fire-eyes wrote:
On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 22:09 -0500, Ryan Sims wrote:
My computer has had some bizzare symptoms for quite some time now, and I finally ran memtest86 from the livecd, and was wondering if anyone could help me understand what the diagnosis is.
There were definately errors that popped up; say a page and a half of
them. (and here's the stupid question part) does this mean I need to
drop $60 on a new PC3200 stick? Is there an acceptable level of
error?
My experience has been that if memtest finds a single error, the RAM is not worth using. Computers are sensitive devices, and if in just once place you get a 0 where you should get a 1, or the other way around, there will be serious problems.
Such as random crashes. Apps segfaulting left and right. Merges failing in unrepeatable ways.
You need to replace this.
But that's not always the case. Random errors will crop up every now and then using unbuffered memory (which is what most people use), and less so, but even with registered memory. Nothing is fool-proof. If you read the README that comes with memtest86 it will tell you the same thing. Now if memtest86 constantly produces the same error every time you run it, even if it's only one or two, then I'd replace the RAM. But if it passes a few times and you only see one or two intermittent errors that don't ever repeat at the same address, it's probably not bad RAM. You have to run multiple passes of memtest86 to really get a good idea of whether or not the RAM is good.
James -- [email protected] mailing list
