The person who made MemTest86 says that memory testing is entering "a new era." The memory diagnostic tool will now show you which memory modules are broken visually. ... With the new MemTestX86, it will be easier to find spot DDR5 memory modules.
I'm a noob, but noobs like me do enjoy that it tells you which bar's the culprit here. Not that it helps too much (you could still run the modules 1 by 1 to figure it out faster), but I think it's a neat feature.
It can help a lot if someone is mixing memory kits. It can also help determine why a crash happens. If it is always the same chip making error, the stick is probably defective, but if the errors move around on the same stick or all sticks, it is probably the bios settings that are wrong instead.
If it mean the end of testing memory one by one, i am happy. But also more and more motherboard have this kind of tool on bios now, usefull on server.
I agree with all of this. The more modules you have, the harder it is to figure out which one is defective. It gets harder when not all of them are the same. About a decade ago, I built this Core2 Quad system out of spare parts and wanted to overclock it. I spent hours trying to figure out which of my box of misfit DDR2 DIMMs were good enough to stabilize my OC. Turns out, not were most not good enough but one of the slots was apparently not capable of handling the OC either. If this version of memtest were available back then, it'd have saved me a lot of hassle. Granted, I'm not sure it's possible for earlier versions of DDR to have such a feature. Does get me to wonder if other versions with ECC could do it, though. EDIT Oh yeah and for what it's worth, memtest is a real easy first step to check the stability of your OC, even if you didn't touch your RAM settings. If memtest fails, you can be assured your OC is unstable. Since memtest doesn't require a full-blown OS to boot up, it's so much faster and less risky to use. I am not recommending it as your only stability test, but just the one to try first.