Music and Games skipping after upgrading RAM

[BigFoot13]

I am posting this in the hardware section because I think it is hardware related, but I am not sure. I just installed some new RAM in my laptop the other day. I went from 2 x 512 MB to 2 x 1 GB. Ever since then, games like SuperTux and my MP3s skip whenever I do things like open a program or scroll down a page. But all my other games show no sign of this skipping. It never did this before. Also, whenever I first boot up, there are weird distortions in the log on screen and wallpaper, but if I open a fullscreen game, it goes away. I suspected the RAM, and I kind of do still but I am not sure.

When I first installed the RAM, my laptop would not POST. I removed one stick and then the other, and both worked fine, so I put both back in, and it booted fine. But then I noticed the distortions in the colors. They were in wavy lines. But then they went away when I opened SuperTux. But that was skipping like a CD player when you shake it, as were all my MP3 files. I checked the CPU to make sure nothing was using it up, and the CPU usage was low and it wasn't spiking. I rebooted and ran Memtest86 for an hour and it reported no errors, so I figured maybe it was a glitch. But the distortions happen every time I reboot.

I will swap back in my old RAM in the mean time to see if it does it with that. The RAM I bought had lower latencies, so I think It may be unstable. I will also run memtest overnight. In the meantime, what do you guys think? The RAM seems like a likley culprit, but I don't see how that would make music and games skip. And everything else works fine, and it passed Memtest. Is there some compatiblity issue? I would like some opinions on if this may be a fixable issue or if I should RMA the RAM.

Thanks,
BigFoot.

[bigtomrodney]

Usually with strange quirks like this I would try a BIOS upgrade for my system. IS the RAM the same specification in all other areas?

[BigFoot13]

I had flashed the BIOS awhile ago, and the max amount of RAM my motherboard supports is 4 GB. Other than the timings and capacity, the RAM is the same.

[BigFoot13]

Well apparently booting into the 386 kernel and then back into the K7 kernel fixed the issue. I don't know why, it must have been a glitch. I have also noticed a big performance increase now