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[BFG10K]

From memory that's about what it was on my z87 Gryphon.

I think 119MB is excessive, but I would have accepted it as 'normal' had it not been for the fact that the amount changed.

Curious, does it change if you drop down to just one RAM stick and remove the other three?

 

[Lorne]

Just a curious thought to a problem I had in the past from MB MFG bad bios programming.
eg. Turned off onboard GFX but it still used the memory, Had to set the onboard memory settings to zero on one board and another would only allow 32megs lowest.
another instance of bad bios programming but spacificly releative to this was one MB had to have the Memory Hole turned on or it would drop the memory to 3gig and resurve the rest.

 

[aigomorla]

9MB reserved...

Windows 7

Im blaming the UEFI, as im still on the X58 which doesnt have UEFI.

 

[tcsenter]

Im blaming the UEFI, as im still on the X58 which doesnt have UEFI.

It's normally memory reserved to the Intel Management Engine and embedded controller (or the AMD equiv), and BIOS shadowing.

 

[tweakboy]

32-bit OS, most likely.

I have a possible solution, reboot your computer or restart or shutdown let it breath.

My next video card will e 980 GTX or 1080 lol

 

[tidy]

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[Topweasel]

No, makes no difference how many modules are installed.



This was exactly my suspicion from the start, that the IGP setting in the BIOS is buggy and that it doesn't always completely relinquish it's RAM when disabled.

32MB is the lowest configurable reservation for the IGP and 88+32=120, so it's possible I guess.



I think x58 was the last platform to be without IME (what bliss).

If that's the case I'll check my X79 setup and Z87 setup. In theory I should have almost nothing "reserved" on the X79 and hopefully nothing on the Z87 setup. But since that's got an 1150 chip in it, it always could.

As a reference. My Dell work desktop with a 2600 Sandy an 8GB of Ram and a Radeon 5480 installed has 44MB of system reserved memory. Could be a drive cache thing. 32MB for a Hard drive, 8MB CPU cache, and 2 MB CDRW cache. There could easily be another 2MB somewhere else.

 

[tidy]

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[tcsenter]

I think x58 was the last platform to be without IME (what bliss).

There has been an equivalent of IME (embedded controller and system management) since like Intel 3 Series or maybe even one prior (9xx). These days, there is also those instant boot/rapid boot features that keeps a small embedded Linux OS loaded into RAM, and for some other functions like playing DVDs, media player, or whatever without having to completely boot the system to Windows. Those can use anywhere from 12MB to 32MB.

 

[tidy]

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[postmortemIA]

Back then it was only in business/enterprise systems though, where it belongs. In standard desktop boards, you didn't have to start screwing around with ME firmware and MEI until P67 at least (I think it started in P55, but I don't actually remember it with that platform).

I had me/ime on my P35 desktop board. It was made by Intel however.

Btw, OP something more to try: run system information (msinfo32), you'll get breakdown of hardware memory usages per device.

 

[Lorne]

Well I checked yesterday when I posted my last responds from my little workstation with a Q8400, 8 Gigs memory, NV 630 4Gig on a AsusTek P35 POS.
Had zero reserved on a fresh OS install.

Today I have 1Meg reserved, After installing a few Adobe programs.
MSinfo32 does not show any reserved tags.

 

[tidy]

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