3.25 showing instead of 4GB?

Hi! My new PC came this morning ( Specs in sig) and I'm still testing it for any annoyances and faults. I'm trying to find out why XP Pro SP2 is reporting that I have 3.25GB of ram when I have 4GB installed.

Anybody know why this is happeneing? If one of the DDR2 Ram chips are faulty I'd like to sort it out asap. It's OCZ DDR2 Ram.

The system itself cruises incredibly and I'm well pleased with it.

When I first got my new computer it said it had 900-and-something mb instead of 1gig of ram. It's normal, don't worry ;)

My old PC reported 511mb when it actually had 512.

I didn't lose sleep over being 1mb short, but I'd be taking the thing apart and doing a visual check on the RAM if I was 750mb adrift.

Hi IKG! Yep! after a further google search it appears that the OS (32bit) can only allocate a maximum of 3.5GB of Ram to applications. The rest is taken up by PCI devices to function properly. Apparently manufacturers didn't plan on anyone ever using 4GB of ram. :/

[edit] I've double checked everything. I took out the chips and put them back in one by one and when I inserted the third Ram chip POST reported 3GB of ram. It's only when I put the fourth one in that it reported 3.25.

Well, I hope you are going to change you sig then ;)

Hi Amon, what did that system cost you?

I was always told that XP SP2 could only access 3 gig... Which is why I've never gone over 2. :)

You could install XP 64 bit and it will happily run away with 4 gig tho.

Yer gonna love the 4800+ X2... great chip. Never knew windows could be so responsive til I went dual core. :)

Hi Sopi! The systems Full Specs are below. It cost me £1912.38.

Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe PCI Express X16 X2 Mobo
750W Akasa 12 PurePower SLI PSU
AMD Athlon64 4800+ X2
4GB OCZ DDR2 800 Ram
Geforce 7950 GX2 1GB
Dual DVDRW+- Dual Layer 16x Burners
SoundBlaster Audigy 2
2X 400GB Maxtor HD's
CoolerMaster WaveMaster Black Case
Digital 7in1 Card Reader
Wireless 80211g wireless connector
Floppy Drive


All that for £1912.38 which included an OEM Version of XP Pro SP2. That cost me £97.

I didn't buy a speaker set, Monitor, Keyboard or mouse as I have those already. My Monitor is an iiyama vision master pro 455.

I've seen several of the Dell models mention something along the lines of: "Maximum supported memory: 4 GB (3.25GB usable)" in their specification sheets...

I doubt that there's much you can do about this, sounds like you're running into the same kind of limitations...

I guess they mean that each individual DIMM slot will accept up to 1 GB, but it's pointless to buy 4x1GB instead of 3x1GB + 1x256MB in that situation...

Can you do that now? I aways thought you need to balance pair the ram sizes

I didn't think that you had to pair up the memory at all anymore? If the motherboard has a Dual Channel memory controller, you'll get a (slight) speed improvement when using paired DIMMS... If you have different sizes it will still work, except you won't get the dual channel speed benefit.

Amon: By the way, I can't seem to find any motherboard manual for the M2N32 motherboard at ASUS, to see what it has to say about its memory requirements and capabilities.

However, I did notice that different reviewers and sales sites all state different maximum memory configurations for this same motherboard... Some mention 4GB max, others 8GB, and yet others 16GB... Unless there are different releases with the same model number, there really does appear to be a lot of mixed information floating around.

Oh, one other option: You can try to flash the BIOS to the latest version in case it's some bug/limitation that has been resolved with a software update, but of course: use at your own risk. There's always a small chance that reflashing a bios will result in a brand-spanking new motherboard shaped paperweight, so only use as a last resort. As they say, "if it ain't broken, don't fix it".

(I paperweighted an old P-350 and a linksys DSL router myself through bios updates over the years, so don't just assume that it won't happen to you. :-?

It's not a hardware issue. It's the operating system's issue. WinXP 32bit can't access more than 3 gig (without performance issues). A BIOS flash will not solve the problem. Switching to WinXP 64bit will. If you don't mind driver issues with odd hardware.

And you don't want to deny yourself the dual-channel speed improvements. They aren't as slight as you may think.

Personally I'd sell off 2 gig of that ram unless you plan on going 64 bit. There's no need for more than 2 gig right now anyway unless you are doing some really heavy rendering.

Same here, my new PC arrived yesterday, dual 64bit intel (i950 3.4 775 2*2 mb 800), 4gb ram, 640gb raid0. Also a complete system (without key/mouse/mon/speakers), for 1180 euro including VAT ..

Vista should be the answer..

That's a nice price for such a beast of a system. ;)

And you know what I can't stand?

For benchmarking I tried chess2.pov @ 640x480 AA0.3 (povray, in \scenes\advanced), Povray, a raytracer, is often used for benchmarking. (www.povray.org for those who wanna try)

My old brick, an Athlon XP2.0 from end 2002 with 256MB running win98se gave me 2:41, , the new dualcore gave me 2:27 .. I truly can't believe this minor difference!

I'm kinda surprised that a 3.4 core doesn't eat the 2.0 XP up as well... Is POVRay a multi-cpu app? Cuz if it's not then you won't see the real speed increases that a multi-core cpu will bring.

it's only dualcore with a special build iirc, for that you really need a 64bit OS

But regardless of the dualcore, even a single core should be miles ahead I'd say..

tho it would be nice to see these benchmark results from other ppz ^_^ Amon? plz? :P

I *think* ran that correctly... Got 2.03 and it LOOKS from the spikes in my performance meter that it is indeed using both cores, though not evenly or completely. So I'm not sure.

Frankly I'd say that's not a very good benchmark because it's so small. I'd think something a bit more substantial would be much better.

Try Landscape.pov. It pushes your cpu for a while and should be more indicative of what it's doing under load. However, I'm seeing pov only putting a core under 50% load. BOTH cores, but still only 50% on each.

I got 239.23 seconds on Landscape.pov at 640x480 AA 0.3

Try that.

4 minute 51 .. so uhm.. 291 secs.., while having winamp playing mp3s the background.

And on the old brick: 34:59 :S so uhm.. 2099 secs .., with mIRC in the back only..

don't think winamp is gonna have much impact on it... as I said, it's only pushing 50% cpu power... But 291 isn't unreasonable. And compared to 2099, I'm thinking that's a good jump. :)

Because Windows is a piece of shit.

Hi! Just reporting that everything I've thrown at this new PC cruises in a big way.

Prey, Quake 4, Doom3, Rise & Fall, Area 51, FEAR, Age of Empires 3 and lots of other games absolutely fly with all settings set to max. Everything looks amazing.

With regards to Windows 64Bit; my brother has it installed and he's got 4GB also but it doesn't pick up the full 4GB. It picks up the same amount as mine. I've tested the Ram thouroughly with mem utils and all is ok so it can't be the ram.



Nah! Windows XP Pro is the best operating system I've ever used. It's stable, fast and reliable. I've never had problems with it like BSOD's or random crashes.

Microsoft are top for a reason. They run a monopoly (Good for them) and they produce excellent software.

But, you may continue on your MS WIndows Bash if you like.

well at least you are ready for the next few versions RAM wise

i hate it when software puts limitations on things such as RAM

also to you MS Windows bashers, would you rather be using a MAC with it's limited software libary, non-self-upgradable and one mouse button(i hate that thing)

i think not

* hides for OS-war ^_^

@Amon: I had the same problem with matched 4GB installed under XP Pro. Even worst, it caused the machine to run slowly almost to the point of hanging at unpredictable times. Removing 2GB solved the problem, at least until I can get around to installing XP64 or when Vista arrives.

Also, if you want a good test to bring your beast to it's knees then fire up pcsx2 and try the FFX intro movie;)

Great news fellas. One of the 400GB Maxtor drives just failed. It started making loud clicking noises, windows froze, and after a forced reboot the drive wasn't being picked up by the BIOS.

The primary HD (Also a 400GB Maxtor drive) has also started making clicking noises. I have a feeling this one will die too.

So much for the brand new computer. I'll be phoning Vantage Computers on Monday to let them know. I have a feeling that I'm in for a long haul of returns, warranty phonecalls and bullcrap :/

I paid over £1900 so that vantage can put Maxtor Drives in my system. Because we all know that Maxtor drives really are the best. :/

1900 * ~1.4 = euros, so uhm, 2660 euros .. That's quite a lot to pay for a system without monitor/controls I'd say, unless you really are a die-hard l33t-gamer who wants to run every shooter at 1600x1200 with all details on.. :P

I typically count with 1600 euro's for a good all-round system, including a monitor.. as such a price somewhat represents a stable price..(as in, not the very newest, so the prices won't drop to 50% overnight).