no problem. Unless you need utmost stability for specialist use of your comp, for work etc, all this stuff is a waste of time.

 

[SouthEastBlue]

I found Bad Company 2 a very good test for CPU overclocks that pass 20 passes of Intel Burn Test.

 

[Sin_Chase]

I tend to do tests to check for short term stability, then just use it day to day for a couple of weeks. If no crashes, no problem. Unless you need utmost stability for specialist use of your comp, for work etc, all this stuff is a waste of time.

Agreed.

The stress most of these burns will put to make the system unstable are very rarely reached in real world usage.

 

[Azuse05]

I found Bad Company 2 a very good test for CPU overclocks that pass 20 passes of Intel Burn Test.

Tbh this is the best test. IBT has a habit of producing errors when there aren't any hence a lot of people use linx instead (better interface too) but 50 runs is usually considered the final test with it. Not just because error can pop up after 40 runs, but because it heats your pc up like summer temps BC2 will pick up errors that primes small ffts tend to but in my experience it's crashes tend to be related to memory, either that ram or controller (cpu-nb).

I personally wouldn't go past 3.7 on the cpu multi at it disables cool & quiet, past that fsb makes more sense to me (although I do have 1600 ram) but disabling cool & quiet is good oc practice.

Once you've got the cpu stable the cpu-nb (memory controller) is the next step with seems to provider better fps increases. Best way of testing that is with pi, maxxpi specifically. Runs of 128M for quick testing, 256M for fine tuning. Make sure you set the priority to high, actually make sure you set the priority of ibt/linx to high too or it'll take longer that needed.

 

[wannabedamned]

Prime is ancient, stick to Linx I'd say. I ran 100 rounds of Linx on my unlocked 555 the other day, that tells me it's stable if nothing else.

How can something be ancient at running a stress test

Anyways, More is the key to finding out system stability.

So prime, LinX and Intel Burn test, Nothing wrong with any of them.

I also like to stress my graphics card at the same time as a CPU stress, So i find out how much heat a system will emit at its max.

No point having a CPU stressing alone when it comes to overall gaming stability, the extra heat pumped from the GPU can often cause CPU temps to raise and obviously thats bad for an OC

 

[opethdisciple]

 

[Merlin5]

Hi again chaps. I ran 3D Mark06 and 3D Mark11 last night, no crashes, no problems, (apart from a crappy score in 3D Mark 11 )

Just got home having left prime95 running since 1am this morning and it's passed 17 hours large FFT's. I've now stopped it. I'm gonna do 50 passes of linX next then maybe a blend test on prime or orthos. It's looking good though isn't it?

 

[Michaeljcox24]

12 hours of prime for CPU, 1 hour on loop of Heaven and I think anyone is close enough.

 

[j.col]

Hi again chaps. I ran 3D Mark06 and 3D Mark11 last night, no crashes, no problems, (apart from a crappy score in 3D Mark 11 )

Just got home having left prime95 running since 1am this morning and it's passed 17 hours large FFT's. I've now stopped it. I'm gonna do 50 passes of linX next then maybe a blend test on prime or orthos. It's looking good though isn't it?

its looking good, personally i would say you are stable, even without running linX

 

[Merlin5]

its looking good, personally i would say you are stable, even without running linX

I think you're right. I'll probably do linX for the hell of it though before going to bed. That'll take just under 4 hours @ 50 passes. I did my 3rd 3D Mark test just now, Vantage. No crashing. I really want to see how things go by stepping up my multi to x20 which would be 4Ghz. I'll try that tomorrow. Not sure how many people get stable 4Ghz on a locked 550BE, or at least, without messing with other frequencies and voltages.

Question: does keeping my vcore at 1.5v 24/7 use up a lot more electricity than 1.35v, and, does it really shorten the life of my cpu by a lot?

 

[Snykch]

Had my SB OCd to 4.6GHz, 24hrs prime, 50 runs linx, even memtest for 12hrs, all stable, yet somehow I was still getting the random occasional crash, or occasion where it could take up to 3 reboots to get into windows.

Finally just gave up on it and resorted to the MSI OC Genie settings for 4.2GHz. Probably not even much different overall, and not a single problem now.

 

[EggCustard]

Life has taught me to not proclaim a system as stable unless it's passed 10hrs+ of Prime95 (i.e. at least one whole loop) and 50 loops of LinX/Linpack.

...but everyone out there has their own interpretations of what stability is.

 

[OLDPHART]

personally i run 20 runs of Intel burn test
and then an overnight run of prime95 blend test.

but in my own expierence, i have noticed that if a 20 run of IBT passes, then i am stable.

For me >IBT >20 runs of standard - threads set to 8 > 10 of high > sorted.