PCTech Forums

EVGA nForce 680i: MOBO
core 2 duo e6600: PROC
8800 GTX : VC
VISTA OS

This system had 2 gigs of original RAM when it was built. I bought and installed 2 additional 1 gig sticks of RAM and installed them (these are identical to the original).

The computer does show that it has a RAM increase. It stated previous that is had 2 gigs of RAM. Now it states it has 2.75 gigs. I'm sure that the sticks are in there properly. Can anyone shed some light on this ?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi JokeBook

Its a known discussion point with Vista. Click on this link



for more info. Vista sorta uses it. It does leave you scratching your head.

Bah, this is unfortunate. Thank you for taking the time to respond and provide the link. May I ask if this means that the 4th gig of RAM installed in the computer is not even being used?

Thanks again!

Seems your Vista is a 32bit version, so total RAM shows up only 2.75gb.
If you have 64bit Vista, your system should show you about 3.5gb Ram total.

Hope this helps.
Bill

Sorry Bill, but you're wrong.

32 bits gives 4,294,967,296 addresses... aka 4 GB

64 bits gives 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses... aka 16 EB

64-bit Home Basic supports up to 8 GB
64-bit Home Premium supports up to 16 GB
64-bit Business, Enterprise and Ultimate support 128+ GB

Jokebook has 4GB of RAM installed and his 8800gtx has 768MB of RAM onboard. Since a 32 bit OS can only 'see' a maximum of 4GB worth of addresses, your actual limit is 4GB - GPU RAM. So in Jokebook's case he should be seeing 4-0.768 = 3.232GB.

The fact you're seeing 2.75GB is the weird thing, Jokebook. Obviously you're using a 32bit OS. Closest I can get to that number is if you've got 2 of those 8800GTX in SLI, but even then that's more like 2.5GB left over.

Regardless, if you want to be able to put all of that 4GB to use, Jokebook, you'll have to change to a 64bit OS.

Sorry for the bad news. Hope you have a better understanding of the problem now.

Subtract the memory on the video card 512 and you should be right on at 2.75 gig

Thanks guys! It is very clear. Icecube my VC has 768mb of RAM so that would leave me with 3.25...., however, I'm guessing that there is some RAM being used by something else as well (maybe the OS) so that is why I'm seeing 2.75. Either way if that is all I can get, then it will just have to be enough. I don't want more RAM bad enough to get an entire new OS. It does seem narrow sighted on Microsoft's part to only have the use of 4GB of RAM on their standard 32 bit OS.