3 GB installed but only 1GB usable.

Well supposedly drivers are kinda important.....go figure I thought I had installed the W7 driver but I checked the date and ver and found out it was in fact a Vista driver ...so I installed the Win 7 drivers and now I have 2 G usable now...I opened almost everything on my computer and even Battlefield 2142 at the same time.....only used about 40% memory...so I have recovered 1 gb of the 2 gb that was lost....

Now I'm gonna try to find the last Gig....

Thanks guys for all your help and suggestions......

Snuffy...thanks for the links...I'll check them out...

sorry I forgot to ask if there is a setting in bios for "OS installation" or something similiar? On some systems to keep the mobo and OS most compatible the bios will only use 1 gig while installing an OS. Let me see if I can gleen some info abt the mobo from the mfr web page.

ken

Windows isn't stealing your memory. First, the 3gB is visible to your computer, so it's there. Windows does stuff in the background (in addition to everything that's running in the foreground) - so it's eating some memory just by running.

If you open up Task Manager (right click on the Task Bar to get to it) and sum the memory usage in the Processes tab (with the "Show processes for all users" selected, you'll see most of what's being used.

Then go to the Performance tab of Task Manager and you'll see a description labelled Physical Memory - that'll show the Total, Cached, Available, and Free

Here's a description of the stuff in Windows 2000 Server Task Manger (I can't locate a more recent link): Task Manager It describes all but the "Free" entry under Physical Memory

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32bit client OS's (not server OS's) can only see 4gB of physical memory addresses. Some hardware leaps in front of the line and reserves some of this address space for itself. This means that Windows (being 2nd in line) may not get all of the physical memory addresses that it needs for your memory.

For example, if you have 4gB of RAM, and your hardware claims 1gB of address space, there's only 3gB of address space left for your RAM. You can have a gazillion gB of RAM installed - but if there's only 3gB of address space available, that's all that Windows will be able to see/use (BTW - Windows changed the display in Vista SP1 so you'll see installed RAM rather than usable RAM).

NOTE: This is physical memory, and is not related to the /3gb switch for virtual memory

The only way around this limitation is to remove the hardware that's doing it. IME the biggest culprit here is the video card - so you can remove the video card to remove the restriction, but then you won't be able to see anything! :)

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Virtual memory bears no direct relation to physical memory (that we can see). The Windows Memory Manager sub-system manages the swapping of memory between virtual memory and physical memory by swapping stuff in and out of physical memory and the pagefile.

Each process in Windows 32 bit client OS's is limited to 4gB. 2gB are reserved for kernel-level activity, and 2gB are reserved for user-level activity.

So, if you've got 50 processes running, then you've got 200gB of virtual memory address space reserved for those processes (they may not all be used).

You can switch the 2gB/2gB thing to 1gB/3gB only under these circumstances:
- the /3gB or PAE switch must be enabled in Windows
- the application that's using this MUST BE PAE AWARE. If it's not, then nothing will change.

Darkassain....attached is my WEI....this memory should be scoring higher than this. I did find out in my bios that my voltage profile was back to 1.5 v and I adjusted it to the 1.65 v the memory calls for and it placed it to the true 1600 speed in the bios now...

It does appear that 767mb is shared system memory but I'm not sure if this is the missing ram so I'm not sure if this is what you were talking about

Thanks

Grandpa

go check BIOS if reads 3Gb or not, also use CPUZ to check if you've installed your RAM correctly. CPUID

From Stoneage...thanks for the suggestion of CPUZ...great tool even if I done understand everything...attached are shots..3 g is showing and running but the freq appears to be off. My bios is showing 1600 mhz and CPUZ is showing only 800mhz.

Cpt Zero....attached is the memory voltages for the memory. I have the TR3X3G1600C9. It calls for 1.65v

I am gonna check with corsair as well but the system and bios both seem to be registering 3 gb.

Thanks guys.