Accessing 4 gig of RAM

My Lenovo Y710 has 4 gig of RAM installed, but Vista, of course, only used 3 gig. I thought when I upgraded to Win7 (32bit) that it would use all 4 gig, but system information says it's still only using 3 gig. Is there a setting I can change or perhaps a BIOS upgrade that will cause the machine to use all 4 gig of RAM.

Thanks in advance,
John P. Sparkman

32-bit OS(s) can only addressed roughly 3.5gb of ram. 64-bit can use all 4gb. However if you have a embedded video card, it will take some of that memory.

The model Y710 has the Mobile Intel GM45 Express integrated graphics chipset, so the ram will also be used for this.

I don't know though if it will still use the extra non-used mem. if the graphics chip is using 512, the system might still be able to use 3.2g (I think this was the limit....not sure)

Also the limit is to it being 32bit. but the system might report it differently than what is available. so the system might say 3.0, but it actually has 3.2

There are many system functions that need address space and/or RAM. And 32bit has only 4gb of address space. Read this for details: Maximum Memory in 32-bit Windows Vista : Windows Vista and Windows 7 Help

so the system might say 3.0, but it actually has 3.2

If it says 3.0. it is 3.0 - not anything else.

thanks whs, I just read the article. I remebered something about the numbers coming up differently. The instance was that the BIOS reports all 4mb, but the system does not. Very good article.

whs said:

The instance was that the BIOS reports all 4mb, but the system does not

The BIOS and the OS are two pairs of shoes. The BIOS is pretty dumb and does not know lot.

The OS does rely on the BIOS for hardware info. Yes, in a 32 bit OS, 2GB is for the apps and 2GB for windows. All available hardware has to be mapped into the address space so its always less depending on what is in the machine.