Biostar P4M900-M4 memory issue

[bhaskarb]

Hello friends
I am facing an unique problem with my motherboard. I have two 2GB DDR2 667MHz sticks, due to the motherboard chipset's restriction, I wont get full 4GB, so even at the time of boot-up it shows max. of 3.69 GB, while sharing 128 MB for onboard graphics and 3.25 GB while sharing 256MB for onboard graphics.

Now I opted a NVIDIA GeForce G210 PCIE 2.0 card, and at my utter surprise the total available RAM has gone down to 2.69GB only, and there is no change even if I stop sharing memory for onboard graphics. I check my system with Everest ultimate, and it shows 2 DIMM of 2GB RAM, but DIMM2 has only 768MB of RAM, I have interchange the RAM's and also tested with a single RAM on bank 2, then it shows 2GB.

Now I tested the Graphics card with GPU-Z, and it shows 1024 MB of DDR3 RAM, of which 1019MB is usable.

So can anyone please throw some light on the issue, whether its the problem with the motherboard or with the PCIE card.

Looking forward to your kind inputs. Thanks in advance.

 

[itzdanielp]

The system can only address a *total* of 4GB. so....

4GB - 1GB for GPU = 3BG
3GB - 128Mb for shared graphics memory = 3.69GB

Unfortunately due to the limits of the system dedicated memory on a GPU is counted towards the 4GB limit.

 

[bhaskarb]

Best answer selected by bhaskarb.

 

[bhaskarb]

Thanks Daniel, so if I use one 1GB stick, then it will be the same as of now.

 

[itzdanielp]

You mean using a 1GB and a 2GB stick together? Yeah, and make sure you are not using any shared graphic memory. That will give you 3 for the system and 1 for the graphics total of 4GB

 

[bhaskarb]

yes, total 3gb of system memory + 1gb of graphic memory, as the chipset limitation, I hope I will still have the same amount of memory which is 2.69 GB.