Propbeanie,
As I pointed out in my PM to you last week, my system for modding the game isn't much different than yours. My "work" computer is stuck at a 2 gig memory limit too with my mother board, yet run a faster video card than yours. Like you, I've got another computer that runs a larger memory capacity, and its on this system that shows the value of the LAA.
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FOTRS uses a lot of "Big Old" this, or "Big Modern" that with its ship class naming.
The only "Old Liner" they have has "Big" in front of it.
I will usually copy the entire inventory of the Museum (its all laid out in the asset directory at the menu text box) before walking through each entry. That's how I know what's next in-line that caused your CTD. As you said, it could be you reached your maximum memory usage and the game just decided to shut down. I'm not a fan of overclocking either, so maybe we're left with one thing to do.......upgrade the workhorse of our computers for the sake of keeping up with the times. A little upgrade every few years is needed if you ask me.