Was wondering what the current best tool is for testing memory? I recently installed a 4GB kit of G.Skill DDR3, and one of the sticks went bad. Initially I used Windows Memory Diagnostic, and it reported problems. I then burned a boot-cd with memtest86 on another machine, and booted that. The latest version had a tendency to reboot the system during initialization. When it ran it reported thousands of errors on slot 1. Running the previous version was stable, and confirmed the errors. Pulled the stick, tested again, swapped back and forth to confirm which one was shot. So I bought another 4GB kit of the same ram and RMA'd the first kit back to Newegg. When I booted up memtest86 to test the new kit I ran the latest version and it again rebooted the system during init. I had thought maybe it was due to the ram being bad before. But apparently there is some other incompatibility. This is an E8500 on an Asus P43 board, and memtest86 is pretty long in the tooth. Anyway, dropping back to the previous version again worked, and this time reported no errors in eight passes.
Is memtest86 still widely used? Is there a better alternative? What do you guys think of Windows Memory Diagnostic?
Last question is a quickie: the G.Skill DDR3 SPID is 8-8-8-21 @ 1.5v. After installation in my Asus P5P43TD PRO the BIOS has the timings at 9-9-9-24 according to CPU-Z. Is it normal for the BIOS to use relaxed timings? Is there any benefit to trying to tighten these up to SPID?
Is memtest86 still widely used? Is there a better alternative? What do you guys think of Windows Memory Diagnostic?
Last question is a quickie: the G.Skill DDR3 SPID is 8-8-8-21 @ 1.5v. After installation in my Asus P5P43TD PRO the BIOS has the timings at 9-9-9-24 according to CPU-Z. Is it normal for the BIOS to use relaxed timings? Is there any benefit to trying to tighten these up to SPID?