Have 1gig of RAM installed but only 768 is being used?

[Trankuility]

Right now I have 1gig of ram and I want to upgrade to 2gigs. To be sure that my motherboard can go that high I went over to Crucial.com and looked up my motherboard specs and did a system scan.

When I manually looked up my motherboard it said the max amount of ram it can handle is 3072MB.

When I did a system scan it gave me the message "Your computer currently has 1024MB of memory installed; and will support up to 768 MB."

It sounds like it's telling my that even though I have 1 gig installed 768MB is the limit. Therefore about 300MB isn't being used and I can't go higher otherwise that will be wasted too. Yet the manual search said differently. What the heck.

How do I find out if my system is really wasting the ram and how do I fix it if it's an error on my part?

My current specs:

Soyo dragon motherboard P4X400 Ultra
1gig of DDR ram (1 @ 512MB 2700, 2 @ 256MB 2100)
P4 Intel 2.4ghz
Win XP
GeForce 6600GT agp video card

Thanks.

 

[birdog]

What kind of scan did you do? Is all the ram the same type and speed?

 

[Aenslead]

there is one easy way to find out.

Right click on "My Computer" and chose "Properties"; see how much RAM it reports. I am sure it will show 1Gb; What limmits the amount of memory is the chipset, and no chipset since AMD 750 or Intel i815 give you LESS than 1Gb memory max.

I am sure you will be fine with your two gigs;

 

[Trankuility]

I clicked on the "scan my system" option on the site. It's on the right hand side below the "flash memory by category".

The RAM is at varying speeds and sizes. It's a total 1gig of DDR ram (1 stick @ 512MB 2700, 2 sticks @ 256MB 2100). I know the lowest speed will take priority but I don't know if that would actually effect how much ram the scan reports as available.

As for clicking on My Computer it shows as 1gig. I always thought things were cool and dandy until I did that scan. Now I'm all confused.

 

[Aenslead]

Things are cool and dandy. Don't worry. Proof of it is that the scan is wrong, and you are actually using your gig.

You can upgrate to 2GB with confidence.

 

[Trankuility]

Thanks man, appreciate it.