4GB ram but only 3.25GB available - 64 bit Windows

BarGin

I have just bought an Asrock ION 330 Nettop pc. It came with 2GB ram and I have replaced the original sticks with 2 x 2GB. All 4GB is recognised in the bios and Windows 7 RC x64 recognises it all but says only 3.25 GB is available for use. The onboard video uses 256MB but what has happened to the other 500MB?

asininity

Intergrated graphics taking some of it???

Leopard

You may find this helpful - irrespective of the fact that it's written essentially for Mac users. It addresses the issue in regard to both PCs and Macs.

I thought all the articles in that small series were interesting. They're linked.

RobTang

dont quote me but I remember reading somwhere the ion platform only supports 3.5gb of avaliable ram, even under 64bit systems. I think its an issue with nvidias chipset sucking up ram somwhere.

BarGin

Thanks for the info, I suppose I will just have to wait and hope a future bios update resolves it.

damoandclaire

it could be PAE (Physical Address Extension).

It basically means that the mainboard doesn't have enough addresses to show that its utilising all the memory and as a result, windows only says its got so much. Chances are its still using it all tho.

have a look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Samba_Pa_Ti

damoandclaire wrote: »

it could be PAE (Physical Address Extension).

It basically means that the mainboard doesn't have enough addresses to show that its utilising all the memory and as a result, windows only says its got so much. Chances are its still using it all tho.

have a look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

it most definately is that, turning on "memory mapping" in bios should fix it, all bios' are different but 9 times out of 10 theres a memory mapping option (might be called somthing slightly different depending which mobo it is)