Win7 64-bit, 16Gb RAM, Half Is Hardware-Reserved

ye347

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Apr 5, 2014
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Running Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit. Had 8Gb RAM, noticed that 4Gb were hardware reserved. Bought 16Gb of RAM and installed it (new chips, 4x4Gb). Now I see 16Gb recognized and 8Gb hardware reserved. Looked under MSConfig -> Boot -> Advanced -> Maximum memory is not checked. What is happening? Why does the system always reserve half the RAM for the hardware?
 
Solution
It depends on what hardware you have in the system.
For example if your motherboard has on board video such as an Intel based HD 4000 series. It will hardware reserve an amount of your system memory.

If the case, and you have a pci-e based graphics card installed in your system.
Then in the bios you should disable the Intel graphics on board solution.

The maximum memory tab is for how much windows can see and use.
So if you tick the box and windows should set the size it can use. It should set it auto to use the 16gb.



It depends on what hardware you have in the system.
For example if your motherboard has on board video such as an Intel based HD 4000 series. It will hardware reserve an amount of your system memory.

If the case, and you have a pci-e based graphics card installed in your system.
Then in the bios you should disable the Intel graphics on board solution.

The maximum memory tab is for how much windows can see and use.
So if you tick the box and windows should set the size it can use. It should set it auto to use the 16gb.



 
Solution

ye347

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Apr 5, 2014
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4,510
Sorry - I do not quite understand the answer. Maybe I don't know enough about hardware. Let's take it a bit slower.
Here's what my BIOS shows:
---
BIOS Info: A15 (02/04/2010)
System: Dell Studio XPS 435T/9000
Processor type: Intel i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
CPU Speed: 2.67GHz (133x20)
Processor L1 Cache: 256 KB
Processor L2 Cache: 1024 KB
Processor L3 Cache: 8192 KB

Memory Installed: 8192 MB <----- Should be 16 GB!
Memory Available: 8192 MB
Memory Speed: 1066 MHz (133x8)
Memory Technology: DDR3 SDRAM
---
In the Windows Resource Monitor -> Memory -> Physical Memory I see:
Hardware reserved: 8202 MB, Available: 3497 MB, Cached: 2281 MB, Total: 8182 MB, Installed: 16384 MB

How is it possible that Windows sees more installed memory than the BIOS does?

In MSConfig, I tried to check the box and specify "Max mem: 16384 MB". I restarted the PC, but the result is the same.

In the BIOS, there is no option to "disable the Intel on-board graphics". My graphics card is an Nvidia GE Force GT 620.

Can you be more specific about what I should try to change and where?
 

ye347

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Apr 5, 2014
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0
4,510
Solved the problem. The BIOS only showed 8 Gb. The motherboard had 6 slots. I had installed 4x4Gb into four of these slots. I moved two DIMMs from the leftmost two slots to the rightmost two slots, and now the BIOS sees 16 Gb. All 16 Gb are available in Windows as well.