NVidia 9500gt

[quad777]

Hi,I have a Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33ghz with XP Pro SP2 32bit OS with 4gig RAM on it(if im not mistaken the 32bit OS can only take up to 3gig RAM).Before installing the graphics card the OS shows 3gig of RAM but After installing my graphics card which is a nVidia Geforce 9500GT 512mb,the system only shows 2.5gig available,tried it on windows 7 32 bit and same result,but when used on windows7 64bit OS it shows the full 4gig for the system and doesnt take away any RAM for the graphics(which i assume is happening with the 32bit OS's)....Can someone explain as to why the ram decreases on the 32bit and not on the 64bit and why does the ram have to decrease in the first place?

 

[megamanx00]

Before installing your GPU you may have other devices that have RAM allocated. If you didn't dissable your onboard GPU, which I assume you were using before you installed the 9500GT, then that is still hogging up some of your memory address space, even if it's not using RAM per say, leaving you with less RAM in a 32-bit OS

Remember, system Devices take up the top part of the address range so your sound card, system devices, and video card all take up part of the range.