Ram and Bios issues

[HandyDandyRandy]

ok well my problem isn't that bad of an issue but it makes me edgy when something is wrong....


The deal is that i have a abit kr7a-133r mobo and 2x kingston 256-ecc ram pc2100. very normal and basic but the problem i have is that for some reason when i use belarc or do the test at pcpitstop both tell me that i have 768 megs of ram, not 512(which i have)when i run the test at pcpitstop it tells me that my bios is telling it that i have 768 but that windows is reporting 512 and that the reason might be video shared memory but that isn't the case either.Gforce TI 4200 is the video card i have. So then i saw a post at anandtech that a guy said he had his ram in slot 1 and 3 so i thought ok maybe i need to split up the ram so i did and now it tells me that i have 512 in slot 1 and 256 in slot 2 & 3 and also another stick of 512 in slot 4 ???? Now I'm really lost doesn't make any sense to me why it should be doing this.


Any ideas whould be much appreciated and karma will come back to you

 

[LiLithTecH]

This was taken right off the ABIT FAQ's.

Does ABIT KR7A-133R support ECC memory?

KR7A-R can boot up with ECC memory modules installed, but without ECC function.

It supports up to 3GB of un-buffered memory and 4GB of registered memory. Please
mention that the maximum DDR memory support of KR7A is about 3.5G rather than 4G.
This limitation is caused by PC architecture and the missing 0.5G memory address is
reserved for PCI I/O space, AGP aperture mapping space and other onboard device I/O
space, so, although the KT266A datasheet exclaims the memory support is up to 4GB,
actually the system only use about 3.5GB with four 1G DDR memories installed. In
another word, BIOS and operation system will report about 3.5GB only.


In other words, just confusing Belarc and Pitstop.
I think that it is funny that they support ECC, tested and branded ECC memory, but don't
use its function.
So you paid extra money for the ECC ram, but get almost no benefit from it.

 

[HandyDandyRandy]

yeah i could understand it being off by a half a gig at full capacity but not off by 256 at minimum capacity and not after i move it being off over a gig ???


doesn't make much sense to me ??

 

[HandyDandyRandy]

anyone else got any ideas?

 

[Storm]

What happens when you just put in one stick of your kingston ram? Does it show up as 256?

 

[ironique]

You could try flashing your bios with an updated version. This might settle the confusion with pcpitstop and berlac.