Usable RAM issue. In need of assistance!

[Superman]

3 Gigs usable?



So, I'm using the 32 bit edition of Windows 7. I'm pretty sure that up until last week, my system reported that it was using 4 Gigs of RAM and worked fine. This morning I noticed it's changed to 3. The only thing I can think of is that I added a Radeon HD 4670 card recently, and I'm thinking that might be when this started. Anyway, here's my system.



I've looked at some of my BIOS settings after doing some Googling, but I think I'm in over my head. Any help would be appreciated.

By the way, found this on the AMD site under the FAQ section. Best tech support answer ever. I had to post it.



Any ideas on where to start with this?

[General Zod]

The only thing you can do is upgrade your OS. 32 bit windows can't recognize more than 3gb of ram due to its limitations, so you need a 64-bit version.

[Superman]

The only thing you can do is upgrade your OS. 32 bit windows can't recognize more than 3gb of ram due to its limitations, so you need a 64-bit version.

Even with Windows 7? I could have sworn this wasn't an issue until a day or two ago.

[General Zod]

The only thing you can do is upgrade your OS. 32 bit windows can't recognize more than 3gb of ram due to its limitations, so you need a 64-bit version.

Even with Windows 7? I could have sworn this wasn't an issue until a day or two ago.

Even Windows 7 has that limitation. Hence there's 32-bit and 64-bit versions of it. This page has some useful info on the differences.

Why shouldn’t you install Windows x64?

The short answer is that you should go with Windows 7 64-bit unless you’re running a system well into its antiquity where driver support is going to become an issue.

[Superman]

Ah, ok. I tried the 64 bit version once before, but I had some compatibility issues with some of the software I use. I should probably check it out again.

Thanks!

[Joviwan]

More accurately, it can't use more than 4 gig's of ram total, between ram on the motherboard and ram on the video card. So your recent video card upgrade almost certainly has more RAM than your last graphics card, thus the sudden decrease in usable RAM.

[Starglider]

There are actually dodgy hacks available that force Windows 7 to use PAE. Linux, Windows Server etc use this feature to support up to 64 GB of RAM in 32-bit mode, although the per-process limit is at best 3.5 GB.

However said hacks are highly dubious, and in any case 32-bit is well overdue to die. 32-bit x86 is particularly horrible because of the stupidly small number of registers, and no-one should be using it if they can possibly help it.

[Edward Yee]

I thought 32-bit and x86 were the same thing? But yeah, would be nice for there to be more 64-bit versions of many key programs.

P.S. ArmA 2 is weird in that supposedly, Windows XP 32-bit is actually the system it works best on.

[Executor32]

What is known as x64 in common parlance is actually 64-bit x86.

[Sea Skimmer]

I thought 32-bit and x86 were the same thing? But yeah, would be nice for there to be more 64-bit versions of many key programs.

P.S. ArmA 2 is weird in that supposedly, Windows XP 32-bit is actually the system it works best on.

It also works better some graphics settings set much higher then lower, well programed it is not but they had almost no budget by modern game standards.

[Edward Yee]

Something more on-topic: It doesn't appear now, but at one point while running Windows 7 64-bit I was shown that I had 4 GB, but only 3.5 of it usable; FWIW the video card (both the mainboard-integrated one and the dedicated video card) has 512 MB dedicated video memory each.

[darkjedi521]

Some BIOSes act funny with exactly 4GB of RAM or less installed. They treat it as a 32 bit system and map all the IO spaces under the 4GB limit, removing access to the RAM there, even if you are running a 64 bit OS. I've hit this in mainly the early Core 2 motherboards that are pre-Vista and assume you are running 32 bit XP on there and configure themselves in the most optimal manner for that. Check your BIOS settings to see if there is an option to shove the IO spaces above 4GB when using a 64 bit OS.

[Edward Yee]

Thanks for the advice. To clarify, after a recent reinstall, the full 4 GB is available. However, for some reason compared to a previous installation, the graphics/gaming graphics ratings in the Windows Experience Index actually went down by 0.1 each, for the same video card/drivers, no despite the lack of any hardware change...