I just upgraded to 4 gigs in windows xp and have an 8800gtx which has 768 megs of ram. I have heard that windows cannot see over 4 gigs of ram including video ram. Windows is showing me I have 3.5 gigs of ram to use. How is this possible unless somehow windows is cutting out some of my video ram? If that is the case is there any way I can tell windows to use that ram on the videocard instead of the system ram?
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Odd ram issue in xp32, system sees 3.5 + 8800gtx?
- Thread starter Jared701
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YeOldeStonecat
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Sounds like it's seeing RAM correctly. 32 bit Windows sees 4 gigs max..including RAM in hardware, motherboard resources, and...video RAM. I'd think you'd be reporting more like 3.2 gigs of RAM...but things vary a bit.
Zepher
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3.25 here with a 9800GT 512meg card.
Joe Average
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don't see how that helps me... my system should NOT be seeing 3.5 gigs of ram if I have a 768mb videocard, it should be showing less than 3.3. 3.5 + .768 = > 4gig. I'm asking why this is happening, not stating I don't understand the 4 gig limit.
Edit: Is there a way I can see how much ram my system is seeing on my videocard? It would be very strange if the system claimed it saw 3.5 gigs + the 768megs.
Joe Average
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You missed what the guy above me said:
Zepher said:
He's got a 512MB card and Windows is "missing" ~768MB of RAM, sorta. Your situation isn't too far different, to be honest. So, like I said in my post, it's all about comprehension. The info you want is in that sticky I linked to, seriously. Just gotta find it and comprehend it.
You missed what the guy above me said:
He's got a 512MB card and Windows is "missing" ~768MB of RAM, sorta. Your situation isn't too far different, to be honest. So, like I said in my post, it's all about comprehension. The info you want is in that sticky I linked to, seriously. Just gotta find it and comprehend it.
The only thing I can find from your link is that for some reason windows may only be allotting 512megs for my videocard and I'd have to change the hexadecimal code or whatever it is to 768 in order to get the full amount of ram from my videocard. Is that what you were wanting me to find? If that is the case why would windows default to using less memory on the videocard than what it has in total? I'm not at my home computer so cannot check it yet, but that is all I got out of your link. Unlike the previous poster I'm not saying windows is using more videoram than what I have and subtracting that from 4; I'm stating it is not taking the full ram on my videocard from the 4 total. I can only assume somehow that windows somehow got set to only look for the 512 or less ram on the videocard. I would like it to use all of the ram on there and use LESS system memory.
BinarySynapse
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The video subsytem is probably only requesting a certain amount of address space be allocated until it actually needs to fill the other 256MB. I've got a 9600GT in one of my systems and only 256MB of address space allocated to it. It's really a non-issue since the driver will probably just slide the memory map around as it sees fit when accessing all of your VRAM.
bigdogchris
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It must be, because in my experiences with SLI in 32 bit OS experimentation, your system will allocate all hardware ram first, then whatever is left is detected as system memory. But I've never tried it with greater than a 512MB video card.I was getting about 2.4GB of ram (had 4gb installed)
Now, are you basing this amount available ram from task manager and the computer properties window?
Yes, I was having problems getting past the bios with 8 gigs of ram installed even though my motherboard says it can handle it (I know windows xp wouldn't see it but going to vista soon) I only looked at the task manager and computer properties windows then had to head to work. I was mainly just wanting to start up prime95 to make sure my system was stable while I was at work but saw that oddity and wanted to see what could be causing it.
ryan_975 - Your explanation seems plausible and the only thing I could think of that would cause this. I really shouldn't worry about this at all since I have vista ordered, but wanted to see why windows would show me something I didn't think was possible.
BinarySynapse
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I don't even pretend to understand the complexities of memory management. I just know that it's definitely not a black and white issue. Some system behave the way you'd expect, other can have a 512MB card and see only 3.2GB, while another system with the same card can see 3.75GB. Looking at it from the outside, one can only make wild guesses to what going on inside these devils.
EDIT: I'm assuming that you're getting 64-bit Vista. You'll see the same issues with 32-bit Vista.
bigdogchris
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Yes, I'm on Vista x64 now. I was just really hesitant to make the x64 leap earlier in the year so I was considering 32 bit Vista. But the guys here really convinced me x64 Vista is the premier OS right now, and they are 100% correct.
Memory adressing still is a mysterious thing to me. I do understand where the 4gig limit comes from though.
I have a vista laptop and i put 4 gigs of ram into it, because i remembered that 32bit can handle that. As i had to figure out, yes it does handle it, but not the full extent. I had 3.something gig recognized. I only have a 512mb graphic card though.
so as far as i have understood it so far, there is other hardware that reservers itself some memory adress space (HDDs for instance? don't know) and this is why you can't adress the full 4gb of RAM.
Please correct me if i am wrong
I have a vista laptop and i put 4 gigs of ram into it, because i remembered that 32bit can handle that. As i had to figure out, yes it does handle it, but not the full extent. I had 3.something gig recognized. I only have a 512mb graphic card though.
so as far as i have understood it so far, there is other hardware that reservers itself some memory adress space (HDDs for instance? don't know) and this is why you can't adress the full 4gb of RAM.
Please correct me if i am wrong
BinarySynapse
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Memory adressing still is a mysterious thing to me. I do understand where the 4gig limit comes from though.
I have a vista laptop and i put 4 gigs of ram into it, because i remembered that 32bit can handle that. As i had to figure out, yes it does handle it, but not the full extent. I had 3.something gig recognized. I only have a 512mb graphic card though.
so as far as i have understood it so far, there is other hardware that reservers itself some memory adress space (HDDs for instance? don't know) and this is why you can't adress the full 4gb of RAM.
Please correct me if i am wrong
Hard drive controllers, USB controllers, PCI bridges, etc all take a small bit of address space (most between 1KB to 16KB). It's the video subsystem that takes the largest chunk of space though. Also in most laptops and cheap desktops, the video "card" will take a share of the actual physical memory as it's own. That can be anywhere from 1MB to 128MB or more depending on the chipset.
bigdogchris
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Go to Device Manager, and click on View -> Resources by type, then at the bottom open up Memory. Right now I have 41 hardware devices using memory. A 512MB graphics card (which is actually about 523MB) + all these devices using memory, means that you'll have about 3.25GB ish in 32 bit, with 4GB installed.