Available RAM much less than actually installed

[ukbrocko]

Thanks a lot! Bit of a Doh! moment from me.

I think Acer should be a bit more explicit that the "up to 1792 MB of shared system memory" is fixed and cannot be user defined.

I'm going to try to get an 8gb set of mem sticks to see whether shared memory is indeed capped at 1792 MB.

bravoelt255 - do you have an update from Acer as it sounds like Brianzion has solved our RAM issue?

Cheers

 

[brianzion]

hi there in the bios settings can you not alter the amount of dedicated ram? but on the other hand it might take away the performance of the graphics, at the moment its using 1gig, increase in ram size may cause this figure to rise to say what acer quote as up to nearly 2gig ?

 

[brianzion]

i read the write for for this laptop its very good one of the fastest and lots of excellent features for games and movies well put together do you suffer from anything with the amount of ram dedicated to the graphics?

review :ar: http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/274753/acer-aspire-5940g

 

[ukbrocko]

The BIOS settings available for change are Time, boot order, quite boot and that's about it. I'll take a grab when I get home. Very poor.

So at the moment the ATI card has 1GB of its own memory + nearly 2GB of system memory

While system performance is pretty good I find that having a lot of programs run at start up (which on this spec laptop should be do-able) the HHD is continually thrashing.

Consequently about 6 months in I had an HDD failure with disk temp rising to about 70 degrees! (a common issue im sure with "desktop replacement" laptops. I have a USB cooling pad which helps a lot.

I had issues (Jan - Feb this year) syncing with my iPhone, a common problem with the Intel chip set I believe. Other PC manufacturers released BIOS updates quickly, Acer did not. When they finally did release an update they would not officially instruct me to update in case it killed the machine, which would require it being sent to their repair centre and a charge being applied. From their website "Updating an incorrect BIOS may cause harm to your system. We recomend that you only do this after being instructed by one of our Customer Care representatives. By using these updates you agree to accept the possibility of product failure."

A far cry from a Dell machine i have. Dell are quite happy for users to update the BIOS and when I've had issues with HDD they sent me a new disk for me to install myself.

All in all, not a great customer experience, which is a shame as the laptop is a really nice peice of kit (aesthetically)

 

[brianzion]

1024 MB of dedicated DDR3 VRAM, up to 1792 MB (1792 megabytes = 1.75 gigabytes)of shared system memory, yes but up to it says? and in the bios it says how much is dedicated 1024MB (1GB)? so under 2 GIG really. adding another 4 GIG should give you just over 3 GIG if it allocates the max to the graphics so there would be a increase in performance.

 

[brianzion]

here is a excellent tool to see your ram called rammon by passmark its a free program :ar: PassMark RAMMon - Identify RAM type, speed & memory timings

RAMMon is an easy to use Windows based application that allows users to quickly retrieve the Serial Presence Detect (SPD) data from their RAM modules. It will allow users to identify a multitude of attributes, of which, includes the manufacturer, the clockspeed and other data of their DDR2, DDR3, XMP and EPP memory devices and even some older memory types. It uses SysInfo DLL SDK to gather the SPD attributes from RAM devices. This information provides a snapshot of the available data for each RAM module installed on the system.

make sure you choose the 32/64 bit option for your system

 

[ukbrocko]

I got hold of 2x4gb sticks. It looks like the 2nd stick is reserved no matter what.

 

[brianzion]

yes i can see it went straight to hardware reserved there must be a way of changing that what does bios say and re-check the memory setting in msconfig

 

[bravoelt255]

Hey Brianzion/all,

Apologies for the late reply but I was abroad. I actually did get my laptop back from Acer representative in my country. It was indeed a defect in the mainboard and had to be replaced. Now everything is ok and I am utilising the full 4Gb Ram. The only issue that I have now is the keyboard. The back light of my keyboard is extremely low now. I have contacted Acer again and they apologised for this once again and they are going to check if they did something wrong while replacing the mainboard. If need be they will replace the keyboard as well. I am quite happy with their service.

Regards,

bravoelt255

 

[ukbrocko]

Brianzion, no way of changing the reserved memory in the BIOS. Its so limited. Literally, quiet boot, netowrk boot, passwords are the only changable settings.

I've tried various memory settings in msconfig. If its over the size either 2gb when i have 4gb in total it reverts back to 0.

bravoelt255, thanks for the reply. Unfortunately my experience in my country has not been as good. I started another support ticket when i saw you thread. That was on wednesday last week, no reply yet.
Could you Private Message me the Acer Support Reference number? If you wouldnt mind be quoting it when i contact them again that would be great.

Thanks again.

ukbrocko

 

[bravoelt255]

Hi ukbrocko,

Apologies for the late reply. But I had to take my laptop to ACER representative once again. They changed my mother board 3 time!!! And finally they even changed the processor. Long story!!! But finally I have my laptop back after 1 month and a half.

Unfortunately I do not have a ticket available. they just took my name details and that's it.

Regards,

bravoelt255