• A Great friend to the HardForum with a great kid that he is trying to get a scholorship to continue his schooling. Please give hime a vote! Only 24 hours left! Thanks.
    If you have an VOTE FOR KEENAN!

IMC Testing - Any Specific Tests?

liquidfluidity

liquidfluidity

2[H]4U
2FA
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
2,938
Trying to track down some missing ram issues and I'm down to a short in the board or the IMC is going in the chip (W3520). So I'm looking for some specific programs to do some IMC specific testing. I have ran LinX and MemTest 'till the cows came home and I just tried the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool. Anything else?

Unfortunately , no one else around me has an x58 set-up so I can't just pull the chip and try it in another board. I'm down to RMAing the chip(great batch and I don't want to lose it) or buying a new board. :(
 
This board and processor are basically a Intel® Core™ i7-920 with built in support for ECC memory. If you want you can call our technical support at 916-377-7000 and they maybe able to help you with the problem.
 
Not to disrespect but from everything I've read thus far about tech assistance , hasn't been good. I'll try anything at this point though. Like I said , I don't have access to another chip or board so I'm trying to rule out the chip.

No tests you can share , IntelEnthusiast?
 
HCI Memtest for stressing your memory. This runs inside Windows, and is more stressful on the memory than Memtest86.

P95 Large FFT for stressing the IMC/Uncore.
 
Totally forgot about P95! Duh!!! I'll have to check out that HCI Memtest also , although I have already tried each stick of ram in each slot for 50 passes each with MemTest86 on top of another 50 passes with all 3 slots populated. Thanks Tsumi !
 
No problem.

I found HCI Memtest through a guide over at overclockers.net. Apparently he said that HCI memtest can find errors within 1 or 2 full cycles while Memtest86 for hours did not find anything.
 
Is it risky to the oz to run a memory stress test while booted in OS?
 
I doubt that it would be risky. I did it myself with no problems. Besides, HCI memtest only runs in Windows for the free version.
 
Ran P95 for about 18hrs , lg FFTs. I then ran HCI Memtest for another 2 hours using 5 gigs of ram and also found nothing. Venturing to guess that the chip is fine and it's a short in the board. I almost wish it would have been the chip since it has warranty yet. The board does not :(
 
multiple instances of hci memtest running all at once (divide capacity of ram by x number of instances so they are evenly spaced out having x being the greatest common factor)
 
you have 6gb of ram?

run 6 instances of 1000mbs each up to 500% completion.
or fit as many mb you can in 5 instances... Running more instances will yeild more stress overall.

Be sure to have proper cooling since it will be extremely intensive
 
Here's where I started with the issue that I'm having:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1649766

I started doing some Googling and found quite a few instances of bad IMCs and these peoples issues were identical to mine. I'm just trying to rule out every thing I can before I pull the trigger on a new board or chip.
 
hmm.. if hci memtest with 5-6 instances pans out to 500% it's not imc i don't think.

Sounds like a bad ram slot.. i assume you tried using the other configuration for triple channel? use the other color DIMM slot.

check for broken traces on the pcb itself (motherboard pcb)

BTW.. this might be a simple solution since all sticks show up in cpuz but not in LinX or task manager.. check maxxmem and see what it is set to

MAXMEM = Limits Windows to ignore (not use) physical memory beyond the amount indicated
 
Tried it all at this point - other than trying the chip in another board. This is a 3-slot board so there's only one configuration. And yes , I did check the MaxMem. Thanks for the assist ;)
 
Well , eliminated the board as being the culprit. Bought an eVGA Classified , and guess what , same problem! :( Down to the chip and I may rma the ram for the hell of it. Luckily , the chip has about 5 months left and the ram is Corsair :) I guess those are positives.
 
Found a bunch of post on various forums about incompatibility issues with the Dominators and eVGA. Bought some Mushkin Redlines and guess what?! All the ram shows :) First cold boot so we'll see over the next few days.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top