Memtest86 is considered by the majority of the hardware testing community the number one application when it comes to defective RAM sticks. The answer to the question regarding the working state of the installed Memory modules comes fast with Memtest86 and that is what matters the most besides the certainty of the verdict.

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.

The standard for memory diagnostics
– Boots from a USB flash drive to test the RAM in your computer for faults.
– Utilizing algorithms that have been in development for over 20 years.

Unreliable RAM can cause a multitude of problems. Corrupted data, crashes and unexplained behaviour.
Bad RAM is one of the most frustrating computer problems to have as symptoms are often random and hard to pin down. MemTest86 can help diagnose faulty RAM (or rule it out as a cause of system instability). As such it is often used by system builders, PC repair stores, overlockers & PC manufacturers.

PassMark MemTest86 supports all current technologies:
– 13 different RAM testing algorithms – including row hammer fault detection*
– All RAM types supported (DDR2, DDR3, DDR4, SODIMM, XMP, ECC)
– Self-booting off USB or Network (PXE)* boot, without needing DOS, Linux nor Windows
– Optimized for UEFI-based x86/ARM systems
– Native 64-bit code (since version 5)
– ECC error detection & injection*
– Secure Boot verified – Code signed by Microsoft
– Graphical interface with mouse input
– Save logs and create customizable HTML reports
– Full test automation via configuration file
– Support for memory blacklisting in Windows (badmemorylist) and Linux (BADRAM)
– Multi-language support (Chinese, German, Russian, Spanish & more)

MemTest86 Features:

UEFI
The new graphical standard for BIOS

Network (PXE) boot
Scalable, disk-less provisioning from a PXE server

Reports / Logs
Save results to disk

Self-booting USB
No O/S required

All RAM types supported
DDR2 / DDR3 / DDR4 / SODIMM / XMP / ECC

Foreign language support
Chinese, German, Russian, Japanese & more

Graphical interface
And mouse support

13 algorithms
Including SIMD and row hammer tests

Secure boot signed
Code integrity verified by Microsoft

What’s NEW:

Fixes/Enhancements

• Added new config file parameter, ‘MAXCPUS’, for setting the maximum number of CPU logical cores used for testing. By default, this value is 256 (Pro Edition) and 16 (Free Version). This parameter can be set to a maximum value of 512.
• Added new config file parameter, ‘AUTOPROMPTFAIL’, for specifying whether to display the test result and ask for user intervention on test failure, even when AUTOMODE is enabled
• Added new config file naming convention allowing for separate config files depending on memory size: GB-mt86.cfg
• Fixed memory size calculation to use rounding instead of truncation
• Display PASS message box in yellow (instead of green) on test completion if corrected ECC errors were detected
• Display error message if no valid SPD.spd file was found when SPDMATCH=1
• Display error message if no SPD modules were detected when SPDMATCH=1
• Display error message and exit MemTest86 when failing to measure CPU clock speed during startup
• Updated XML message to include CPU info & SMBIOS info sent to PXE server/management console
• Added ECC Support for Intel Tiger Lake H chipset
• Added ECC Support for Intel Rocket Lake chipset
• Added ECC Support for Intel Alder Lake chipset
• Added ECC Support for Intel Ice Lake-SP chipset
• Added support for retrieving CPU info for Intel Elkhart Lake chipset
• Added support for retrieving DIMM temperatures (TSOD) for Intel Alder Lake chipset
• Fixed issue with measuring ARM64 CPU clock speed due to CPU cycle counter (PMCCNTR) being disabled
• Fixed HTML report to display error bit map in text when copying/pasting
• Fixed Linux badram entries in HTML report to be page size aligned (4096 bytes)
• Fixed parsing bug with SPD.spd file when whitespace appears at the end of each line
• Fixed issues with displaying RAM SPD DDR5-specific info
• Fixed support for limited number of command line parameters in Free version
• Fixed bug in overflowing text in SPD info screen
• Fixed REPORTNUMWARN config file parameter not being written when saving config file
• Included Serva PXE server configuration file in Site Edition package
• Updated blacklist with Dell Precision 7760 screen display issues

Download Memtest86 Pro