I bought 4gb ram and only pushing 3.25

irpwns

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Mar 6, 2011
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I just purchased 2 - 2gb DDR3 Ram sticks. I checked the properties of my computer and it says that I only have 3.25gb. What gives?

MSI 880GM - AMD II x4
 
YOu are using a 32 bit Operating System !! --- qith a 32 bit OS the system can only address 2^32 soecific memory addresses (2^32 = 4GB.) so the most memory your entire system can have is 4GB. from that subtract Approximately 640MB of reserved system memory addresses and you have 3.5 GB. of addresses left - from that subtract about 256MB of video page file addresses (the OS does not reference your Video card memory directly as it is swapped in and out of the page files by the video card so only addresses the page files - otherwise you'd be subtracting more memory addresses for newer video cards) and you have left about 3.25GB. of addressable memory space which is what your system is showing so is perfectly normal ! --- (to use more than that you need to switch to a 64 bit OS)