Just added 4GB RAM, only 3 showing up? - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Just added 4GB RAM, only 3 showing up? (/showthread.php?tid=69390)

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- Axial - 05.04.2010

Just to set things straight:

32-bit Windows can only recognise maximum of 4GB of RAM. Yes, I said that right. What happens is that Windows also takes some of your RAM to make a buffer for the videocard. i.e. your video card has 512MB of VRAM, so you lose 512MB of system RAM. I had 4GB at one point, and it registered as 3.76GB, since my video card has 256MB of VRAM. You'll never get the actual 4GB to register.

If you want 4+ GB, upgrade to a 64-bit operating system.

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- {HVY-E}Jinxx - 07.04.2010

Windows x32 will ONLY recognize up to 3.5gb of ram (The 4gb that people list Windows recognizing is due to the difference in acknowledged standards). What you are refering to is called shared video ram and depends on the BIOS, not Windows.
Certain proprietary MB BIOS' allow you to set a section of ram up to be used as video or shared ram. This is usually done to make up for the lack of ram on a mediocre proprietary video card.

You can use more than 3.5 gb of ram on a Win x32 system, but there is a trick to it. You use ram above the 3.5gb cap as a ram disk (virtual hard disk) and make Windows use this drive as your swap file. I used to do this with my XP x32 system and saw some performance gaines as Windows was using Memory for the swap instead of the hard disk.


Microsoft MSDN References can be found here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx

Hope this clears things up for you.

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