Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

[PhenomII Dude]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

If that were true then Windows is actually penalizing ...

that is why motherboard manufacturer lately separately integrate vram for onboard graphics.

did I say that before? ;)

[mv2devnull]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

A rather well illustrated blog on subject:
Mark's Blog : Pushing the Limits of Windows: Physical Memory

[Psycho101]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

that is why motherboard manufacturer lately separately integrate vram for onboard graphics.

did I say that before? ;)

It is possible that some do this. However the main reason why we are seeing some boards with discrete RAM on integrated GPU's and some using system RAM is price driven. VRAM is an expensive product (at least GDDR3 and GDDR5 are any way) and "stealing" system RAM allows them to cut integrated graphics costs considerably. The trade off seems to be this "double subtracting" problem and also much slower speeds than discrete VRAM.

For 2D this performance drop isn't noticable. I used a 630i board with 7100 integrated GPU running on 128MB (options were 32MB, 64MB, 128MB and 256MB) with little issue. It actually even managed 40 FPS in World of Warcraft at medium(ish) settings which I thought was pretty good for the spec.

Maybe another thing that could help would be if the OP reduced the amount of RAM the GPU is assigned. Personally I see little point giving that GPU 512MB of RAM, it's pretty under powered as far as 3D is concerned. 256MB max would be fine, having first tested with 128MB to see if that amount will be sufficient. A decent game of Plants Vs Zombies will be about all you can expect from an integrated solution.

[aerodog]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

I experienced this same problem but didn't know I had it until I tried to upgrade to 6GB and Win 7.
Hence, I found two possibles solution to this problem. If the first doesn't work, consider the second.

Try this first:
START > IN THE SEARCH AREA TYPE IN: MSCONFIG AND CLICK ENTER
IN SYSTEM CONFIG SELLECT THE BOOT TAB AND CLICK "ADVANCED OPTIONS"
ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THAT WINDOW SHOULD BE A BOX LABELED MAXIMUM MEMORY
REMOVE THE CHECK MARK IN THAT BOX AND THEN SELECT OK AND THEN APPLY AND MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL -
RESTART YOUR COMPUTER IMMEDIATELY. I'VE SEEN THE SAME THREAD ALL OVER TRYING TO SOLVE MY PROBLEM BUT FAILED TO.
THEN BY ACCIDENT, I SHUT OFF MY COMPUTER AND WHEN IT RETURNED THE PROBLEM WAS GONE.

THE SECOND IS THAT MAKE SURE EACH OF YOUR RAM CHIPS ARE COMPATIBLE WITH EACH OTHER. BUT THIS PROBLEM IS PURELY SECONDARY THOUGH IT WAS NOTED BY A MS TECH.

[Psycho101]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

That's going to make zero difference if you fit 6GB into a PC with a 32bit OS. There's no way on earth, that without completely de-compiling, recoding and re-compiling the kernel that you'll get it to recognise more than 4GB - GPU VRAM as usable. You may get the System Properties page state "6GB of RAM" but you're not going to be able to use more than ~3.25-3.75GB.

Beware of statements from people claiming to be an "MSVP" etc, Microsoft give those kinds of "Qualifications" out in packs of breakfast cereal.

[aerodog]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

Correction:
I updated to Windows 7 64bit Home Premium and you are correct about Windows 32bit OS not able to support more than 4gb. This is why I updated.

[ledzep]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

Hi all
as i had the same problem, i dropped in the give my experience and solution to the bios don't show full mem capacity problem.

you can also see this thread where i 1st posted about this problem:
Windows 7 64bit recognize 4GB of 6GB RAM - Rage3D Discussion Area

the problem on my PC was a bent socket pin on the mobo (as the i7 cpu doesnt have pins just flat surface connectors), it was pulled back to place with a tiny screwdriver and a magnifying glass and now all is working fine and all 6GB of mem are recognized and used by the system.

hope this will help somone in the future.

[mv2devnull]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

That's going to make zero difference if you fit 6GB into a PC with a 32bit OS. There's no way on earth, that without completely de-compiling, recoding and re-compiling the kernel that you'll get it to recognise more than 4GB - GPU VRAM as usable.

Right.

# uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.27.25-170.2.72.fc10.i686.PAE #1 SMP Sun Jun 21 18:51:33 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8309468    7864264     445204          0     212692    6166264
-/+ buffers/cache:    1485308    6824160
Swap:      5111800         80    5111720
# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      8309468 kB
MemFree:        445204 kB
...

Sone 32-bit OS do offer that already, for free. MS Windows are not among them.

[artdrivers]

Re: Showing Usable RAM 2.75GB while installed is 4GB

Sone 32-bit OS do offer that already, for free. MS Windows are not among them.

Yeah PAE. Some special motherboards and itanium cpu's.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx

Windows 7 with PAE http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...96(VS.85).aspx
Linux with PAE Ubuntu 4GB Ram Limitation and Solution