4 gig ram on Vista 32

[BenKenobi]

Hey guys,

For christmas I got another 2g of ram for my computer, already had 2g.

Right now its coming up as 2814mb, and I thought I would be able to at least get 3 gb some. Any suggestions? Anyone else getting around this amount? At least it looks like I shuold be getting 2g of RAM for just games alone, without the OS.

[imlittlev]

hey, i m getting another 2 gb also, i think theres a fix out there that lets you use more, ihavent looked closely (ram is still shipping)

[pigworthy]

I believe 3.2 GB is the most 32bit OS will recognize. I've done a lot of playing around with this. You have to have a 64bit OS to really use it. You can use the /3GB in your boot.ini file. But this can cause your system to become unstable. So be careful.

[Dead...Again]

That seems like a lot of memory space to be used by motherboard resources and PCI devices. Normally you still have 3 - 3.5 GB available.
Go into your Device Manager and click View -> Devices by Type.
This should list all of the memory space used by the system.

[th3st1ck]

I have Windows XP Pro, and 4GB of RAM, it shows up as 3.5, i believe the amount differs depending on your OS

[pigworthy]

Darth would know for sure. But a 32bit OS can only address up to 3.7GB total I believe. And the OS reserves like about 500mb for it's own, unless you use the /3GB switch. Which ussually means it will display 3.2gb useable, or about 3.6 if the /3GB switch is used. But you will not get a 32bit OS to show you 4GB. Unless vista has some new trick.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3034&p=5

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3044&p=1

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3060&p=3

Here is a good article on the problem.

[Ghost_Rain]

They and hot Fix on Microsoft website that fix the problem with the ram.

[random_id]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us
"If a computer has many installed devices, the available memory may be reduced to 3 GB or less. However, the maximum memory available in 32-bit versions of Windows Vista is typically 3.12 GB."

The thing you can try is go to your BIOS and see if there's an option called "memory hole remapping" or something similar to this name, and try to enable this option, sometimes it might help in cases like this.

[BenKenobi]

I haven't installed very many devices... I don't even have a sound card

[drunken_chef]

I haven't installed very many devices... I don't even have a sound card

lol, even if its an onboard sound card it is still a device.

[random_id]

yes, all on-board controllers (USB, firewire, sound, SATA/IDE, etc.) still count as separate devices. Anyway, with such amount of RAM you really should be using a 64-bit OS instead of trying to find hacks/workarounds for 32-bit memory limitations :P It's not really expensive (if you own a 32-bit Vista you can simply order a DVD disk with 64-bit version here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...a/default.mspx) and most of your 32-bit programs/games will run fine under it with very little (if any at all) performance decrease.

[BenKenobi]

But why aren't I getting 3.xxx gb then?? I have a 680i motherboard

[random_id]

But why aren't I getting 3.xxx gb then?? I have a 680i motherboard

Because you have a 32-bit OS and depending on hardware it will "give" you anywhere from 3.5GB to whatever you're seeing now. Here's another example of same thing you're seeing (solved by installing a 64-bit OS):
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=535694
and another one:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23...a-home-premium

[BenKenobi]

I dont want 64 bit lol

aren't there compatibility issues?

[random_id]

Compatibility issues? With what? I don't have any issues :P