Prime95 and running other apps

[Strife2101]

Hey I was wondering if running Prime95 2x torture test for my AMD Opteron while playing WoW would cause a crash, or should it be stable doing this? Or if I am doing Prime95 should I only be doing that cause it takes so much processing power?

My Specs are

Opteron 170 @ 2.7ghz
Thermalright SI-120 w/Panaflo
DFI LANParty UT SLI-DR Expert
2gb of Kingston Value Ram @ 225mhz
EVGA 7800 GT CO
2 120gb SATA Seagate Barracudas
Sound Blaster Audigy
OCZ Powerstream 520W

 

[PingSpike]

If the system is stable, it should run fine. (well, it'll probably run like ass since the processor will be maxed out...but it shouldn't be crashing)

 

[Strife2101]

Well the first time doing this I got a Blue Screen of death, the next two times I did the same thing i was getting video corruption in the game, I thought it might be the video card but the temps arent on the card arent high at all, so I guess that leaves it two processor volts or memory. I ran the memory at 2.5-3-3-6 at 225mhz in Memtest for 11 hours and got no errors do u think the memory could actually be the problem?

The game was actaully running smoothly till the crash. Also after i closed the game after the video corruption I went to run the game again and it said that a file the game used was corrupted. I dont know why this would happen either.

 

[nealh]

memtest does not guarantee the ram will be ok in video games ..often memtest speeds are slightly higher than stable in 3D

would try 3-3-3-8 for timings and re try prime95 adn WOW..I bet you will be fine

 

[RichUK]

lol

 

[Strife2101]

what is so funny?

Should I not be doing this?

 

[nealh]

Originally posted by: Strife2101
what is so funny?

Should I not be doing this?

Not funny but the KVR at 225 is impressive they can be "generic" chips so YMMV on real OC potential??

 

[Shimmishim]

here's the deal with running games or other programs with prime..

unless prime is given the highest priority, games should run fine.

what happens is the cpu cycles are used by the game (which usually gets priority) and then whenever prime is given an opportunity (let's say you leave WoW on to go to the bathroom for a while) then the cpu usage of WoW will probably drop due to no action being done and prime will then get the left over cpu cycles and run.

so the best way to test a dual core system assuming you want to game is to just run prime on one core (since you can set affinity) and then run WoW on the other core while you are testing.

 

[HomeyFoos]

Pardon my ignorance, but how do you determine what programs run on which core? Is this specified in the OS? Or is it just logical that while Prime95 is occupying one core, that the other will be used to run the game? I'm trying to learn so I don't have to ask too many questions (ironic, huh?)

 

[Shimmishim]

Originally posted by: HomeyFoos
Pardon my ignorance, but how do you determine what programs run on which core? Is this specified in the OS? Or is it just logical that while Prime95 is occupying one core, that the other will be used to run the game? I'm trying to learn so I don't have to ask too many questions (ironic, huh?)

in the task manager, you can set the affinity.

go to processes, select something like prime95, then right click, then find Set Affinity and set affinity to core 0 for prime and set affinity to core 1 for your game.

 

[RichUK]

Originally posted by: Strife2101
what is so funny?

Should I not be doing this?

Nothing funny really, i just haven't seen many people (if any) that try to play games whilst maxing out both cores. It just means the windows scheduler will keep chopping and changing the CPU time (utilisation) between the two apps, and this could get a bit hairy (although it should still not crash).

There is nothing wrong with this i suppose, but its probably a better idea to just let prime do its job on stressing both cores on their own, if trying to test for stability. Rather than play a game at the same time.

Although everyone for there own I guess.