Prime stable vs Game stable

hlennie

hlennie

hlennie

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Right to start of with got rid of my 17 920 co and got my hands on a brand new i7 950 for the price of a i7 920 do

now my problem is at this speed cant seem to get prime stable as it crashes with in 5 mins

But i can play many games with out a problem no blue screens or lock ups with every thing on max even crysis seems to be flying a long at a very good pace (played for over 8 hours)

so what u think should i drop my clock down to 4.2 to get lower temps and volts so prime is stable or just sod it and enjoy
 
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In the future a game might come out that pushes the processor harder and it might crash but if everything you do currently is stable and its not in the back of your mind then just enjoy it :)

Prime 95 runs at least 15c hotter then any of my games so it makes sense. you can always change it later if it starts crashing. The only thing you cant say is that its 100% stable.
 
I have experienced the complete opposite of this with my rig.. I could get my system stable with both P95 Blend Test, and 20 passes of LinX with all available RAM, but when I try playing games my system would crash after an hour or so...

Tbh 4.6GHz is overkill, if I were you I would definitely lower the clocks to have a completely stable system and lower temps..

Use these higher clocks for benching yes, but I can't see any need for 4.6GHz 24/7 usage...
 
Unstable is unstable. A processor that works things out very very fast but occasionally gives you the wrong answer is inferior to one which doesn't make mistakes.

Of course gamers tend to feel differently, where higher fps but the occasional misplaced pixel seems a fair trade off. I'm surprised there's any difference in games between 4.2 and 4.5ghz, would expect you to be gfx limited even at the slower speed. If so, drop down to stable speeds and enjoy the same frame rates without any crashes

@Davy, if I can get my 920 to run at 4.6ghz 24/7 stable I will very much be doing so :)
What was your solution? Prime stable + ibt stable + crashing would leave me stumped
 
I love popular culture, even when it sprouts urban myths along the lines of "swine flu is fatal in most cases", "watercooling is dangerous", "England are good at sport" and "Prime is the only stability test that matters."

When will people learn that stable through multiple runs of Prime 95 means that... the computer is only stable when churning through multiple runs of Prime 95. Nothing more, nothing less. It is one tool out of many that should be used to determine whether a computer is stable.

On the flip-side, if something isn't Prime-stable, then it isn't calculating correctly. Thiss will eventually lead not just to misplaced pixels, but data corruption, crashing, and loads of moaning posts of this forum. None of which are fun.

If you're happy to accept the associated risks, then that is cool. If you have any concerns whatsoever, back your clock off and make sure your computer is happy and content.
 
@Jon, I ended up returning my processor to OcUK, and I have a replacement chip arriiving tommorow... I had a bunch of other issues with my system as well, but that's a whole different story!!!

I personally don't see any need for 4.6GHz for 24/7 use.. but to each their own, I personally wouldn't want to run anything over 4GHz for 24/7 use atm...

What mrthingyx said above is right enough imo..
 
mrthingyx said:
On the flip-side, if something isn't Prime-stable, then it isn't calculating correctly. Thiss will eventually lead not just to misplaced pixels, but data corruption, crashing, and loads of moaning posts of this forum. None of which are fun.
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who said prime is the only test that matters?

You can have prime unstable but games stable imo, like you say prime is one program and it happens to generate more processor heat thhen most games because it is programmed to generate heat through loading the processor as much as possable. If the games installed on a system generate less heat they might run endlessly without a problem. Just like processors that are watercooled can be overclocked more because of the extra headroom that the lower temprature allows.
 
If it works with everything you want it to do, then what's the problem? That sounds like a PC in perfect working order. Prime 95 is pretty niche, it's only a way overclockers can verify highest stable overclock figures, so they all compete on a level playing field. Prime 95 is a useful tool, but it's not the end all and be all of stability.
 
if u can game with crysis for 8 hrs running at max detail with no problems then i would say your pc is pretty stable as no other game will push your pc as much...dont worry about it;)
 
On a related note, Furmark seems to absolutely thrash your graphics card, and yet in Crysis say, my temps only ever go up to about 50-60% of the max temperatures. Are there any games out there that reach similar loads to Furmark? You could argue that finding you max overclock using Furmark is actually overkill, or should that be underkill?
 
GTA IV is a good way to test game stability as it thrashes both CPU and GPU. I had an overclock that was stable in IBT and Prime but crashed in GTA IV.
 
chiLLZ said:
The only thing you cant say is that its 100% stable.
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And netither can you, no computer on this planet is 100% stable even at stock speeds.

If they where why are there so many forums online with posts like "plz help", or that there are so many tech departments in companys all over the world.

If his system dos'nt crash or error when he is gaming, and thats what he uses his comp for then thats stable, who cares if prime fails, its one little test.

ITs like mine, fails prime (blend, passes all the rest for hour after hour), passes 100's of tests on IBT, runs through video encoding no issues, games no issue, any benchmark i throw at it no issue.

So let me guess to you lot thats unstable too as 1 little test thats how old fails lol. blinkered much?

And even if his was to crash under a new game its a simple task of down clocking it abit.
 
yup...who cares if it's unstable in prime or IBT. THey are useful tools but at the end of the day, if your puter never crashes for what you use it for then that's all that matters.

I use prime/ibt runs to test stability preliminarily but that doesn't mean I won't settle for a higher clock that is not prime stable. Prime screenshots are great for resale value though.
 
chiLLZ said:
who said prime is the only test that matters?

You can have prime unstable but games stable imo, like you say prime is one program and it happens to generate more processor heat thhen most games because it is programmed to generate heat through loading the processor as much as possable. If the games installed on a system generate less heat they might run endlessly without a problem. Just like processors that are watercooled can be overclocked more because of the extra headroom that the lower temprature allows.
Click to expand...

Based on this and five other threads I found on the first results page alone when searching for "Prime" in this sub-forum, I would say quite a few people.
 
@bifday2k, I'm reasonably confident in saying that computers don't make mistakes in calculations. Occasionally a hard drive missteps and writes data down wrong, and there's probably something to ecc ram, but the processor itself I'm fairly confident gets the right answer every time (when stable).

As for why you think every computer is a bit unstable, are you only used to Windows by any chance? I've never had debian stable crash on me, or show any inclination to do so. Ubuntu goes down occasionally, but it can always be traced back to me changing things I shouldn't have. Yet a 'rock stable' or stock settings computer running XP still seems to crash occasionally. I blame software for this.

Prime isn't everything, but it is quite a lot. Similarly ibt. If it passes both of these, memtest, furmark and folding@home (don't send the units off while testing!) you can start to be pretty confident it's not going to crash in normal use.

However crashes are not the only problem here. A computer has to **** up pretty badly to actually crash. However an unstable system will get numbers wrong when calculating, it makes mistakes. If that's partway through a database, while saving or backing up an important file which then corrupts, giving you nonsensical answers in mathematica, then you have problems. Or at least I would do.

If all you ever do is game, don't care much about it occasionally crashing out of a game or corrupting a save game, then off you go. I care if my computer can't accurately execute code. I'm quite fallible enough already without my computer making mistakes for me
 
Yup jon im in total agreement with everything you just said, what does annoy me though on here and many other forums is that people will state oh ur computer is'nt stable, but it is for the use u intended.

I totally agree that most instabilty is down to software and rarely hardware if set up right that is.

Its like the original poster only games so, his is stable for that, would it be for folding/or intense database app's who knows, but he dos'nt do that.

If he was to then yeh he would probably have to try and get it more stable.
 
thanks guys for your input will leave it @ 4.6 as theres only a 7c temp diff when idle 42c (stock) vs 49 (OC) and when gaming its about 65c (OC)

In future if there are any games out that cause crashes ill just drop down to 4.4 or 4.2
 
I don't understand why people are willing to sacrifice ANY stability for such minor overall gains, most games probably have less than 50% overall utilisation with a quad core so game stable is just another name for partially stable.

How is having a 4.5ghz cpu that can't handle more than 75% load any better than a 4ghz cpu that can be maxed out? you get a few extra fps at most and a cpu that's a ticking time bomb.
 
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