What is with my memory?

[the red fox]

Hey all I wondered if anyone could help me with this: I recently put in a new graphics card to up my framerates and let me play more modern games. I had about a day of excellent speed and graphics, but now the comp is running slower and crashing more often than it ever used to. When I looked at the system diagnostic it tells me that the computer has only just over half of its memory available, so instead of running with 512MB RAM, I am in effect running 255MB. Does anyone know what is going on? My comp is having all sorts of problems that I think stem from this.

[OTZ]

If you have a floppy drive, download and run Memtest to see if there are any problems with your RAM. Is it one stick or two? Could be any number of problems at this point but we can probably narrow it down after some tests.

[Spiff]

You should perhaps try refitting your memory - one of the sticks may not be sitting in place as it should.. make sure the clips are down to hold them in, things like that.

[Hadrian]

512MBs is not much memory for gaming purposes.Your system is going to require some of it before you ever start playing. Most games today will require more than 256MB to run smoothly. You're system is probobly utilizing the page file system heavily, and that will definately drag down your FPS!
Try getting atleast another 512MB of RAM and you should see a big difference. I just don't know if lack of RAM causes CTDs though.A lot of security applications running or excessive programs in your startup will use up your RAM as well...

[Incinerate_IV]

Check the amount of memory you got while the computer is just booting up (where it shows your bios version, processor speed... and all the other stuff), if your computer don't show that you have to go into bios to find that out. If it still says 256mb then theres something wrong with your ram. If it doesn't, then its probably driver conflicts. Did you uninstall the old driver with driver cleaner while in safe mode and then install the new driver? If you didn't then this is most likely it.