How to free up my Ram>?

[clarkey01]

Hi All

As expected I only see around 3GB of my ram in windows (due to my GTS etc) What I need to is where has the other memory gone? is there anyway to deligated it? Choose where it is used out of my 4GB addressing space?

Many thanks

 

[JustaGeek]

You need a 64-bit OS to use the full 4GB of RAM.

 

[Nothinman]

As expected I only see around 3GB of my ram in windows (due to my GTS etc) What I need to is where has the other memory gone? is there anyway to deligated it? Choose where it is used out of my 4GB addressing space?

It's either being masked by MMIO addresses used by your hardware or remapped above the 4G mark depending on a BIOS setting and in either case you're out of luck if you're sticking with 32-bit Vista.

You need a 64-bit OS to use the full 4GB of RAM.

If you stick with consumer Windows, yes but otherwise not true. 32-bit Windows Server, Linux, FreeBSD, etc all can use >4G of physical memory.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
You need a 64-bit OS to use the full 4GB of RAM.

Yeah I know that...I just want to know where the 340MB is ( my GTS takes up 640) and my RAM is seen as 3GB, so thats 340 missing somewhere or used up other things which I wish I could change.

 

[Nothinman]

Pull out your X-Fi and see how much memory comes back.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: clarkey01

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
You need a 64-bit OS to use the full 4GB of RAM.

Yeah I know that...I just want to know where the 340MB is ( my GTS takes up 640) and my RAM is seen as 3GB, so thats 340 missing somewhere or used up other things which I wish I could change.

You can't really do much about it. Quite a few devices are memory mapped and you will usually lose a few hundred MB aside from the video RAM.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: clarkey01

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
You need a 64-bit OS to use the full 4GB of RAM.

Yeah I know that...I just want to know where the 340MB is ( my GTS takes up 640) and my RAM is seen as 3GB, so thats 340 missing somewhere or used up other things which I wish I could change.

You can't really do much about it. Quite a few devices are memory mapped and you will usually lose a few hundred MB aside from the video RAM.

There is an option in the BIOS which disables memory mapping, would it be wise to turn it off?

 

[lopri]

Windows XP (post SP2) and Windows VIsta 32-bit have a 'hard' limit on 3.25GB. No matter how stripped down system you have, you won't see more than 3.25GB of system RAM. The reason MS did this is simple: To prevent unnecessary driver nightmares. There are still a couple ways to work-around this, but it's absolutely not worth it unless your specific application (which is used strictly for productivity) requires 4GB of RAM. It's what OS is doing is becoming more obvious because people with GTX SLI or 2900 CF don't see <2.0GB of RAM because of their GPU memory takes up to 1.5~2.0GB. You'll still see ~3.0GB of RAM even with 2900 XT 1GB SLI.

 

[Nothinman]

There is an option in the BIOS which disables memory mapping, would it be wise to turn it off?

No, it won't change a thing about what you see now and will make it impossible for OSes that either fully support PAE or are 64-bit to use all of your memory.

Windows XP (post SP2) and Windows VIsta 32-bit have a 'hard' limit on 3.25GB.

No, the hard limit is 4G. However much you lose beyond that is dependent on your hardware.

 

[pallejr]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
No, it won't change a thing about what you see now and will make it impossible for OSes that either fully support PAE or are 64-bit to use all of your memory.

That depends on the remapping. If it remaps on a boundary, you might lose a chunk of ram that you would otherwise have available.

 

[Nothinman]

That depends on the remapping. If it remaps on a boundary, you might lose a chunk of ram that you would otherwise have available.

I have yet to hear of that, but I guess it's possible.

 

[pallejr]

i believe that is rather common. Many times it takes all ram above 2GB and remaps it, thus leaving only 2GB for windows to see

 

[pallejr]

http://support.asus.com/faq/fa...=P5B-E&SLanguage=en-us

says it remaps on a 1G boundary

 

[hans007]

the memory is not gone, just it cant be addressed because those 32bit addresses are being used for i/o devices, pci addresses, video memory, bios rom addresses , things like that.

 

[Nothinman]

Originally posted by: pallejr
http://support.asus.com/faq/fa...=P5B-E&SLanguage=en-us

says it remaps on a 1G boundary

That's pretty retarded, I thought they were all more granular than that.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Windows XP (post SP2) and Windows VIsta 32-bit have a 'hard' limit on 3.25GB.

No, the hard limit is 4G. However much you lose beyond that is dependent on your hardware.

Vista's 32-bit MMU is soft-limited to 3.12GB physical memory (according to Microsoft), but you are correct that XP has no 'limit' up to the hard limit of 4GB (minus the address space needed by the hardware).

That depends on the remapping. If it remaps on a boundary, you might lose a chunk of ram that you would otherwise have available.

Correct. Enabling memory remap on 32-bit can actually result in more address space lost due to peculiarities with some memory remapping implementations. There are many reports of LESS RAM being utilized with memory remapping enabled on 32-bit systems than with it disabled.