Ram not registering - have 4x1gb windows only addressing 3gb

Yeo it is im afriad.


A 32bit operating system can only use something like 3.27gb of memory. But as 4x 1gb sticks, can use 3gb.

thanks hatman, I actually did google search it, but I guess I'm not as technically savvy as someone like Croc, so I apologize for making him or you feel reduntant...

Cheers

I see you were wondering about PAE. IIRC, PAE is sometimes used to get 32 bit SERVER operating systems to use that missing RAM for SOME applications, such as SQL server. It is a complicated explanation I have never fully understood but it seems there is no way for us everyday 32 bit users to do it.

A 32 bit OS can only ADDRESS 4 gig of RAM. Some of that 4 gig limit is reserved for other things such as your video card RAM for example. Hence you end up with 3.2, 3.0 or 3.5 etc. of useable RAM



To use all 4 gig you need a 64 bit OS, (and the correct CPU and chipset.)

Are you having problems with it the way it is?
Do you actually need the 4 gig of memory? By far most people don't need or will notice any difference between 2 and 4 gig.
64 bit OS's (Windows) can be troublesome with driver/hardware availability/compatabilty.

its a known windows limitation.

You should still have plenty left over to game.

You probably won't notice the lost memory, still, it would bug me to know it was there and wasn't being utilized.

As other people have said, you need a 64-bit os to utilize it all, I use xp64 and I haven't had any issues so I'd recommend giving it a try, you can also download a 6 month trial from ms, to make sure everything works with it before you spend any cash.

To clarify, there are only 4GB of available memory *addresses*. The issue is a shortage of addresses to assign to the physical RAM (since in order to use the physical RAM, it needs an address). When you only have 2GB of physical RAM installed, there's no problem because the system has 4GB of addresses to work with, so even after using up something like 1GB of addresses for the hardware and setup, more than enough addresses are left over for all your 2GB of physical RAM.