HOW TO USE PRIME95 EFFECTIVELY
First, install the program as you would any other. Next, run it, and go to the ‘Advanced’ tab – select ‘Password’. Type in the password 9876 and enter it. Now go back to the ‘Advanced’ tab, and select ‘Priority’. Set the priority level to 10.
This effectively gives all of your system resources to Prime95 when it is running – now any processes running hidden in the background won’t be able to steal work time from Prime95, ensuring the most effective stress test possible.
At the very bottom of this post, a picture has been uploaded to further clarify Priority Ten setup for Prime95.
When you want to stress test your processor, run Prime95, go to the ‘Options’ tab, and select ‘Torture Test’. Run the Torture test at the default settings.
Make sure that you have turned off any screensavers, and closed all other applications when Prime95 is running.
Prime95 should never be run in tandem with any other stress testing programs, period. Prime95 is known and proven to be most effective when run by itself, and is less thorough when used with something else running at the same time. If you use Motherboard Monitor Five to monitor your temperatures, you should turn the interval time way down – 60 seconds is appropriate.
If you have an Intel processor with Hyper Threading, you need to run two instances of Prime95 for complete effectiveness. This is proven fact; in that two instances of Prime95 will catch instability that one instance won’t, on an Intel machine with HT. In order to run two instances simultaneously, simply install a second copy of Prime95 in a different folder, and run it in tandem with your original. Priority ten should be used for both instances of Prime95 in this case.
When you are stability testing with Prime95, you want to run the Torture Test for at least 24 hours. Why 24 hours?
There is a very common misconception that if your machine can pass Prime95 stability testing for, say, four hours, your machine will be able to run stable, regardless of what you are doing, for four hours as well, without issue. This is simply not the case.
Prime95 often finds errors in its 16th - 20th hour of testing, a potential for instability that wasn’t found after only four hours of testing. After only four hours of Prime95, the potentialfor instability still exists. 24 hours is widely viewed as a sufficient time period to catch any instability that may be present, but by all means test longer if you are able.
If 24 hours seems like an extraordinarily long time to leave your computer on, keeping your machine unusable because of the processes it’s doing, try running Prime95 overnight, and then through to all day while you’re at school or work.
For CPU specific testing, a Large FFT Prime95 test is an alternative to the more "system-stress" oriented Blend test that runs by default. The choice is ultimately up to the end user - the Blend test is reccomended in these guidelines because of it's qualities as both a processor and system stress test.
That’s all there is to Prime95 – 24 hours of Prime95 at Priority ten is "certified stable", and ready to rock for 24/7 use.
