HeavyLoad has been designed to test a computer’s resistance to extreme operational conditions, such as intense CPU and RAM usage. Knowing how much your machine can resist is useful to avoid server crashes or to make sure your personal computer will not overheat. This can also be used to predict the behavior of systems when they are low on resources.
The program is really easy to use. When system is not subject to stresses, it shows a graph of CPU and physical memory usage, just like Windows Task Manager. The difference becomes apparent when you launch the stress test; as you will soon realize, the graph lines go up until reaching almost 100%. In addition to CPU and RAM, you can also ask the program to test the behavior of free disk space and GPU. Luckily, my system endured the test without problem. However, I was kind of afraid it could overheat and I wished there had been a CPU temperature display somewhere on the screen.
This application allows some customization, such as number of CPU cores to test, thread priority and memory allocation speed. You can also set the number of minutes you wish to run the test or choose to stop it manually.
I should admit, it is quite difficult for me to really assess this program in such a short time because in order to discover a program’s advantages and drawbacks, you need to use the program for a while. Fortunately, the accompanying help file made it easy for me to point out some of the shortcomings. The developers admit that after running a test with HeavyLoad, it will be necessary to restart the system because the memory will be fragmented and the swap file will be too large. They also say that if HeavyLoad does not terminate normally, you will need to manually delete a large test file left behind by the program. In addition, they warn that this application cannot assess GPU stress properly when there is no independent graphic adapter installed or you are not using the latest drivers.
v3.0.0.160 [Nov 25, 2010]
-Redesigned user interface.
-HeavyLoad is now available as German version, too.
-HeavyLoad can now be executed with command line parameters.
-HeavyLoad can now allocate the complete physical memory on systems with more than 2GB memory.
-The chart now displays the free space of the system partition, too.
-The duration of the test can be set in the options dialog.
-The limitation for remaining disk capacity and memory can be defined.
-It is possible to set the speed in which the temporary test file is written and the memory is allocated.
-Added function to check for available updates.
-HeavyLoad now stores the user settings in an XML file in the user's profile.
-The support for Windows 2000 has been dropped because Microsoft dropped it in July 2010.
-Bugfix: The temporary test file can now be deleted in all situations.
-Bugfix: The temporary test file can now be written constantly even if the test option "allocate memory" is active. constantly even if the test option "allocate memory" is active.
-Bugfix: Now the free memory chart displays the correct value on systems with more than 4GB memory.
-A few minor bug fixes and improvements have been incorporated.
