Two similar 4GB machines - one shows ~500 MB less than the other in WINXP

[rgames]

Greetings all,

I'm looking for some help in getting more available RAM out of my new machine (Machine B) - it should be a bit better than the one I replaced (Machine A) in terms of available RAM, but I'm coming up close to 500 MB short. Here are the details of the systems:

Machine A:
ASUS P4P800 Deluxe
P4 2.8 GHz
4x1GB DDR2
VisionTek ATI Radeon X130 512 MB AGP
E-MU 1212m soundcard
Onboard Gigabit ethernet
Onboard IDE and SATA controllers
Onboard sound disabled
RAM at boot: 3454 MB

Machine B:
ASUS P5B-E
Core 2 Duo 6400
4x1GB DDR2
ATI Radeon X1950 256 MB PCIe
RME HDSP 9632 soundcard
Onboard Gigabit ethernet
Onboard IDE and SATA controllers
Onboard sound disabled
RAM at boot: 3008 MB

Both machines use WinXP SP2 and the /3GB switch. The windows task manager shows available RAM consistent with what's shown by the BIOS at boot. I realize that the PCI hardware uses up some of the available address space, but the new machine uses less video RAM than the old machine, so it should have more RAM available, not less...???

I'm a composer, not a gamer or computer expert, so please bear that in mind . I do, however, need every bit of RAM I can get, so losing ~500 MB on the new system is a huge hit. Vista is not an option because the audio hardware I use is not supported... I tried enabling "Memory Remap" on the P5B-E machine and that showed 4 GB at boot but only 2 GB in Windows, so that actually made it worse.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

rgames

 

[myocardia]

Welcome to anandtech. The difference has to be in the two soundcards used. Does the RME have onboard RAM, like some of the more expensive gaming soundcards these have?

 

[rgames]

It appears it's inherent to the BIOS on the P5B-E:

P5B-E memory limitations in 32-bit: http://episteme.arstechnica.co...7909774/m/125007225831

I still don't completely understand what's going on but, apparently, the only solution others have found with the P5B-E is to switch to 64-bit.

Bummer...

rgames

 

[Nothinman]

The machines are almost completely different hardware so you have to expect some difference. If your BIOS supports remapping the lost memory above the 4G mark you can do that and run a 32-bit OS fully supports PAE or a 64-bit OS to get access to the rest of the memory.

Both machines use WinXP SP2 and the /3GB switch.

Don't do that. The /3GB switch doesn't do what you think and has absolutely 0 affect on how much physical memory the OS sees.

 

[Modelworks]

Switching to 64bit is not as painful as it may seem
I'm pretty sure there are 64 bit drivers for both of those cards.
I haven't used emu in a year or so , but the card I had then did have 64 bit drivers.

Microsoft has a free trial of xp x64 for download that will last 4 months, enough time for you to try it out.
http://www.microsoft.com/windo...64bit/facts/trial.mspx

I've found it to be a very stable os, even more so than xp 32 bit.

 

[pallejr]

msinfo32 can give you a memory map, so you can see exactly what goes where

 

[hans007]

i think the address for video card memory are mapped into the 32bit address space.

so its possible if you got a video card with less ram on it, it'd give back some address space.

 

[jmmtn4aj]

How exactly are they similar? Besides the 4GB of memory which I'm assuming isn't even the same brand or speed