memtest86-3.5 How long does it take

it will keep going as long as you let it run. 20 mins is a good run.

I am pretty sure you would know within 5 minutes if your RAM had problems. Sounds good. Usually if RAM is bad you get a ton of RED ERRORS all over the screen. What is the problem you are having?

There is 10 loops. It would be much faster if your were doing only 2gB at a time. All memory over 3gB, memtest as to use paging to test it, so it is much slower for the test to go thru.

Since Vista includes a memory test function, this is what I use to check my memory.

20mins is not long enough. I recommend at least 5 passes (10 tests in each pass). This will take 2 hours or so.

Also, I'll just leave this here -
http://www.overclock.net/intel-memor...ml#post5492030

I'm sorry for resurrecting an old thread. However, I'd like to say that with Memtest, let it run all 8 tests at least 5 times minimum. It may take a few hours to have 5 passes minimum. However, it's worth it. 1 passed test is just not enough. And one pass through one of the 8 tests isn't enough either.

For example: I had my memory overclocked to 5-4-4-12-1T @ 952MHz with 2.1v. It passed all 8 tests in Memtest 3.4 at this overclock when just a slightly higher memory clock caused it to fail after like the 7th test in the first pass. So, when it passed all 8 tests at 952MHz vs. something like 963MHz, I called it stable.

But, I finally got around to letting Memtest go through several more passes. With that overclock, it only got through 2 passes and then failed. So, I kept reducing the overclock ever so slightly. I got it to do 3 full passes (almost 4 passes) with stock clock (800MHz), and 5-4-4-12-1T, with 2.1v. So, then I changed tRAS from 12 to 15, and the voltage from 2.1v to 2.150v. It passed 6 full times. In fact, it was probably 10-15 minutes away from making it 7 complete passes, but I grew impatient and booted into Windows.

So, the lesson I learned here is: even though it may be able to make one or two complete passes, that doesn't mean it won't fail the 3rd, pass or 4th, or 5th, etc.

But, I'm not even done testing my memory yet. I still have yet to do the 9th test in Memtest (there are 9 total), and I still also have to run a Blend and a Large FFTs test. After all, it's very important to have stability.
Edited by TwoCables - 2/18/09 at 6:26pm

If you need a quick result, running test 5 only usually works.

You should really use memtest86+