Best Stress Test out there

[tigersty1e]

So I'm stable in 3dmark06, and all my other games (COD4, Bioshock, Medieval 2, BF2, WIC, Stalker), but after playing Rainbow Six Vegas for 1-2 hours, I got the 8800 GT bug. Checkerboard artifacts came on and then the system restarted.

Temps are not an issue because I picked up Fear and ran the benchmark... temps were 62-68C (around there) and the same thing happened.

The problem is I can't reproduce the same artifacts in Fear and I beat Rainbow Six Vegas. I don't want to play Vegas game just to get some artifacts.


What is a good program out there I can use?

 

[teatime0315]

Crysis at max

 

[LOUISSSSS]

3dmark06 on loop for 6-12 hours would set u straight for the most part on GPU stability (and some cpu)

if all ur games r running fine, u should be good to go

 

[CP5670]

rthdribl used to be more intensive than any game a year or two ago, although I don't know if that is still the case.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: CP5670
rthdribl used to be more intensive than any game a year or two ago, although I don't know if that is still the case.

That gives max watts on most video boards and gets the fans going too.

 

[tigersty1e]

What's this Ntune?

I installed it and ran the system stability test. The test ran for 5 seconds stopped and then ran again and back up again until I killed the program.


Is it supposed to do this? I'd imagine a stress test program would constantly play something instead of closing and opening again every 5-7 seconds.

 

[Syntax Error]

Ntune's stress test is rubbish, try using ATI Tool to put some heat on the card; good for testing out operating temperatures within your card after a heatsink mod or an overclock.

 

[Gaurav Duggal]

Atitool stresses the card but not as much as crysis - I tried both after overclocking my card, atitool passed, but the system restarted after running Crysis for just 10 minutes. Personally to stress the whole system, I run Atitool's 3dview and Orthos and then crysis GPU Benchmark. Atitool tells the max temperature, so thats a plus point.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

atitool ftw, thats a great stress test that helped me pick up artifacts when i was overclocking and testing

 

[SniperDaws]

rthdribl will stress your card much more than crysis will, ATItool somtimes doesnt detect artifacts so you shouldnt rely on it too much, anyway heres rthdribl


when you open it it starts in window mode so have a mess with the options.

if you goto File then click on "Config Display" tick fullscreen then choose your native resolution that will put you in full screen mode at your native res.

 

[Rubycon]

Shadermark v. 2.1

Watch your GPU amps as you cycle through the various shaders. The one with the fuzzy hair makes the fan on the 3870x2 reach close to the speed at system power up and the air ejected out the back is painful to a finger placed in its path after a few seconds.

 

[Sentry2]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
Shadermark v. 2.1

I'll second that.

Supreme Commander is also a good one. Crysis was stable @ 918MHz while SC wasn't.

 

[error8]

I personally let the cube in ATI tool spin until the card reaches the maximum temperature. After that I let the artifact scan do its job for at least one hour. If it passes this test, I guess the card is 80% stable. Then I just play games and see if the card gives me problems or not. If it doesn't I call it perfectly stable.

 

[ManWithNoName]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
atitool ftw, thats a great stress test that helped me pick up artifacts when i was overclocking and testing

I agree. ATITool or ATI Tray Tool's 3DRenderer work amazingly well. Run them for 3 Hours and you'll know your stable. As far as rthdribl goes which some others have mentioned, that app is very dated and my last 3 cards didn't even break a sweat running it, sorry.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Supreme Commander is a stress test? I wouldn't know... I play zoomed out. No wonder my card artifacted only there. (fixed with bigger fans)

I second ATiTool. (or third or whatever)

 

[Piuc2020]

Games like Supreme Commander and Civilization IV are good stress tests in the sense they push your whole system, including disk, CPU, RAM and GPU (not so much with CivIV but a lot with SupCom) so those are good testing a general overclock.

But yeah, I second rthdribl, it's pretty good for checking temps and stability, I guess looping the CPU benchmark in Crysis would give a fair stress to the system as a whole as well

 

[tigersty1e]

So it looks like Atitool doesn't really stress my memory overclock... only core.

I found out that the second 3dmark03 test (battle of Proxycon) brought out artifacts on my memory overclock...