Missing RAM

[GreenArrow2k4]

Just purchased 2 X 1G DDR2 to have my Vista Ultimate system up to 4G.

POST shows a 3.4G reading on my Gigabyte 945P mobo. In Vista, the total memory is 3.4G. What happens to the other ram? Was informed Vista 32bits can 'see' up to a max of 4G.

Advise needed for this newbie.

 

[themisfit610]

Oh it can... but sadly 4GB refers to every piece of addressable memory in your entire computer.

You loose a few MB in CPU cache, and a whole lot to your video card RAM.

32 bit sucks like that plus, a 2 GB per process limit can hold back high end video encoding...

~MiSfit

 

[Trevante]

The first problem is your chipset I believe. I know some older intel chipsets don't even recognize a full 4GB (hence why your POST only shows 3.4 instead of 4GB.) Then there's the OS itself. AFAIK, 32 bit OS's cannot actually recognize the full 4GB. They recognize something like 3-3.25GB. Some people with 32 bit OS's don't even bother with 4GB and just get 3GB of RAM for this reason.