Usable ram , windows reserves more then i seem it should

[iTree]

i built 2 desktops with parts i ordered off newegg , same parts and they both use windows ultimate 64bit , my step bro uses the other one and when his got set up it reserved 250MB from the 4GB ram it has what i seem is reasonable for the on-board gpu what is a ATI HD 4250 what from what i know uses 250mb , but my system with the same hardware when i set up with the same os reserved 750mb from the 4gb and says that only 3.25 is usable when my step bro's says 3.75 usable
i dont understand why this should be so much higher with the same hardware and model plus same bios and drivers and same operating system

this is what i am useing
biostar ta880gb+
amd athlon 3x 3.52ghz
]]ati HD 4250 on-board
geil 2x 2gb ddr3 1333

 

[rwpritchett]

You can manually set the amount of system memory that is dedicated to the onboard video within the BIOS. By default, it's probably set to "Auto" which will be a crapshoot as to how much it reserves.

Go into your BIOS and manually set the video memory to 256MB and see if that helps.

 

[Herr_Koos]

It's really not necessary to fiddle with Win 7's memory management. The concept of free vs reserved RAM can be very misleading, since free RAM is effectively wasted RAM. The amount of memory Windows reserves will depend on your user behaviour, i.e. it pre-loads often run applications to an extent so that they launch faster. Thus the memory profile of two otherwise identical systems can be vastly different.