Stability testing To PRIME or not to PRIME that is the question!

[swiftmetal]

Now before we start I am not wanting to start an argument just try to settle ongoing debates around using Prime and IBT to check for stability. I am not suggesting that I personally know everything nor am I saying that using these programs in any way damage your systems.

Now with that out of the way I pose my question.


Should you use PRIME and things like IBT to check for stability and maximum temperatures. (Please start your post with FOR or AGAINST Prime and lets do our selves a favor and not quote everyone and arguing with their posts just post you own opinion on the matter THANKYOU.)


AGAINST

Personally I don't like using prime to find stability in my system because I find that i get higher clocks than people using it. This is because I base my temps on what I play and do normally and if the system crashes I then mess about with the settings.

In a pinch I will use 3D Mark 11 on loop because I have seen overclocks be perfectly stable in prime and then crash in the first few seconds of the cpu tests in 3D mark.

I think of my cpu as a car most . Would you buy a brand new car and thrash it to within an inch of its life for hours upon hours just to see if it was ok to drive the speed limit for the rest of the time. I know I would not I would just drive my car normally and and see if it would perform under the type of circumstances that I would be using it for in the first place.

So in short my personal opinion on the matter is that you get higher clocks no unneeded torture to the cpu and real world stability.

Thank you for your time.

 

[swiftmetal]

Thank you guys so far that is really good feed back for people to ponder over.

 

[swiftmetal]

Don't worry, your brand new car has already had the nuts thrashed off it at the factory ( I used to do it)

I really want your job lol

Just make sure you do tests with your GPU running as well, otherwise you might find that you get overheating even if the CPU is prime stable.

This is a very good point that I totally overlooked seen as your temps look stable in prime and then add some gpus to the mix and bang your case temps sore or even if you are water cooling your coolant temps could go up a lot too>

AGAINST:

For some people "stable enough for what I do" is enough, playing [game] 250MHz faster than you could while completely stable and getting the weekly blue screen in exchange is fine for some people and I know a bunch of them.

I am totally guilty of this as this is why I spend money on my system to plays games and the faster and the higher quality the better.

 

[swiftmetal]

Prime No need!!!

Encoding, Gaming, Editing, win rar, browsing, folding or whatever you use your PC for!!! Do need!!!

Nuff said really

I 100% see your point but the point is you don't play the same games all the time and newer games will have newer CPU requirements.

Say you set your Overclock up to play MW3 and the CPU was only used 60% (with you un-prime tested overclock) then you fire up battlefeild 4 and you get 90% usage and a BSOD...

So you'd need to fix your overclock before you can play the game, i'd find that pretty frustrating.

You can also replace "gaming" and the "game names" with any other scenario..

I do appreciate your point and do get where you are coming from but if you want gaming stability why no just put any of the new versions of 3D Mark on loop and that should give you a good idea of gaming stability.

 

[swiftmetal]

It is a test that is more suited to gaming and it was just a suggestion for people that must prove to them selves that their setup is stable within games before actually gaming. It has more realistic temps and loads levels and stresses bot cpu and gpu to "gaming levels" and is a better indication that overclocks in cpu and gpu are gaming stable.

Personally I just oc then go on a game if it crashes so bet it mess rinse and repeat.