The 32 Bit OS RAM and VRAM Conundrum

So here's my problem; I just installed 2 more GB of RAM to make the grand total 4. All well and good till there. I see that 3.49 GB is usable. That's understandable too because it's a 32 bit operating system. Subsequently however, I recalled that my graphics card had 1GB of video memory. So shouldn't mu usable RAM be 3GB? I ask this because I don't want my graphics memory to be compromised in any way. Is there a tool to check memory allocation between different devices? Can someone explain to me how this works.

Depends on the video card / hardware. The system doesn't necessarily need to map in texture memory, just display memory and most low-end video cards don't allocate that much memory.

Well, you can see my system specs. What do you reckon?

That's good to here. But shouldn't it be compromised theoretically. I'm not saying I'm not happy about it. Just wondering.

This is also a i3 core, which is 64-bit capable so memory is mapped different then on a true 32-bit (with or without PAE)

The missing 512MB of memory might be allocated to video in the BIOS. Disable the onboard video and de-allocate RAM away for onboard video.

Tae Song said:

This is also a i3 core, which is 64-bit capable so memory is mapped different then on a true 32-bit (with or without PAE)

The missing 512MB of memory might be allocated to video in the BIOS. Disable the onboard video and de-allocate RAM away for onboard video.

Sorry if this is a stupid question but how does one go about doing that.

People often think that a videocard takes away as much system RAM as it has RAM of its own. That's a common misconception.

The way it really works is that the videocard reserves a memory range (below the 4GB limit) to map regions of its own onboard RAM into, so the system can access it as needed. When another part of the video RAM is needed, the card simply maps out the current region and maps in the new one.

That's the reason you don't see a full GB being reserved and unusable for Windows. This is perfectly normal.