Talking about MemTest86+ basically puts us in Grandpa Simpson's shoes telling stories to the little ones: It's a true classic among RAM diagnostic tools, but the last stable build was stuck in 2013. Luckily, MemTest86+ just returned from the dark side with its brand-new version 6.00, which now brings official support for DDR4 and DDR5 memory, UEFI systems, and the latest Intel and AMD chipsets.
The history tells us that the original MemTest86 was a creation of Chris Brady in 1994. Its version number remained at 3.0 for two years (the build belongs to 2002), and at that point Samuel Demeulemeester created the open source fork MemTest86+, prioritizing support for new processors and chipsets.
In February 2013, the MemTest project passed into the hands of PassMark, which is still available free for personal use. However, MemTest86+ reached version 5.01 in September 2013... and didn't move from there for nine years. Fortunately, that has changed with the recent announcement of MemTest86+ 6.00, which symbolizes the project's return to an active development phase, fixing bugs and adding hardware support.
Download the new MemTest86+ 6.00 to test your RAM
MemTest86+ 6.00 was written from scratch, and its changelog is certainly impressive. The new version includes UEFI support for 32 and 64 bits, correct detection of DDR4 and DDR5 memory, systems with up to 256 cores, XMP 3.0 readout, 64-bit Long Mode Paging, detection of the entire AMD Zen family (that is, from Ryzen 1000 to 7000) and Intel hardware up to the 13th generation, SDRAM support (yes, believe it or not), and more robust detection of everything pre-Zen, and old Nvidia and AMD chipsets.
The installation and execution process for MemTest86+ remains unchanged: You can download a «USB installer» compatible with Windows that will take care of copying all relevant files to a USB drive, or alternatively, use one of the Linux images in 32 and 64 bits. And to finish, MemTest86+ remains open source, so we will soon see it integrated into diagnostic tools in many distros. Download a copy!
Official site and downloads: Click here
