Quote Originally Posted by dejanh View Post
Well, I've been overclocking for 12 years now and I can only speak from my experience but Prime (in any form) is not always an indicator of stability. On my old AMD system with a 5000+ BE I could Prime all day long at 3.2GHz, but I know for a fact that it was not 100% stable, for example. That's why I am not longer a big speaker for Prime (or for that matter any one stress tool). You will also notice huge differences when running Prime 32-bit and Prime 64-bit, so what then? Do you say that unless you are full-day stable in both Primes under all three options for running it you are not absolutely stable? Or better yet, blend tests say they test RAM, but I am certain that they do not test 6GB of ram, so what then?

Anyway, I think you get my point. I ran Prime for about 2 hours, temps were stable, everything was stable. For me that is good enough. Indeed, in most cases I will not run Prime for more than 30 minutes before I declare an OC stable. This has never failed me in the past and I doubt it will be any different now. I will also almost bet you that if you leave Prime running just long enough with a hefty OC, your system will crash. How long that "just long enough" may be is subjective and dependent on your OC. It may be hours, may be days, maybe a week.
I must respectfully disagree; I really appreciate the work you've put into this thread and it's enlightened me quite a bit, but I beg to differ on this one. I think it's important on boards like this to have a certain set of standards regarding when an overclock is considered relatively stable for the purposes of spreading correct information regarding expectations. While I completely agree with your assessment that 24/7 for a month doesn't necessarily equate to stability, I also believe it's important to use the most scientific means at our disposal to render judgment on what may or may not be considered stable. I also agree that having alot of experience overclocking can lead to having a good "gut feel" of stability, but one must remember that alot of folks in this forum (albeit not as much as other forums) are newer and looking for advice. Developing that "gut feel" takes years of practice.

That being said, I would like to recommend to anyone seeking advice that anything in the area of 12 hrs of prime or 6 hrs of LinX goes a long way to "prove" stability.

Comments welcome, but I don't want to hijack this thread; so try not to pay too much attention to me.

On that note, I just got my P6T deluxe/920/6GB OCZ 1600 Plat. Seems to be a great chip, I could hit 3.6Ghz on water at just above stock volts. I'm still learning this platform and will post results when I get anything substantial.

Thanks!