Usable Ram

[jwhitmor90]

Hey all,


Here's my rig:
Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66 GHZ
700 W Raidmax PSU (SLI Certified)
EVGA NVidia nForce 780i SLI
2x GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB in SLI
OCZ SLI-Ready edition 4 GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800
Windows 7 32 bit Professional
Hitachi Deskstar 1 TB 7200 RPM
Seagate Barracuda 320 GB 7200 RPM

I am essentially wondering why my comp is showing 4 GB RAM (2.5 GB usable). Does this imply that I am not getting the full usage out of my RAM? After looking around, I found that the 32-bit version of windows unfortunately limits the amount of usable ram, but I also found that it limits to around 3.5 GB, not 2.5. I already tried some suggestions in other forums, including checking the RAM's BIOS setting (although I am not quite sure what to modify), unplugging and plugging in the RAM sticks, and changing some settings in msconfig, all of these suggestions unfortunately had no impact, and I still have 2.5 GB of usable ram available. Any other suggestions would be very helpful

Thanks in advance.

 

[rolli59]

The rest of your ram is reserved for system resources! http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978610

 

[o1die]

All 32 bit windows operating systems only recognize about 3 gb of ram (with or without onboard video, which uses a small amount). 64 bit windows 7 will recognize up to 32 gb, but you'll have to do a fresh install (format).

 

[arson94]

32bit OS's use 32bit memory addresses = 2^32 = 4294967296 bytes = 4GB. This is the most a 32bit OS can address, Windows and Unix alike. The problem is that MMIO (Memory Mapped I/O), video memory (onboard or on a discrete card), and even your agp apreture size are mapped within this 4GB of memory address spacing. Subtract all the addresses that your BIOS maps into memory from 4GB and you have the total amount of available address space for actual RAM. MMIO is pretty much every periphreal in your computer. So, if you can manage 3.5GB or more under any 32bit Windows then I'd be happier than a pig in ****. If you can get 3GB or more then I'd be satisfied. Otherwise, I'd look into disabling some onboard crap that you don't need, decreasing apreture sizes, uninstalling extra devices that you don't use, or going 64bit in the OS department.

 

[inzone]

Windows will count all the ram in your system including the ram on your video cards which adds up to 1gb.

 

[caqde]

Yes due to the fact that you are using a 32bit system and have more than 4GB of total system memory (4GB system and 512MB Video) you are not getting the full usage of your memory in Windows 7 32bit. This is why you only see 2.5GB of memory (4GB(Total Addressable) - 1GB (reserved for system use) - 512MB(Video) ) The 64bit version of Windows 7 allow for 16GB (Home) and 64GB (Pro and above) of total memory.

Going to 64bit will net you access to the lost 512MB of memory and allow you to use Virtual memory again as of right now you have no access to virtual memory.

 

[jwhitmor90]

Thanks for all the help guys. Makes sense now. Really just sounds like the only truly viable option to get the everything I can out of my memory is to upgrade my OS to a 64 bit version.

Thanks again.

 

[jwhitmor90]

Best answer selected by jwhitmor90.