So, I'd been having some problems with the computer that I built earlier this summer--random crashes and the like. I did a ram test, and it turned out that one of the chips had developed a couple of unstuck bits. I pulled the chip and called Kingston. They were happy to RMA given just my word that it failed memtest86+, but since the module was purchased as a pair for dual channel, I had to send in both the bad chip and its corresponding twin.

Well, today I finally pulled the bad twin. I had been playing the PC version of Gears of War before I pulled the second chip. I have attempted to resume playing the game on only the two gibibytes of ram remaining. Unfortunately, this is completely impossible as Vista uses nearly a gig of ram and GoW wants more than a gig in order to do whatever it is that it does (presumably hold all those high quality textures and the AI for the various badnicks). The game runs, but not in a way worth trying to play it. I blame Vista. I shouldn't need 4 gigs of ram to play a game that runs with only 512 MiB on the Xbox 360. I guess that I'll go play some console until my ram gets back.

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