Hi All -
First off, thanks for reading this and for any help you can provide. the TL;DR version is my memory has failed memtest86 in a couple different ways, but has also passed it. Not sure what to do next.
I have had a pretty unstable system for the majority of the time I have had this computer (about 5 years now), but it never really impacted what I was doing with the computer. I would get the BSOD about once a week, but it wasn't that big of a deal.
Recently, though, I have started to play some games (lightweight games, mainly). I was playing Orcs Must Die, on the lowest settings, and any time more than 3 orcs were on the screen, it made gameplay super choppy. After searching around the internet, different forums, etc, and everywhere I looked they said that OMD should play on almost any system without trouble. I went to the systemrequirementslab Can You Run it, and it said I was above the maximum settings.
I updated my video card driver, and that didn't help. I made sure Vista had SP2, but that didn't help. I then ran the Vista Memory Diagnostics tool, which told me I have a memory issue. I found the Gskill tech support folks recommending making sure my memory speed was correct in bios, so updated the timing settings. No help. I downloaded and ran the memtest86 utility, and of the 4 times I have run it, here are the results:
First time: Error Conf. Value 181, Test 9 had 65000+ errors
I removed one stick of memory, ran the utility, no errors. I swapped the sticks, ran the utility, no errors.
I put both sticks back in, ran the utility, no errors.
I thought good, problem solved. I fired up the game, it got choppy, it crashed and BSOD my computer. I ran the memtest, and now I have errors.
Error Conf. Value 172, Total error bits 9
Then I ran it again, and got an Error Conf Value of 200, with 14 error bits.
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor BX80562Q6600
GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
EVGA 384-P3-N851-AR GeForce 8800 GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Any advice or help is appreciated. Thanks again!