New
#1
BIOS sees 12GB Windows 7 x64 sees 12GB (9.96 Usable)
My wifes motherboard got fried. So i bought her a new one along with a slightly upgraded cpu. She has a gtx 960 2gb pci-e 16x dedicated card. But windows for some weird reason is seeing all 12 gb of her ram but only 3.96 gb is usable. I got her a motherboard that has no onboard video to avoid the memory sharing unless you switch it over to dedicated in the bios.
With only 3.96 usable she can't run most of her games.
Any way to fix this? I never ran into this problem in the decades i have been building pc's. Mine don't do this and her's didn't do this on her old msi motherboard. The only time i seen this was with onboard video since it shares the ram.
Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P
AMD FX 8350 Stock Clock
MSI GTX 960 2GB Dedicated
12GB ram.
700 Watt PSU
2TB WD Black 7200RPM drive for steam games.
Windows 7 x64 Ultimate installed on an SSD
Bios is upto date according to the list of bios on gigabyte's website.
Running stock speeds on Ram and CPU. Fresh install of windows 7 x64. I always do a fresh install on a major hardware change like motherboard and or cpu. Ram i don't. Bios sees all 12 GB of ram.
Tested all her 4 sticks in my pc and my pc seen all 12GB and all 12GB was usable. Her bios sees 12GB and windows sees 12GB but only 4GB usable. After messing around i did get it to go up to 9.96gb usable.
This is what i tried so far.
I installed the 2x4GB sticks in a1 and a2.
Then installed the 2x2GB sticks in a3 and a4 according to the manual for dual channel.
Tried them one at a time and checked each was read at their stated size and windows did also.
So i put one stick of the 2x4 sticks and stuck it in a1 and the other 2x4 in slot a2. Turned on the pc and bios and windows seen 8gb full usage.
Turned the pc off and took 1 stick of the 2x2 sticks and stuck it in a3. Turned on the pc and bios and windows seen the full 10GB.
Turned the pc off one last time to put the final stick of the 2x2 into slot a4. Turned the pc on and bios and windows both see the 12GB but now windows says 12GB (9.96GB Usable).
I tried switching on XMP profile in bios, only one option Profile 1. So i enable that saved and rebooted and no change. Windows sees 12GB (9.96GB usable).
In BIOS i even switched from other os to Windows 8 and still no change.
Looked at msconfig under boot tab and advanced and the maximum memory check box was unchecked.
I'm stumped about what could be causing this. I even reinstalled windows 7 x64 and still the same problem.
I'm attaching pictures of her bios and the log file and pictures of HWinfo in case you need them to help with my problem. I also attached a picture of the CPU. I don't see a bent pin but maybe a more keener eye can see what i don't see.
Last edited by SnakeFist; 10 Dec 2018 at 18:43.