9 replies to this topic

[Pandut]

So I recently bought a new processor and another 2 gig stick of memory. Got em' installed pretty easily, but whenever I check my system specs, my PC registers my RAM only having 3 gigs of memory. Both of my memory sticks that are 2 gigs each, so I'm not sure why it's doing this .

[TheDR]

First guess is that you have a 32bit operating system. 32bit operating systems can only use 3.9GB (or something similar) of RAM. You would need to upgrade to a 64bit operating system to use more RAM.

[CJ]

TheDR, on 22 Mar 2011, 18:33, said:

First guess is that you have a 32bit operating system. 32bit operating systems can only use 3.9GB (or something similar) of RAM. You would need to upgrade to a 64bit operating system to use more RAM.

They can support 4GB, not use them, they can only use 75% of them actually :|

[BeefJeRKy]

Theoretically, a 32-bit OS should be able to use 2^32 addresses in memory which amounts to 4G bytes (4 * 2^30) but the RAM you get from manufacturers I believe uses Giga as 10^9 so that is more like 3.7GB in the true memory address sense. It's the same way with HDDs. You buy a 1TB hard drive but it shows up as 921GB on your system.

[CJ]

Scope, on 22 Mar 2011, 21:41, said:

Theoretically, a 32-bit OS should be able to use 2^32 addresses in memory which amounts to 4G bytes (4 * 2^30) but the RAM you get from manufacturers I believe uses Giga as 10^9 so that is more like 3.7GB in the true memory address sense. It's the same way with HDDs. You buy a 1TB hard drive but it shows up as 921GB on your system.

That's theoretically, but for some reason if you check the system specs on Win 7 32 bits you'll find that the RAM is always capped at exactly 3GB...

[Pandut]

CJ, on 22 Mar 2011, 16:05, said:

Scope, on 22 Mar 2011, 21:41, said:

Theoretically, a 32-bit OS should be able to use 2^32 addresses in memory which amounts to 4G bytes (4 * 2^30) but the RAM you get from manufacturers I believe uses Giga as 10^9 so that is more like 3.7GB in the true memory address sense. It's the same way with HDDs. You buy a 1TB hard drive but it shows up as 921GB on your system.

That's theoretically, but for some reason if you check the system specs on Win 7 32 bits you'll find that the RAM is always capped at exactly 3GB...

I'm not using Windows 7 though, I'm using XP.

But let me get this straight, even though I have 4 gigs of RAM, my operating system will only use 3. whatever becuase it's not able to use all of it? And updating ones OS is just upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, right?

[BeefJeRKy]

Not true CJ, on my older Vista desktop, RAM was displayed as 3.8GB. Maybe there is something wrong with your RAM? Unless you're using a laptop, in which case, some RAM is reserved for your GPU.

[TheDR]

Sobek, on 22 Mar 2011, 22:30, said:

CJ, on 22 Mar 2011, 16:05, said:

Scope, on 22 Mar 2011, 21:41, said:

Theoretically, a 32-bit OS should be able to use 2^32 addresses in memory which amounts to 4G bytes (4 * 2^30) but the RAM you get from manufacturers I believe uses Giga as 10^9 so that is more like 3.7GB in the true memory address sense. It's the same way with HDDs. You buy a 1TB hard drive but it shows up as 921GB on your system.

That's theoretically, but for some reason if you check the system specs on Win 7 32 bits you'll find that the RAM is always capped at exactly 3GB...

I'm not using Windows 7 though, I'm using XP.

But let me get this straight, even though I have 4 gigs of RAM, my operating system will only use 3. whatever becuase it's not able to use all of it? And updating ones OS is just upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, right?

You'd have to make sure to get a 64bit version of Windows 7 (as you can buy either 64 or 32).

[BeefJeRKy]

In practice, you won't gain too much from those 400 or so MB that you're "losing". If you're going for an x64 system, might as well get over 4GB of RAM.

[CJ]

Scope, on 22 Mar 2011, 23:56, said:

Not true CJ, on my older Vista desktop, RAM was displayed as 3.8GB. Maybe there is something wrong with your RAM? Unless you're using a laptop, in which case, some RAM is reserved for your GPU.

I said Seven, not Vista...
Also it wasn't on my PC, I use 64 bits Win 7

Edited by CJ, 22 March 2011 - 23:27.