On Wednesday 23 March 2005 22:12, Greg Edwards wrote:

> Does anyone have a handle on which of these DC apps would load/overheat the
> machine the most ?

I'd put my money on Prime95, it's optimised in a way that few if any of the 
others are. However it tests CPU and memory only, not the I/O subsystems, 
which could be a stability issue to gamers (especially the graphics card).

Note, experience with systems with a front panel CPU temp display suggests 
that memtest86 (during testing cached memory) actually gets the CPU a few 
degrees above what Prime95 manages. The problem with Prime95 is that, in 
order to do useful work, pipeline and cache misses do occur in a way which is 
not neccessary to a memory tester.

> I don't think any of the ones above have a torture test where they detect
> wrong results being computed, like Prime95 does.

Which is worth a great deal. A few compute errors might sneak through on a 
marginally unstable system if there is no checking.

Prime95's checking in torture test mode is pretty near perfect, we _know_ 
what the result should be so any mismatch... Small errors may however be 
disguised by rounding to nearest integer so there is no guarantee that 
_every_ glitch will be detected. That's why I reccomend to overclockers that 
they use the speed just below the speed at which Prime95 appears to be 
stable. This safety margin also allows for high ambient temperature etc.

Regards
Brian Beesley
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