I use the benchmark to indicate stability because it covers more of the system. Realbench is better yet and is more fun as a competitive benchmark. I still get BSOD in Adobe CS6, Realbench, etc.

XTU uses Prime95 as a competitive benchmark. Prime95, including that in Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU), is next best. Great for sensing/monitoring - poor for stress/stability tests. Its memory read/write/latency benchmark is also a great indication of progress when tweaking memory. The stripchart graph is valuable for recording what happens during a full screen app or game where you can't see a monitoring display in real time. Aida 64 is the best monitoring program for all the sensors going on around a modern CPU. Profiles that pass CPU, FPU and cache stresses for hours still give me BSOD in more stringent tests. They give varying results.Īida64 isn't very good, except for stressing memory. I've used several stress tests to indicate stabilty of an OC profile. Some additional comments on stability testing - all my own opinions with plenty of room for YMMV.

Xtu setup