What to use to test stability?

FlyingFish · 21 Jan 2007 at 15:46

Hi all,

Just been messing around with my aging pc, and wondered if there is a free util that tests my pc for stability.

Not really looking for anything that benchmarks, as my pc aint that quick compared to modern stuff, but i do have it munching videos and stuff.

I've just gone backwards from a Nvidia 6800le to a Ati 9600xt (had it in the draw), for image purposes. And just stuck a new heatsink and fan on the chipset (nforce2). It was screaming and driving me crazy.

Just wanna make sure its all gonna be stable.

Mick

Rob43 · 21 Jan 2007 at 17:31

Orthos or prime95 & 3DMark should do the trick

Chingoo · 21 Jan 2007 at 20:31

nothings stable untill you run it through SnM

Had rigs in the past that ran prime for 12hours+ yet fell over pretty quickly in snm!

KillBoY_UK · 21 Jan 2007 at 20:45

i 2nd SnM and it moniters temps and volts at the same time

Guigsy · 21 Jan 2007 at 20:55

Zefan · 21 Jan 2007 at 20:59

Use what you're going to be using.

Prime, SnM etc are all good but I find if you're not going to be doing FaH or anything then just test games and encoding (just everyday tasks) and you'll see if it falls.

Some people can go way OTT on stability testing.

ghgh · 21 Jan 2007 at 21:12

The only program I use for stress testing is something I run anyway on all my machines - Folding@home, I find this uses 100% of the processor and certainly warms the processor upto levels which most other applications, even ones that use 100% of the CPU - SETI@Home for example, don't. Ive had systems run seti@home for months 24/7 but have locked up occasionally whilst running folding, note temperature related either. I find that if FAH EUE's wu's then the system is unstable. In my experience, if a system can run FAH stabily then it can run any app. without locking up, restarting or bsod'ing so I don't bother running orthos, or prime95.

Guigsy · 21 Jan 2007 at 21:18

Problem with SETI/Folding/Prime/etc is they load the hell out of your processor, but your memory is only ticking away and your graphics card is doing naff-all. Only when everything is working at full tilt and sucking down as much juice as possible can you test stability. Play the lastest game WHILE running one of these two soak up spare CPU time.

FlyingFish · 21 Jan 2007 at 21:45

Go on then......SnM?????

Google brings up some bizarre results, so anyone got a link?

Mick

KillBoY_UK · 21 Jan 2007 at 21:54

its a rusky program i dig out a link in a bit

edit http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=127

ghgh · 21 Jan 2007 at 21:56

Guigsy said:
Problem with SETI/Folding/Prime/etc is they load the hell out of your processor, but your memory is only ticking away and your graphics card is doing naff-all. Only when everything is working at full tilt and sucking down as much juice as possible can you test stability. Play the lastest game WHILE running one of these two soak up spare CPU time.

Very good point. That will test for absolute maximum stability.

Some of the 'good' WU's for folding use about 180meg of RAM each so they must be accessing the memory every few split seconds all the time...but I can understand what you are saying with standard units that don't give 'bonus' points...they just use like 5 meg of RAM so can't be that demanding on the memory side of things.