RAM capped, Games and Graphics Crashing

[cddm95ace]

First off, Computer Specs:
i5 4670k 3.4 GHz
EVGA GTX 760 OC
8 GB DDR3-1600 Corsair Vengence
Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H Motherboard
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I honestly am at a loss for what the problem is, so I'm just going to give as many details as possible and hope someone can help me out. I built my first PC about a month ago, and am new to Windows 7 as well so I feel a little out of my depth for troubleshooting.
The first few weeks my PC performed fine, I had only installed minecraft so far but it was running at 300-500fps. Not long after, I started getting the "Driver has crashed and recovered" error that seems pretty common. After some googling I backdated my Nvidia driver from version 335 to 332 because supposedly the 335 was unstable. That seemed to fix things for a few days, but recently my game keeps dropping to 0fps and not responding, however the graphics error has not returned in Minecraft. Playing warthunder (more graphics intensive), however, did bring the "driver crashed and recovered" error.

Initially my suspicion was that the GPU was bad, because it was a graphics driver error I was getting. However, I've noticed via Resource Monitor, that my RAM never even comes close to using it's 8 GB, and appears to never use above 3 GB without triggering a crash. Note, these crashes are of a game, not of the whole system. Meanwhile, 2+ GB of something called SWAP memory is being used. I was unable to find much about the purpose of SWAP via googling so if anyone could enlighten me about what it does / is supposed to do that would be great.

Because of the low RAM usage even with Chrome, Skype, Spotify, and a game open, and the inversely high SWAP usage, I'm wondering if it's my RAM, not my GPU that is faulty. Additionally, Minecraft allows custom allocation of physical memory to use, however I get an error anytime I try to allocate more than 1 GB, saying "it could not reserve enough space for object heap."
So really, any help, even a better place to post this, would be extremely appreciated. Having a gaming PC I can't game on without errors after <5 minutes playing is really annoying.

I've read lots of threads for similar issues so I'll go ahead and say everything I've tried so far:
"Maximum Memory" setting in msconfig is not selected
I am running 64-bit windows, not 32
I discovered that my RAM was not running at the labelled frequency or voltage so I change those settings in BIOS with no difference in result
In Computer Properties it shows that 7.89 out of 8GB is usable, so it doesn't seem to be unrecognized or broken, just refusing to be used.

 

[drtweak]

You can try running Memtest86+. There is a link in my signature. Download it and burn it to a CD or a bottable drive of some kind and let it run for at least and hour. If there are errors most likely they will show up in the first few minutes. Running it longer just stresses the memory and see if it breaks. You can let it run as long as you like. A lot of high end builder will let it run for 24 hours or even more.

Now the SWAP is more of a Linux/Unix term. In windows its called PageFile. They are one in the same. Only this is in Linux you actually make a partition of your choosing (Usually twice the size of the memory at least) and you make that swap. In windows it makes s PageFile.SYS that is hidden on the C: Drive or the drive of your choosing (Since you have a SSD you can always move it to a Disk Drive to save space and longevity of your SSD)

What this does is it acts the same as memory but it runs slow and it runs off your hard drive. Programs that may be idiling for a long time or may have memory needs that don't require it to be super fast get moved here. Yes you can disable it altogether but then if you have BSOD's or anything like that it can't say any kind of crash info for you to debug later.

As for the memory it may not be set to the correct XMP setting to run properly but still this should be causing your issue.

If the memory scan comes clean I would 1) Uninstall all Nvidia Drivers and reboot and then run a CCleaner on on the Temp files and Registry to clean up anything else. Then I would download the latest WHQL drivers which should be the 335 drivers. I've been running the 335 Since it came out on my GTX 480 and have had no issues.

 

[Tradesman1]

Have you tried going into SafeMode to see if any difference, may have a rogue driver, might also run a Malware and Virus scan while in safe mode

 

[cddm95ace]

@drtweak, thanks for the answer and explaining SWAP to me. I going to run MemTest tonight and see what happens. What exactly do you mean by XMP?

@Tradesman1, I have been into safemode when I backdated my drivers but not since, so I'll give that a go just in case.

 

[Tradesman1]

Let us know

 

[cddm95ace]

Alright, so I ran MemTest86 for about 4 hours. I didn't notice anything obvious, so here's an imgur album with all the pictures I took of the data. http://imgur.com/a/W7Mtu

Not exactly sure what all that means but nothing stood out to me as not working.

 

[Tradesman1]

How are things in Safe Mode?

 

[cddm95ace]

I booted into safe mode, however, since I use a wireless adapter that needs a driver I don't have internet connection in safe mode. Without internet I wasn't able to test anything that typically gives me problems or even open enough programs to exceed 3 GB of RAM usage.

 

[drtweak]

select safe mode with networking. should work then

 

[cddm95ace]

Sorry for the late reply. I booted into safe mode with networking, and although I still couldn't launch any games without graphics drivers I managed to open enough programs and tabs to reach 3 GB of RAM usage. Once that happened my computer became extremely sluggish and unresponsive until I got everything shut down, which reinforces for me that something is capping me at 3 GB, as I should have been able to use up to 8 GB before my computer ran out of memory and started being slow to respond. Is it possible that one of my drivers could accidentally been downloaded as 32-bit instead of 64-bit and that's giving me issues?

 

[drtweak]

No drivers will have nothing to do this with. Besides if you have a 64 bit OS ONLY 64 bit drivers can be installed.

My only other guess is to go though it one stick at a time and see if one of them seems more sluggish than the other.

Just sounds like there is still a ram stick that is acting up.

 

[cddm95ace]

Okay, I'll try doing them separately. Wouldn't something have shown up on the memtest86 if the RAM was faulty?

 

[drtweak]

Yes but one of the two sticks could still be acting up for what ever reason.