prime95 blend torture test and memory swapping to disk

Tresark · 2004-05-28, 02:11

I just installed one of these MB's. Fresh load of WinXP pro, all new. Started testing stability with Prime95. Ran for 6 or so hours, lots of results no problems. Loaded up MBM5 to watch CPU temps, ran Prime95, nothing for hours. Checked CPU load, down around 5%. Hm. Maybe something wrong, reinstalled windows, ran Prime95 all okay. Loaded mbm5, ran Prime95, cpu load at 5 or less percent again. Hm, reinstalled windows (getting good and reinstalling windows), ran prime95 good results. Loaded Gigabyte supplied monitor HSM something or other. prime95 using 5% of cpu again? Hm, reinstalled windows again, ran prime95, all ok. Rebooted and looked at CPU temps via bios. Finished booting, prime95 back at 5% again. WTH? If I do anything to access the on board CPU temp monitor prime95 drops to 5% and stays there. Anyone else see this problem or know of solution?

Thanks,
Tre

ET_ · 2004-05-28, 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tresark

I just installed one of these MB's. Fresh load of WinXP pro, all new. Started testing stability with Prime95. Ran for 6 or so hours, lots of results no problems. Loaded up MBM5 to watch CPU temps, ran Prime95, nothing for hours. Checked CPU load, down around 5%. Hm. Maybe something wrong, reinstalled windows, ran Prime95 all okay. Loaded mbm5, ran Prime95, cpu load at 5 or less percent again. Hm, reinstalled windows (getting good and reinstalling windows), ran prime95 good results. Loaded Gigabyte supplied monitor HSM something or other. prime95 using 5% of cpu again? Hm, reinstalled windows again, ran prime95, all ok. Rebooted and looked at CPU temps via bios. Finished booting, prime95 back at 5% again. WTH? If I do anything to access the on board CPU temp monitor prime95 drops to 5% and stays there. Anyone else see this problem or know of solution?

Thanks,
Tre

Maybe the temperature monitor is using some CPU or is not well threaded. Try raising the priority of Prime95 to 5.

Luigi

Tresark · 2004-05-28, 09:54

The task priority is as high as it can be set. If I mistated myself, I'll clarify. MBM5 nor HSM are run continuously. All I must do is run them at least once and from then on prime95 no longer runs properly with or without the monitor programming running. Notice also that a single attempt to look at the CPU temps via the bios also triggered prime95 to run without using the full CPU.

I've run other benchmarking programs, 3dMark2001se, and 3dMark03 and others and no appreciable difference before or after the temperature check programs have run is noticed. This appearantly only effects prime95.

Tre

Tresark · 2004-05-28, 11:17

FYI.

If I run the inplace large FFT or the small FFT, it runs as expected. All this is the torture test section of prime95. The only time it exhibits the behavior of using 5% of the CPU is when I select Blend from the torture test menu. It is spending all the time thrashing the harddrive. The paging file goes up to 1.5 Gbytes and it just continuously accesses the harddrive. I've flashed the bios to the latest available. No change. I'm sure it will go back to normal behavior if I reinstall windows. Removing and reinstalling any other application has no effect on the performance. Easy to do as there is nothing installed on the machine other than windows and prime95 and the monitor programs I was trying to use.

Tre

flava · 2004-05-28, 11:30

How much RAM do youhave on that computer?

Tresark · 2004-05-28, 11:51

1.5 Gig.

flava · 2004-05-28, 12:53

Seems that P95 eats all the memory, the 1.5Gbytes RAM and the max it can take from the pagefile. When the system runs out of pagefile space, it alocates more and more space on the disk and the memory accesses bottleneck the overall performance (CPU at 5% because it waits for data from memory all the time) Are you using the last version of P95 (v23.8)? What is the limit you set in P95 for memory usage?

Tresark · 2004-05-28, 17:42

Yes, I'm using 238. I didn't change the memory settings from the defaults.
I'm just not understanding the connection to the CPU temperature monitor.

Why would testing the CPU temp trigger p95 into paging memory constantly?

Tre

Fusion_power · 2004-06-17, 19:03

There is a problem with the Blend test in terms of memory allocated when the operating system uses more than 64 megabytes. George is aware of this issue and is considering possible solutions. You might email him for details.

Fusion

2004-05-28, 02:11	#1
Tresark May 2004 5 Posts	prime95 blend torture test and memory swapping to disk I just installed one of these MB's. Fresh load of WinXP pro, all new. Started testing stability with Prime95. Ran for 6 or so hours, lots of results no problems. Loaded up MBM5 to watch CPU temps, ran Prime95, nothing for hours. Checked CPU load, down around 5%. Hm. Maybe something wrong, reinstalled windows, ran Prime95 all okay. Loaded mbm5, ran Prime95, cpu load at 5 or less percent again. Hm, reinstalled windows (getting good and reinstalling windows), ran prime95 good results. Loaded Gigabyte supplied monitor HSM something or other. prime95 using 5% of cpu again? Hm, reinstalled windows again, ran prime95, all ok. Rebooted and looked at CPU temps via bios. Finished booting, prime95 back at 5% again. WTH? If I do anything to access the on board CPU temp monitor prime95 drops to 5% and stays there. Anyone else see this problem or know of solution? Thanks, Tre

2004-05-28, 12:53	#7
flava Feb 2003 2×59 Posts	Seems that P95 eats all the memory, the 1.5Gbytes RAM and the max it can take from the pagefile. When the system runs out of pagefile space, it alocates more and more space on the disk and the memory accesses bottleneck the overall performance (CPU at 5% because it waits for data from memory all the time) Are you using the last version of P95 (v23.8)? What is the limit you set in P95 for memory usage? Last fiddled with by flava on 2004-05-28 at 12:54

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
26.5b5:Blend Torture Test Hard Freeze on 7th Hour	Metasparks	Information & Answers	0	2011-03-16 18:52
Blend torture test fails.	Unregistered	Information & Answers	2	2008-12-06 07:20
blend / small FFT torture test on linux ?	lukasz	Linux	1	2007-01-09 16:16
Prime95 blend torture defaulting to too much memory?	Nazo	Software	2	2005-08-05 07:45
Blend Torture Test Error (No Windows Pagefile)	Unregistered	Software	21	2004-07-20 13:55

2004-05-28, 09:54	#3
Tresark May 2004 5 Posts	The task priority is as high as it can be set. If I mistated myself, I'll clarify. MBM5 nor HSM are run continuously. All I must do is run them at least once and from then on prime95 no longer runs properly with or without the monitor programming running. Notice also that a single attempt to look at the CPU temps via the bios also triggered prime95 to run without using the full CPU. I've run other benchmarking programs, 3dMark2001se, and 3dMark03 and others and no appreciable difference before or after the temperature check programs have run is noticed. This appearantly only effects prime95. Tre

2004-05-28, 11:17	#4
Tresark May 2004 5 Posts	FYI. If I run the inplace large FFT or the small FFT, it runs as expected. All this is the torture test section of prime95. The only time it exhibits the behavior of using 5% of the CPU is when I select Blend from the torture test menu. It is spending all the time thrashing the harddrive. The paging file goes up to 1.5 Gbytes and it just continuously accesses the harddrive. I've flashed the bios to the latest available. No change. I'm sure it will go back to normal behavior if I reinstall windows. Removing and reinstalling any other application has no effect on the performance. Easy to do as there is nothing installed on the machine other than windows and prime95 and the monitor programs I was trying to use. Tre

2004-05-28, 11:30	#5
flava Feb 2003 2×59 Posts	How much RAM do youhave on that computer?

2004-05-28, 17:42	#8
Tresark May 2004 5 Posts	Yes, I'm using 238. I didn't change the memory settings from the defaults. I'm just not understanding the connection to the CPU temperature monitor. Why would testing the CPU temp trigger p95 into paging memory constantly? Tre

2004-06-17, 19:03	#9
Fusion_power Aug 2003 Snicker, AL 1111000000₂ Posts	There is a problem with the Blend test in terms of memory allocated when the operating system uses more than 64 megabytes. George is aware of this issue and is considering possible solutions. You might email him for details. Fusion