ram

[graham7773]

I have 4 x 1gb sticks of kingston and another good manufacturer ram installed and confirmed by Speccy.
Windows 7 System tools tells me there are 4gb of ram installed.
I ran Memtest+ and it gave my ram a clean bill of health.
It also tells me that there are only 3.2gbs total physical memory and only 2.36 of that is available. Anybody have any idea what is going on here? Any ideas?

 

[graham7773]

Thanks for that but I am none the wiser. I would just like to know why my computer reports 3.24 gb ram installed when it has 4gb ram installed

 

[nbrikha]

Maybe you only have a 32 bit OS installed. Or maybe you're using shared graphics, in which case those missing gigabytes are going to help process your graphics. Go to Computer, right click and then click properties. If the system type is 32-Bit Operating System, then that's why.

 

[stroudyit]

2 things that are the likely cause of this.

As already mentioned if you are running a 32 bit Operating System (you can check by right clicking computer, properties) then your PC can only address 3.2GB and therefore only show 3.2gb

Also some boards have shared graphics which basically means that the graphics chip will 'steal' some of your memory for use as graphics memory, this is why you sometimes see 3.2GB (2.75available) etc.

Hope this helps

Daniel Hunt
www.stroudyit.co.uk
support@stroudyit.co.uk

 

[strollin]

I saw your other thread regarding 64-bit Win 7 before this thread. Now I understand where you got the wrong idea regarding Win 7 32-bit using too much RAM.

As has already been said, a 32-bit OS can only address, at most, around 3.2G of RAM. If you went to a 64-bit OS, you would then be able to address the rest of your installed 4G. However, it seems your graphics subsystem is "stealing" around 1G of your RAM for it's use. Moving to 64-bit Win 7 will NOT change that. In addition, 64-bit uses more RAM to run so you probably wouldn't see that much of a difference in available RAM between the 2 OSes unless you added more RAM.

Bottom line is, I wouldn't recommend moving to Win 7 64-bit on your present system unless you add additional RAM. If you decide to add more RAM, now is the time to do it because RAM is very reasonably priced at the moment.

 

[graham7773]

strollin, adding more ram could be interesting. My rig has 4 ram slots and 4 x 1gb sticks in those slots, suggestions? At least I know why I am only seeing 3.2gb ram now. Aren't there adaptors that allow doubling up the ram?

 

[niiko101]

buy 2x4GB sticks of RAM, will give u a total of 8GB, more then enought, that way you not flooding your motherboard dimms full of ram. makes for less stress on the motherboard

 

[stroudyit]

The above would only work on a 64bit system so you would first have to do fresh install of 64bit windows onto the computer, This would require getting a install disc and license code. To buy these I would expect costs of around £100, again no point putting 8GB of RAM on a 32bit system as the computer will only see 3.2gb meaning nearly 5gb will be wasted.

 

[niiko101]

i was under the impression thats what was happening lol