Memtest's accuracy

toucam · 18 Jun 2007 at 09:02

Recently I occasionally had the infamous windows "cannot read from memory, debug or cancel" errors and constantly lock ups during Tomb Raider Anniversary. Ran memtest and a lot of errors were found. How accurate is Memtest? Quite a few people have reported having failed it even the memory is brandnew. Should I RMA my memory, Corsair XMS2 6400 C4 2GB Dual Channel?

nickcardwell · 18 Jun 2007 at 09:37

from experience i think its very accurate, (even with new memory) , though all the memory have tested was run at the correct timings/speeds etc..

M0t0r0la · 18 Jun 2007 at 20:37

It's pretty much what all retailers use to test returned memory. ie It's definitive.

Jokester · 18 Jun 2007 at 20:39

I've found Windows Memtest or Prime Blend to be a better check of RAM stability.

Jokester

Yellowbeard · 18 Jun 2007 at 21:44

toucam said:
Recently I occasionally had the infamous windows "cannot read from memory, debug or cancel" errors and constantly lock ups during Tomb Raider Anniversary. Ran memtest and a lot of errors were found. How accurate is Memtest? Quite a few people have reported having failed it even the memory is brandnew. Should I RMA my memory, Corsair XMS2 6400 C4 2GB Dual Channel?

What MOBO do you have?

Are you OCing and if so, what are your bios settings for voltages, CPU, and memory?

Do your errors only occur with 1 game?

toucam · 19 Jun 2007 at 12:02

I think I have found out what caused the problem. For some reason the DRAM setting in BIOS was DDR835 where it was supposed to be 668 because my FSB is 334 @ 3Ghz , 2.0v. I played TRA for about 2h yesterday and ran memtest again for over 1h no problem. Mobo is P5W DH, E6600.
Cheers for the replies guys.

[TR]SweetSpotOz · 19 Jun 2007 at 12:08

Jokester said:
I've found Windows Memtest or Prime Blend to be a better check of RAM stability.

Jokester

If you are talking about HCI Design Memtest then I disagree but Prime Blend is a good shout.

steve258 · 19 Jun 2007 at 12:32

markyp23 said:
If you are talking about HCI Design Memtest then I disagree

It picked up errors that the memtest86+ couldn't even after running it all night. Only downside is you have to run 2 copies manually for 2Gb and 4 copies if you have 4Gb RAM. I use both just to be safe.

[TR]SweetSpotOz · 19 Jun 2007 at 13:55

OK fair point. It's not been as good in my experience and it's also slightly dependent on your Windows installation.

I mean whenever you've got dodgy memory (as in faulty) Memtest86+ lets you know in seconds and that windows program took the best part of an hour to do that for me.

Although Memtest86+ can take some time to spot stability errors, which I see was what the topic was asking for.

Just reread the post and it's safe to say if memtest86+ finds an error then there is an error.