New version OCCT stability test

[flexy]

i think in the new OCCT they use the same as P95 code for testing the CPU. which is a good thing.

[emoners]

are you guys using this version OCCT PT 2.0.0b.b01?

[fragmasterMax]

I love this version. They took one of the best products for stress testing and made it alot better.

[Tetedeiench]

i think in the new OCCT they use the same as P95 code for testing the CPU. which is a good thing.

We do share some code, yes. i'm using the same libraries (gwnum) and some code for the CPU test was taken out of Prime95 ( which reminds me i completly forgot to mention that in the thanks.txt file). That's why you see a huge *bump* in temperature in the cpu test from 1.1.1b and 2.0.0.

However, the calculations are radically different, using different home-made algorithm which uses a part of the routines of Prime95 (they have proved very effective).

You could call that a "mix" between proven routines and home-made code

[Tetedeiench]

I love this version. They took one of the best products for stress testing and made it alot better.

Many thanks for your cheers guys, i have to say i'm really proud of what OCCT has become I'm not earning a single $ on OCCT, i'm just going on for "fun", so those cheers are really appreciated

[STaRGaZeR]

Many thanks for your cheers guys, i have to say i'm really proud of what OCCT has become I'm not earning a single $ on OCCT, i'm just going on for "fun", so those cheers are really appreciated

I'm sure many here would donate some money to thank you your superb work

PS: Including me of course

[cantankerous]

I know I would.

[virtualrain]

We do share some code, yes. i'm using the same libraries (gwnum) and some code for the CPU test was taken out of Prime95 ( which reminds me i completly forgot to mention that in the thanks.txt file). That's why you see a huge *bump* in temperature in the cpu test from 1.1.1b and 2.0.0.

However, the calculations are radically different, using different home-made algorithm which uses a part of the routines of Prime95 (they have proved very effective).

You could call that a "mix" between proven routines and home-made code

Can you explain how you feel that OCCT is better at stress testing than PRIME95? I'm just trying to understand the differences and how they translate into what people perceive as finding instability sooner. I'm somewhat skeptical of this claim.

[Tetedeiench]

Can you explain how you feel that OCCT is better at stress testing than PRIME95? I'm just trying to understand the differences and how they translate into what people perceive as finding instability sooner. I'm somewhat skeptical of this claim.

Really tough question, and pertinent as well

OCCT uses some, not all, routines of P95. That does not mean OCCT and P95 are the same tools. Think of those routines as an engine : you won't say that every car with the same engine is the same, right ? Some will still be faster, more comfortable, etc.

Well, to begin with, OCCT has 2 engines, Prime95 has only one. RAM and CPU tests are drastically different in OCCT, P95's tests are alike, except datum. OCCT and P95 do not share any data either : we're not working on the same number sets, and the routines working with those sets are a bit different in OCCT CPU, and really different in OCCT RAM.

OCCT comes with alot of features that P95 doesn't have (graphs, monitoring,...). But that's not the topic, just mentioning it.

Problem is i can't answer you with a mathematical proof showing you OCCT is faster.

The errors generated in a CPU are random. You don't have any rule governing that, or rather the rules are so complicated, random and impossible to design at the moment. So we can't predict when or what will make a computation error happen. What P95 and OCCT do is make those errors likely to happen, that's about it.

And how do we do that ? Well, by the old empirical method : try, try, and try, and sometimes, you'll stumble on something good. For example, a number you're working on that has a higher probability to raise errors, for some reason. Do not ask me why ! It's just a fact.

And thus i'll be using this number.

And so on.

OCCT has been around for... em, i don't even remember. I'd say 5 years now. In those 5 years, i've worked on gathering those data, taking beta testers results and "feelings", and improved OCCT.

So yes, i can't prove you that OCCT is better. There will always be cases where a failure will be detected by one program and not by the other. Prime95 is still a great tool, and i don't deny its value here. I'm just saying that, in general, OCCT tends to be faster at making errors happen. And i can't prove it. It's just reports of people who say that OCCT is faster, and there have been alot of them.

OCCT and Prime95, even if they share some code, are completly different tools, and i always advise people to use several tools, as to get a better idea at how stable their computer is.

I won't say my tool is the best, i'd just say that right now OCCT seems to be a bit faster according to user experience, and comes with more features.

The more tools the merrier !

My goal is not to steal anything from prime95... i'm just working on another tool for people to get a better idea of how stable their overclock is.

PS : dunno if i said it here, but i'm french, so if you see some spelling mistakes and such, just ignore them, english is not my native language

[Tetedeiench]

I'm sure many here would donate some money to thank you your superb work

PS: Including me of course

Thanks

I didn't post that to get some money in fact... i'm happy as i am There are some things OCCT gives me that are priceless (for instance, it's on my resume, and, as you can guess, this draws alot of attention).

There's a donate link on my website, but it is not visible enough. It's shown on " http://www.ocbase.com ", before choosing your language.

I'll try to make a news about that... we'll see.

Still, sometimes, fun things happen. I was working on OCCT in a train (i had a 1 hour-long trip to do), and i was debugging. The guy that was sitting next to me told me (i'm translating, so it won't be 100% accurate) :
- "Wow, you're not afraid of stress testing your laptop when it's on battery ? I'd rather avoid it if i were you"
- "Well, i'm not stress-testing, i'm debugging"
*** 3 seconds pause ***
- "debugging ?"
- "That's my own tool, i made some modifications and i'm testing them"
- "You mean you're tetedeiench ?"
- "Yes, that's me. I'm amazed you know my nickname"

Turned out the guy had been using OCCT for 2 years, and had been using it the previous week I gave him a tour of the code and stuff, and that was one of the shortest trip i've ever done

That as fun

[Eldonko]

Thanks Tetedeiench, <3 OCCT.

[STaRGaZeR]

Haha what a coincidence, at least the trip was short and you enjoyed it

[virtualrain]

Thanks for the overview!

It may be that your tool is better at uncovering CPU instability quicker, but it's nearly impossible to prove and I still am skeptical of any such claims. As you say, CPU errors are random.

At any rate, I will add this to my overclocking tool chest again. I used it previously on my current OC and found that I was OCCT stable for an hour when PRIME95 would fail in about 15 seconds. I also found that none of the monitoring worked in x64 due to unsigned drivers.

I really agree with using multiple tools... PRIME95, OCCT, 3dMark, Memtest, Games, etc.

Side story... I remember back in the 80's and early 90's that the way you could test if your PC was "IBM Compatible" was to run Microsoft Flight Simulator (most current version of the day). I guess MS Flight Sim was one of the first stability tests!

[cantankerous]

Great story, the world truly is a small place!

I have a question if you don't mind. With cpu errors being 'random', would you say there is a certain amount of time that should pass before one should feel the 'random error' should have occurred by now if one were to happen at all? People say you should prime a minimum of 8+h before you can be sure of stability, what would you say a duration of time should be when using OCCT? Have you found that after a certain amount of time passing, no errors would appear if the system truly was stable and passed that threshold of when an error would/should have occured if the system truly was unstable? In CPU testing mode how long would you personally feel your system is 100&#37; stable as long as OCCT passed successfully? And in RAM mode?

[Sly Fox]

Very impressive program, many thanks for all the hard work put into the creation of this tool.

If I had any money to spare I'd donate some as well haha! Sadly, I have approximately $7 in the bank :P

[icecpu]

Why I'm getting a black screen during the test if I don't disable the screensaver ?? Running on vista 32bit

[lazy]

thanks for the heads up on this

[Tetedeiench]

Great story, the world truly is a small place!

I have a question if you don't mind. With cpu errors being 'random', would you say there is a certain amount of time that should pass before one should feel the 'random error' should have occurred by now if one were to happen at all? People say you should prime a minimum of 8+h before you can be sure of stability, what would you say a duration of time should be when using OCCT? Have you found that after a certain amount of time passing, no errors would appear if the system truly was stable and passed that threshold of when an error would/should have occured if the system truly was unstable? In CPU testing mode how long would you personally feel your system is 100&#37; stable as long as OCCT passed successfully? And in RAM mode?

I can't give you a 100% accurate answer, but personally, i think 4 hours of P95 is enough. Thus i'd advise you to run OCCT for 4 hours, Mix test or CPU followed by RAM. Mind you, this advice is as good as any other given by anybody... it's just my own opinion

Seems a bug was dicovered with very long tests where monitoring never updates its value, after some time... I'm working on it

[Tetedeiench]

Why I'm getting a black screen during the test if I don't disable the screensaver ?? Running on vista 32bit

It just means that your screensaver is trying to launch, and as OCCT is taking all the CPU, it can't.

nothing to worry about

[Tetedeiench]

Thanks for the overview!

It may be that your tool is better at uncovering CPU instability quicker, but it's nearly impossible to prove and I still am skeptical of any such claims. As you say, CPU errors are random.

At any rate, I will add this to my overclocking tool chest again. I used it previously on my current OC and found that I was OCCT stable for an hour when PRIME95 would fail in about 15 seconds. I also found that none of the monitoring worked in x64 due to unsigned drivers.

I really agree with using multiple tools... PRIME95, OCCT, 3dMark, Memtest, Games, etc.

Side story... I remember back in the 80's and early 90's that the way you could test if your PC was "IBM Compatible" was to run Microsoft Flight Simulator (most current version of the day). I guess MS Flight Sim was one of the first stability tests!

Yes, it's entirely impossible to prove.. and thus user experience is the only way to get an idea of what's going on.

My personal view of this stuff is "Don't give alot of credit to a test passed, but trust the tool that detected an instability". OCCT will, in its stable versions, never report a "false positive", that is an error detected when everything was fine with the hardware.

An error detected is a 100% accurate report, no error detected is just... probability that your computer is stable. The longer the test, the better the probability is. But it's only a probability

[jonny_ftm]

Thanks for the overview!

It may be that your tool is better at uncovering CPU instability quicker, but it's nearly impossible to prove and I still am skeptical of any such claims. As you say, CPU errors are random.

At any rate, I will add this to my overclocking tool chest again. I used it previously on my current OC and found that I was OCCT stable for an hour when PRIME95 would fail in about 15 seconds. I also found that none of the monitoring worked in x64 due to unsigned drivers.

I really agree with using multiple tools... PRIME95, OCCT, 3dMark, Memtest, Games, etc.

Side story... I remember back in the 80's and early 90's that the way you could test if your PC was "IBM Compatible" was to run Microsoft Flight Simulator (most current version of the day). I guess MS Flight Sim was one of the first stability tests!

I also used to trust prime95 small FFT for CPU only testing. Now, that OCCT in CPU mode loads the CPU as much as Prime95, I use both of them. But who wins, I won't be able to answer it, maybe none would be able to do.

However, Small FFT is no longer enough to say an overclock is stable or not. Small FFT/CPOU test will let you adjust the vcore, vPLL and vFSB.

The RAM mode of OCCT gives overclock stability testing a big boost. People often wonder why Prime95 small FFT is stable while games crash in few minutes and F@H bugs. RAM and NB stability account a big part in an overclock. Many people know it well and use Prime95 Blend test for that, or even memtest.
OCCT in RAM mode really outperforms Prime95 Blend/large FFT and memtest (memtest is still the only program testing the whole RAM integrity because it runs in a dos mode, but it won't heat the RAM or NB as OCCT or Prime95 Blend). Prime95 Blend can be stable for 10h when OCCT in RAM mode will fail in few minutes, usually in less than 20mn, and rarely above 2h. Anandtech now also use OCCT in their tests rather than Prime95, must be a reason there, right?

OCCT in mix mode will alternate CPU and RAM tests, so it will be much more efficient in detecting instabilities than Prime95.

If you read some of the other threads in Intel section, you'll see that many people noted it, Blend mode in Prime95 eating banana comapred to OCCT in RAM mode

And yes, I do agree that people looking for ultimate stability should use many benchmarking programs not only one

[Zenoth]

I would like to give my thanks to the creator of this magnificent tool.

I just tried it a few hours ago, and it took only 30 minutes to give errors where Orthos never reported anything after 28 hours. I know it sounds almost impossible I guess but it is the truth. I've changed a few new settings in the BIOS after that, and it ran for 2 hours and 15 minutes under High Priority, CPU & RAM testing without a single error.

I'll be using this program from now on.

[Richard Dower]

Are there any new updates to the program?

[NicoOCZ]

Thanks

I didn't post that to get some money in fact... i'm happy as i am There are some things OCCT gives me that are priceless (for instance, it's on my resume, and, as you can guess, this draws alot of attention).

There's a donate link on my website, but it is not visible enough. It's shown on " http://www.ocbase.com ", before choosing your language.

I'll try to make a news about that... we'll see.

Still, sometimes, fun things happen. I was working on OCCT in a train (i had a 1 hour-long trip to do), and i was debugging. The guy that was sitting next to me told me (i'm translating, so it won't be 100% accurate) :
- "Wow, you're not afraid of stress testing your laptop when it's on battery ? I'd rather avoid it if i were you"
- "Well, i'm not stress-testing, i'm debugging"
*** 3 seconds pause ***
- "debugging ?"
- "That's my own tool, i made some modifications and i'm testing them"
- "You mean you're tetedeiench ?"
- "Yes, that's me. I'm amazed you know my nickname"

Turned out the guy had been using OCCT for 2 years, and had been using it the previous week I gave him a tour of the code and stuff, and that was one of the shortest trip i've ever done

That as fun

Cheers for your great tool m8. Been using it for quite a while now
Too bad there's no OCCT Pro anymore ...

[flexy]

i am using OCCT for a long time already, long before mayn even knew about it ( I could dig out some old threads where i posted on various forums that i found this great stabilty testing tool which finds errors faster than P95 This was like 4+ years ago, i think.

For me OCCT is the "standard" OC testing tool and it gotten even better now - although it's like a love/hate relationship since my nerves surely got wrecked more than one time getting some OC stable...so i "hate" OCCT every time it stops and gives me an error .)

I also agree that a whole range of *selected* tools is best for testing, eg. windows memtest is very good for memory testing. But OCCT is very compact, and 2hrs +/- on "mix" or "CPU" followed by "MEM" is a very good, compact stability test already.