Stress testing: How long before considered 'stable' ?

Stonedofmoo · 20 Jan 2007 at 08:27

I downloaded that Orthos program and ran a stress test overnight. It ran 9 hours and 39 seconds before eventually failing with this

9 hours 32 minutes
Temperature: Case: 29.00
Temperature: CPU: 46.00
====================
Test 2, 1200 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M56623105 using 3072K FFT length.
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
Torture Test ran 9 hours, 32 minutes 39 seconds - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
Execution halted.

Would people say this is stable for an overclocked system, or should I back down the clock speed a little?

Legless · 20 Jan 2007 at 08:51

Most people consider a 12 hour run (with 0 errors) to be classed as stable... The fact that its failing at all means its NOT stable, so you may need to back down your overclock...

Stonedofmoo · 20 Jan 2007 at 08:59

Ah, so close then!

Never mind, plenty of extra voltage left to choose from

marc2003 · 20 Jan 2007 at 09:03

9 hours isn't bad. i'm sure the next notch up on the vcore will sort it.

Big.Wayne · 20 Jan 2007 at 09:31

Stonedofmoo said:
should I back down the clock speed a little?

Its either that or up the volts! (or adjust cooling etc)

sablabra · 20 Jan 2007 at 10:57

48 hours, no less. In many cases a overclock will fail after 24 hours. It is also vital to set priority to about 7-9, as 1 won't stress it enough. I would also run three tests: Large FFTs, small FFTs and blend(make sure it doesn't use any page file).

Remember the above would be only for those of us a bit nuts(we also run two instances of orthos) and require absolute stability, for most people a 12 hour run would be enough.

w3bbo · 20 Jan 2007 at 11:39

Why run two instances of Orthos? Unless you have quad core its pretty pointless as orthos loads dual cores to 100%, its not possible to load it more than 100%. All having two instances will do is one instance stealing cpu cycles from the other therby each instance will only be running at 50%.

Priority to 8 or 9 makes little difference unless you are using the PC at the time. All priority does is what it says, it gives it priority over other programs. Personally I just shut down everything that isn't essential to windows and leave it running overnight when the pc is not in use.

I guess everyone has there own methods of using orthos and this is just my 2p worth

sablabra · 20 Jan 2007 at 11:49

I've had my x2 [email protected] ghz 25 hours small FFTs stable at priority 1. After increasing priority it failed fairly quickly.

w3bbo · 20 Jan 2007 at 11:57

Did you have other programs running at the time though? I'm not criticising the way you run it m8 as everyone runs it the way that suits them but the simple fact is, all increasing the priority does is give PRIORITY to Orthos over other programs. If you have no programs running except orthos it makes little difference whether its priority 9 or 1. I can see the benefits of running a high priority if you are still using the PC for say browsing or encoding etc but if the PC is idle then priority 1 is fine.

Big.Wayne · 20 Jan 2007 at 12:31

sablabra said:
It is also vital to set priority to about 7-9, as 1 won't stress it enough.

w3bbo said:
Priority to 8 or 9 makes little difference

sablabra said:
After increasing priority it failed fairly quickly.

w3bbo said:
but the simple fact is, all increasing the priority does is give PRIORITY to Orthos over other programs.

I'm not a big fan of Orthos (prefere dual prime) but for some reason when u increase priority it seems to speed up the process of finding errors? i.e set priority 1 and it runs for days, set priority 9 and it errors in one hour?

If you are really confident that your overclock is stable then I suggest leaving it on an overnight run of Orthos with Priority set to 9, I think you will be suprised!

If a computer is stable, you can do anything and you cant take it down, dual/quad primes with 3DMark looping at the same time, OCCT, S&M (this one picks up a weak PSU I found) the list goes on and on. The main thing is you tried your hardest to crash it, putting the system under loads it will be unlikely to experience in real-life so if it passes you can be happy.

sablabra · 20 Jan 2007 at 14:22

w3bbo said:
Did you have other programs running at the time though? I'm not criticising the way you run it m8 as everyone runs it the way that suits them but the simple fact is, all increasing the priority does is give PRIORITY to Orthos over other programs. If you have no programs running except orthos it makes little difference whether its priority 9 or 1. I can see the benefits of running a high priority if you are still using the PC for say browsing or encoding etc but if the PC is idle then priority 1 is fine.

I had no programs going. I was sleeping at a friends house so everything was idle while it was running at priority 1. Btw, right after it finished 25 hours, I started a game and got freeze after some minutes.

But I agree with Big.Wayne. Run all you can throw at it at the same time. It should still not crash! The quickest way I check stability, is transcoding with nero. If it is unstable, it will normally freeze within seconds/minutes. If it passes that, I move on to various other tests.