Yes clearing the CMOS sounds like the next step. Other than that you may have to find someone else with a 1GB stick of DDR and see if theirs works any better, by this I mean one that doesn't need to clock down.
But clearing the CMOS should make your BIOS administer new RAM. In a sense it has to POST from scratch all of your hardware to the BIOS so clearing it will make sure it scans for installed hardware again.
As said before it is major simple, there should be a 3/4 inch round battery either upright or flat, remove all of the power to the motherboard and remove this battery.
I leave it for 2 minutes just to be sure. Then fit your RAM, there
shouldn't be a primary and secondary like the hard drives and ATA devices, then pop the battery back in.
After this boot your system and go into the BIOS and make sure your boot devices are in the correct order and correct the time and date. Then save the settings and reboot the system.
You should leave it to boot into the OS and login etc. and if all is fine then this has worked.
(This is just incase you don't know how to clear your CMOS)
If this doesn't work however then I am lost. I haven't seen this happen too often but sometimes it requires you to format your hard drive but this really is a last resort.