Memtest failure - how to test CPU cache?

[Baldrick1001]

I decided to check my daughters PC for memory errors - for no good reason other than I like to ensure that everything is working optimally. Unfortunately I did get an error on the fourth full scan on test 7 @ 279.5M.

The PC was/Is

Q6600 - with acrtic cooler 7 rev 2
4 gig of integral DDR2 ram operating @ 1.8V @ 6-6-6-22
640 gig WD 64M HDD
7900GS PCIE GPU
Giga-byte G41-ES2l
400W Antec true power PSU

I dropped timings and stuff but to no avail - so I purchased some Corsair 5-5-5-18 1.9v DDR2 ram - this errored at the same place - 279.5M in test 7.....

I then decided it could be the motherboard - so I swapped out the motherboard for an Asus p5g41c-m-lx - the error still occurred in the same place on the Corsair RAM, but for the integral RAM I now get a solitary error in test 6 and usually not until 5 or 6 full successful tests have been completed. BTW I have tested the Corsair Ram on another PC and it does not error at all

I have taken the GPU out and run off of the onboard GPU - but this has made no difference....


The only two items that are consistent, as I have changed the MB, RAm and GPU, are the PSU and the CPU. I'm a little concerned that my cache could be faulty on the CPU - I have never O'clocked the CPU - but how do I test the CPU only - any ideas please - I have used prime95 with small ffts but no issues....Any other ideas?

Many thanks

Baldrick

 

[Purgatory]

Intel® Processor Diagnostic Tool

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-031726.htm


Make sure to download the PDF manual too, you may need to install other things to make it work. Also make sure if you are overclocking to remove any overclocks before running the tests.

 

[Uriel]

Does that work for AMD cpus?

 

[Baldrick1001]

Purgatory,

Thanks for that - I ran the prog at default seetings - and it passed. I then upped the following values

Memory test = 100% (was 3%)
CPU Tasks - 100 (was 8)

and ran theprg for 20 minutes instead of 15 - the PC was unuseable throughout the test, due to the load on teh CPU. At the end of this intense 20 minutes test I once again got a pass... Does this mean that I need to look elsewhere for the memtest fault? Is this prog and results pretty conclusive.?
Thanks for your help - its much appreciated.

 

[Mick-1965]

Did you disable legacy usb in the bios ? as this is known to cause errors in memtest for no good reason

 

[Purgatory]

Does that work for AMD cpus?

Nope only Intel cpus

 

[Purgatory]

Purgatory,

Thanks for that - I ran the prog at default seetings - and it passed. I then upped the following values

Memory test = 100% (was 3%)
CPU Tasks - 100 (was 8)

and ran theprg for 20 minutes instead of 15 - the PC was unuseable throughout the test, due to the load on teh CPU. At the end of this intense 20 minutes test I once again got a pass... Does this mean that I need to look elsewhere for the memtest fault? Is this prog and results pretty conclusive.?
Thanks for your help - its much appreciated.

The CPU is fine then, i'm starting to think memtest is just giving you bad results. Have you tried setting the bios to all defaults ? Also a good suggestion was to disable legacy usb support too. Try all that.. but honestly I don't think you have any problems with that pc.. Has it caused any problems when you prime it at high memory settings and high stressing ? If you are not having any strange errors with the pc at stock while using it I would say there is nothing wrong with it just diagnostic software not playing nice. I have a samsung hardrive here for the laptop that always produces an error on their test software, they replaced it with a new one and did exactly the same error. That was just me testing stuff and again never had a problem with it just me being curious.. All that did was waste my time for a fault that was not there.

The Intel cpu tester is very good and have had it spot bad cpus in the past or cpus that have been damaged by a bad overclock. So if it states all is good it is in my book. Also it will cause the machine to run very slowly when using it and trying to do other things on the pc.. That's very normal due to the stress put on the cpu by the test software. Also make sure to use the correct timings and voltages for the memory what the manual for the memory states and check in the bios how the memory is mapped (Memory remap feature they call it on the asus motherboards and it's in the advanced settings). If you have done all that and the pc runs fine but still memtest gives you some bad results, I would ignore it and put it down to memtest not working right on that setup.. You can also try taking the memory to a pc repair centre and they normally have hardware memory testing devices that can check it quickly for you too, if you remain still worried.