Stress Testing

In the process of helping my nephew diagnose a problem with running Rome: Total War on an Alienware computer, I've determined that I need to learn more about various computer diagnostic programs.

Alienware themselves recommended two programs:

• Stress Prime 2004 by Johnny Lee. Based upon Prime 95 (which could use its own discussion, it appears), SP2004 provides various options for testing computer CPU and/or RAM.


• 3DMark03 from Futuremark. "The high quality game tests, image quality tests, sound tests and others give you an extremely accurate overview of your system’s current gaming performance."

Freewarehome.com links to some other diagnostic programs (which I have not tested):

• Microsoft's Windows Memory Diagnostic can be used "to determine whether the problems are caused by failing hardware, such as RAM or the memory system of your motherboard."


• The Freestone Group's Video Card Stability Test can also be used as a screensaver.


• Jam Software offers HeavyLoad 2.0, which "is inteded to stress all resources of a PC (like CPU, RAM, harddisk, network, operating system, etc.) in order to test, if it will run reliable under heavy load."

If you have any favorite computer diagnostic programs (freeware/shareware, professional, or whatever), please post them in the comments.