PassMark MemTest86

Name: PassMark MemTest86
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

MemTest86 is a memory test for x86 computers. This includes 64-bit machines.

There are many good approaches for testing memory. However, many tests simply throw some pa...

Freemium • Proprietary

Mac
Windows
Linux

★

Avg rating of 5 (1)| 1 comments

What is PassMark MemTest86?

MemTest86 is a memory test for x86 computers. This includes 64-bit machines.

There are many good approaches for testing memory. However, many tests simply throw some patterns at memory without much thought or knowledge of memory architecture or how errors can best be detected. This works fine for hard memory failures but does little to find intermittent errors. BIOS based memory tests are useless for finding intermittent memory errors.

RAM chips consist of a large array of tightly packed memory cells, one for each bit of data. The vast majority of the intermittent failures are a result of interaction between these memory cells. Often writing a memory cell can cause one of the adjacent cells to be written with the same data. An effective memory test attempts to test for this condition. Therefore, an ideal strategy for testing memory would be the following:

Write a cell with a zero. Write all of the adjacent cells with a one, one or more times. Check that the first cell still has a zero.

It should be obvious that this strategy requires an exact knowledge of how the memory cells are laid out on the chip. In addition there are a never ending number of possible chip layouts for different chip types and manufacturers making this strategy impractical. However, there are testing algorithms that can approximate this ideal and MemTest86 does just this.

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PassMark MemTest86 information

LicensingProprietary and Freemium product.
PricingOne time purchase (perpetual license)
Alternatives8 alternatives listed

Supported Languages

English

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Our users have written 1 comments and reviews about PassMark MemTest86, and it has gotten 11 likes

PassMark MemTest86 was added to AlternativeTo by michaelgeorge on and this page was last updated . PassMark MemTest86 is sometimes referred to as MemTest86.

Comments and Reviews Post a comment/review

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hhank

★

Top positive comment•

The free version successfully recognized errors in my RAM. A bit at various addresses that should've been set wasn't set: It wrote 0xFFFFFFFF, but read 0xEFFFFFFF. I removed some RAM, tested again and the errors didn't occur anymore.

The RAM failures gave me various errors when using Windows (assuming no other independent failures were involved):

BSODs with many different error codes;
just restarting strait away without a BSOD (a black screen, so to speak);
a decomposing Windows session with one app after another showing the busy cursor or silently refusing to work, and files being overwritten with zeroes (0x00) when written to, including shortcut/.lnk files that you click on (I guess, Windows updates them when being clicked), forcing me to hit the reset button on my computer at the first sign of a decomposing Windows session;
Firefox drawing large rectangles all over the browser windows in the colors lime (#00FF00) and green (#008000);
a frozen screen with the mouse still working.

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Said about PassMark MemTest86 as an alternative

Guest

It's very thorough, adds UEFI support, more tests, is under active development, and there is a free version available for download

Positive comment•

• as an alternative to

Memtest86+