Testing the Tests – CPU Stability
Result – Prime95
Test 1: i7 930 set at 190BLCK with a 22x multiplier. Effective frequency is ~4.2GHz. The system was stable, with no throttling, for just under 9 hours.
Note the middle of the CPU temperature graph where the CPU temperatures start to drop rapidly. This is the time that I woke up and realized that my water temperatures had increased tremendously overnight and I cranked up the fans on my radiator.
Test 2: i7 930 set at 194 BLCK with a 22x multiplier. Effective frequency is 4268MHz. I ran this test for only one iteration (Test 1- Test 10). This test did eventually fail, but the duration it took to fail was greater than 1 hour.
Result – OCCT
Test 1: i7 930 set at 190BLCK with a 22x multiplier. Under this test – just like Prime95, my system was stable. It ran for 14 hours under “large data set” and came back with no problems. The temperature graph doesn’t show much because I returned to my computer a while after it had finished. The maximum temperatures can be seen by Core Temp.
Test 2: i7 930 set at 194 BLCK with a 22x multiplier. Effective frequency is 4268MHz. This test I only ran for 15 minutes because of the results you will see below for Intel Burn Test. After 15 minutes the test reported that the system was stable. I didn’t agree.
Result – IBT
Test 1: i7 930 set at 190BLCK with a 22x multiplier. I set this test to 150 iterations, but stopped it after 108 runs. I felt that since OCCT and Prime95 was stable, IBT should also be stable.
Test 2: i7 930 set at 194 BLCK with a 22x multiplier. Effective frequency is 4268MHz. This is the result I was hoping for – finally an end to the madness. Less than 3 seconds after Everest showed 100% CPU usage, the PC BSOD. This occurred within 20 seconds of starting the test.
Um…. Your testing of OCCT was not very thorough… You should have tested on both small and large data sets. Large is easiest to pass while small is not.
Think I might have to pull out IBT and see how it runs on my 955. Can’t say I ever ran it, but between Prime95 and OCCT it took a rather long time for each test before moving on.
Fully agree on reliable and expected. If I turn on my computer overclocked; never have an issue but one test some where fails causing a BSOD; I just move on, since if its playing all the games I play with no issue’s and doesn’t randomly crash then it working well
@ Lord XeB
I realize your comment on the OCCT test not being very thorough. I agree that OCCT could probably be as sensitive as IBT was, but OCCT was very unclear on which test to use. A good addition to OCCT would be a clear definition of each test. Test Mode Small Data Set nets you “The test wont touch the RAM.” You can conclude two things from this:
1) Best test for CPU since it focuses only on this
2) Is as effective on the CPU as the other two, but doesn’t test the RAM
All 3 tests did eventually fail – but as my conclusion suggests, IBT did it the fastest. In fact, the amount of time it took for both OCCT and Prime95 to fail was greater than the time it took me to run 1 loop of IBT at 191-194. It doesn’t make the program better, but it does make it the fastest.
@ Micheal Turner
I completely agree. I am a (in)famous OCer over at OCN (mostly because I have habit of destroying graphics cards D:), but I am VERY thorough with my stress testing. If it an overclock does not pass 24 hours of prime (to be deemed 24/7 stable) and 50 runs of LinX (AKA a better GUI’ed version of LinX) with max memory (only works with 64-bit systems) I do not deem it stable. <.< Little ruthless on my poor Q6600 but I do not stand for system instability either.
Anywho, very nice guide BTW. And I do agree with you on OCCT. It does need to be clearer, but for reference, P95 during default stress testing is set at small data set (or small fft or whatever they are called).