hey guys.  
 
Here is the situation and i hope i give you enough information.  I am running Vista Ultimate on a Gigabyte DS3 with a 6420 chip.  Over clocked to 3.2 ghz.  2 gigs of ram.  3 drives, 1 ide, 2 SATA (one is 36 raptor with OS only on it).  1 DVD burner optical and floppy.  GPU is EVGA 8600 GT.  PSU is  a Cosair 520 watt.  Think that covers the hardware.  Now to the problem.
 
 
I am mainly playing 2 games.  Everquest 2 and Bioshock.  When playing either game sometimes they will crash in a sense to where the game does not respond anymore.  However it doesnt crash to desktop.  It's like the PC takes a major hit on processing or RAM.  If i move the mouse it takes like 3-5 seconds or it to move if it moves at all.  If i alt+tab it takes a few as well.  It appears as anything i try to do takes a few seconds as to where it is normally instant.  I have brought up the task manager while this is happening and have kill the memory/process of the game(s) but the problem remains.  Rebooting will only fix.  Sometimes when playing Everquest the PC will just lock up all together.  It will get stuck and just make like a really loud static noise until i kill the power.  
 
I have tried 4 different video drivers.  the temps on the card seem ok.  48c at idle and around 68c under load.  
 
I really dont want to have to roll back to XP since i have the 8600 and that kinda defeats the purpose.  
 
Help guys and thanks!!
 
PS my monitor is a 32 LCD Vizio.  I have notice that since i have switched from XP to Vista i dont have the same resolutions options.  There are less with Vista

Get another 1GB ram. I run Vista, a 8600GT, and 3GB. Vista can use up to 1535mb of ram for graphics (including the 256mb on the card). Check your WEI score and see what your figure is.

Yea i remember reading something about this it dosent allocate the memory properly or something i will try to fing the article i think iy said it will rob up to 4 gigs + the card.
 Mactronix

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devi [...] emory.mspx

To kpo6969
 Yep thats the link i lost again and this is the post i was trying to find it for  
  Mactronix

hey thanks alot guys.  If i am correct in this thinking i know vista wont use a full 4 gigs correct?  but it will use between 3 and 4 right?

would increasing my paging file help with this?  It is at default for whever Vista sets it as.