My ram in system says 1008

[Xarick]

I am confused. I have one gig of ddr2 800, but everything reads it as 1008. What is 1008.. why isnt it reading 1024. What am I missing.. do I have bad ram?

 

[NuroMancer]

Do you have a onboard video card?

If so, that is the reason.

 

[Xarick]

no I have an 8800gts

 

[theprodigalrebel]

But does your motherboard have integrated video on it? Maybe it is reserving some RAM for video, even though you have a discrete video card. If so, you will probably have to manually set 'Share Memory for Graphics' to 'None'.

 

[Xarick]

no.. there is no built in video at all. There is built in sound, but I have it disabled . I have been through the bios and I can't figure out where the 16mbs has gone. Unless the onboard lan is using it, or the onboard firewire. I am totally at a loss here.

I dug up the manual and here is what it says:

2.1.1 Addressable Memory
The board utilizes 8 GB of addressable system memory. Typically the address space
that is allocated for PCI Conventional bus add-in cards, PCI Express configuration
space, BIOS (SPI Flash), and chipset overhead resides above the top of DRAM (total
system memory). On a system that has 8 GB of system memory installed, it is not
possible to use all of the installed memory due to system address space being
allocated for other system critical functions. These functions include the following:
? BIOS/ SPI Flash (8 Mbits)
? Local APIC (19 MB)
? Digital Media Interface (40 MB)
? Front side bus interrupts (17 MB)
? PCI Express configuration space (256 MB)
? MCH base address registers, internal graphics ranges, PCI Express ports (up to
512 MB)
? Memory-mapped I/O that is dynamically allocated for PCI Conventional and PCI

So it looks like the board reserves memory for what it calls critical functions.

 

[SparkyJJO]

The RAM-stealing gremlins strike again :Q RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!!!!111!!

 

[Xarick]

further research shows that intel reserves 8mbs for every 512 I put in there. So if I add another gig (which I going to do) instead of 2048 I am going to be left with 2016.

Is this normal? do other boards do this?

 

[Emission]

My board shows up a full 1024 with my two 512 sticks. It might be that your board makes these reservations known, as some others probably don't. If the system is stable, I wouldn't be worried.

 

[Xarick]

So what your saying is that most boards reserve ram, but most just dont report it? Thus intel is saying hey I am taking 16megs of your ram so your os only has 1008 left to use? I guess I was worried that my ram might be bad or something.