4 gigs memory (3.79 usable) on win7-64bit

silk186

silk186

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My buddy is seeing this when he opens up his systems manager, problem is that it is also shows him running windows 7 64bit. I gave him my copy (his previous install was from a legit copy, this copy is less than legit). Long story short, my computer recognizes my full 8GB and the same copy on his still only recognizes 3.79 of his 4GB. If it helps at all he is running an ASUS laptop.
 
Oh, I hadn't considered that, how would I be able to confirm if this is the case?

I asked him to boot with only 1 of the 2GB dims installed and it showed 1.86GB usable.
 
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The Asus laptop doesn't have a dedicated GPU with dedicated memory, and the integrated GPU is using shared system memory.
 
Open MSConfig, open the 'Boot' tab, click on 'Advanced Options'.

Is 'Maximum Memory' checked? If so, that is how much RAM, in MB, Windows is has reserved for PCI devices.

Learned about this yesterday when I upgraded my rig to 18GB and saw 18GB (16.5GB Usable) in my system properties.
 
SlayVus said:
Open MSConfig, open the 'Boot' tab, click on 'Advanced Options'.

Is 'Maximum Memory' checked? If so, that is how much RAM, in MB, Windows is has reserved for PCI devices.

Learned about this yesterday when I upgraded my rig to 18GB and saw 18GB (16.5GB Usable) in my system properties.
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All GPUs (regardless of type or system form-factor) share some system memory - this has been true starting with Windows Vista/Server 2003 R2; therefore, the impact on a system with a small amount of system RAM (typically 4 GB or less) is greater than on a system with greater than 4 GB. It's this reality (and the reality of far higher prices per GB for DDR2 vs. DDR3) that make staying with DDR2 pointless. 2 GB DDR2-800 RAM sticks (either Centon or Crucial) are $24 each at MicroCenter (non-sale price), while 2 GB DDR3-1333 (also from Crucial) is $14.99 - little more than half that. This isn't performance-grade RAM, either - I compared standard-grade desktop RAM of each type.
 
Is he using an Atom-based netbook? Because if he is, there's a really, really dumb limitation to Atom where it can only use 4 GB of memory total regardless of OS.
 
Being a 64bit OS and 64bit CPU shouldn't have a limit like that.

The symptoms your friend is seeing would only make sense on a 32bit OS.
 
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kur1j said:
Being a 64bit OS and 64bit CPU shouldn't have a limit like that.

The symptoms your friend is seeing would only make sense on a 32bit OS.
Click to expand...

Still there are computers with 64bit CPU+OS which cannot address anything above 4G.
 
Some of the older chipsets have 32-bit addressing limitations; this is not the GPU at fault here. What model is that laptop?
 
There are limitations to the core logic set too......and must be considered. Not all logics have the ability to address more than 32bits.
 
night_2004 said:
Some of the older chipsets have 32-bit addressing limitations; this is not the GPU at fault here. What model is that laptop?
Click to expand...

THIS....
Have a Dell E1505 laptop, Core2 T7200 CPU, 4 Gb ram, dedicated ATI Video, Windows 64-bit, yet only 3.5 usable. It is a motherboard incompatibility.
 
silk186 said:
My buddy is seeing this when he opens up his systems manager, problem is that it is also shows him running windows 7 64bit. I gave him my copy (his previous install was from a legit copy, this copy is less than legit). Long story short, my computer recognizes my full 8GB and the same copy on his still only recognizes 3.79 of his 4GB. If it helps at all he is running an ASUS laptop.
Click to expand...
Look for the "memory hole remapping" option in your BIOS and make sure it is set to enabled.
 
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