3.25gb of ram only.

J

JVC

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 24, 2004
Messages
1,280
i have 4gb of ram but windows xp display only 3.25gb, has anyone ever had this happen before?
 
Windows XP only recognises 3 gigs, anythignover that and it will just say 3.25gb present, atm there is nothing that u can do about it except get Vista
 
Wow, how many times have I seen this exact thread show up? :p

The problem is the OS. I am guessing you're using XP 32 bit. I think that 64 bit Windows XP can address 4gb of ram, so you might want to look into that

...or Vista.

...or unix.
 
Wow, I can remember just a few months ago, I said it would be stupid to buy a 32bit operating system in todays computing environment, especially concerning the folks who visit this, and similar forums..... And I got flamed hard core.....

Here we are just a few months later, and I was right.

On topic, it has to do with how many bits of memory your CPU, and OS can address. If you have a 32bit CPU, then at most is can recognize 4gigs of memory, but due to the way that PCI works, it actually uses memory space, (usually allocated by an IOMMU) that is used to send data to and from the buss. The more devices in the system the less available space you will have for ACTUAL memory. So if you have 4 gigs of RAM, and you only see 3.2 gigs, then the reason why is becouse of IO space being used by other devices.

The only way to use the full 4gigs is to upgrade both the CPU, and the OS to 64bits. This is the whole reason that AMD released AMD64 when they did. It provided plenty of time to saturate the market before 4gigs became commonplace. Chances are very good you already have a 64bit CPU, even if it is Intel. So now the only thing you need to worry about is a 64bit OS.
 
duby229 said:
Wow, I can remember just a few months ago, I said it would be stupid to buy a 32bit operating system in todays computing environment, especially concerning the folks who visit this, and similar forums..... And I got flamed hard core.....

Here we are just a few months later, and I was right.
Click to expand...
I can somewhat see why you may have been flamed, because saying it's stupid to go with 32 bit XP is wrong. 4 GB of RAM isn't really needed right now on a single machine, and considering XP 64 left a lot to be desired in terms of driver compatibility, XP 32 is the more viable option. When Vista is released to the wild and we have a few months to see how it's 64 bit drivers are, you may be right....but for now, in XP 32 bit is the way to go.
Least said:
Wow, how many times have I seen this exact thread show up?
Click to expand...
Quite a few (even on this front page) , which happens to be common around here. A question will be asked over and over and over again, instead of a simple search. There have been times where the same question has been asked, while the next several threads under it are asking the same thing. I remember a time when over half the questions on the front page were asking if SP2 was safe to install. ;)
 
Yup, I'm doing just that, waiting a few months after the release of vista, then I'm building me a 64bit monster.
 
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