Quote Originally Posted by virtualrain View Post
QFT! (This is one of the best posts in this thread!)

If you don't test your system with a program that detects computational errors, why test? Using a game or benchmark that could be throwing all kinds of errors that are ignored doesn't make any sense to me. If you can run such an app for any period of time on an OC'd system all it means is that you got lucky, not that your OC is stable.

I personally feel that the overclocking community is deteriorating because the commercial pressures on betatesters, reviewers and journalists to show wild overclocks is causing them to cast aside principles that defined overclocking just a few years ago. A screenshot of SuperPI32M completing seems to be all it takes now to legitimize an overclock... am I the only one who thinks this is a bad thing?
I've made a similar argument as yours in several forums, VR. Web sites like Anandtech confirm stability with only a 30min Orthos Blend. I'm sure other sites have done the same. There's immense pressure to throw out the high numbers to attract readers that ethical journalism appears to be cast aside. It does a great disservice to readers when they go to lay down their hard-earned cash for a component only to find out later it doesn't stably perform anywhere close to what was in those "great" reviews.

SuperPI is a performance utility and nothing more. It's useful for comparative analysis but not as any indicator of stability. It is no more an indicator of stability than one run of 3DMark06, which seems to take about the same length of time.

I believe Prime/Orthos is perhaps the most reliable method so far to determine long-term stability. But as others have noted it is extremely time consuming, not to mention all the electricity being wasted. I believe we really need a tool that will yield results much quicker.

My brother (a DBA) runs an Oracle script that will crash his system within 15-20min despite being able to pass a 12+hr Orthos run, so even Orthos is not the end-all be-all of stability. Then again, very very few hobbyists ever see that type of environment. I wish BOINC had an error reporting mechanism--at least that way the computing cycles are being put to good use.

Right now I'm fiddling with Everest Ultimate's stability test. I really don't know how thorough the test is at determining overall stability (no GPU test) but it really loads my system down during operation. I've used OCCT but don't like that it relies on third party software (MB Mon, SpeedFan, Everest) for monitoring system functions.

I've considered a somewhat unorthodox alternative: Dropping the CPU fan speed in half or a third and running the same test that passed previously. This would perhaps account for higher ambient room temps during different times of the year. You never know when the AC will go off or fail. But here again, more time & resources being munched.