4gig DDR2 showing as 3.2 in Vista 64

twoodster · 8 Feb 2007 at 13:37

I've just added a couple more sticks of DDR2 and it's only showing up as 3.2 at bootup and in Vista 64bit Home Premium. In the actual bios the full 4096 is displayed. Any ideas if this is normal or not? My motherboard is a ConRoeXFire-eSATA2 and the ram is OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2.

J86 · 8 Feb 2007 at 13:37

go to dxdiag and look how much memory your graphics card has

twoodster · 8 Feb 2007 at 13:40

Hmmm - 1371meg..........how does that work then?

rpstewart · 8 Feb 2007 at 13:40

Take a look at the product page:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ConRoeXFire-eSATA2

Specifically the bit "Due to the chipset limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP, Windows® XP 64-bit, Windows® Vista™ and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit"

twoodster · 8 Feb 2007 at 13:42

rpstewart said:
Take a look at the product page:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ConRoeXFire-eSATA2

Specifically the bit "Due to the chipset limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP, Windows® XP 64-bit, Windows® Vista™ and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit"

So what does that mean in English? Sorry - I'm not much of a tech head

Is it saying I'm essentially only running 3 gig and I've wasted my money on the 4th?

rpstewart · 8 Feb 2007 at 13:55

That's pretty much it.

Cold Fusion · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:00

Well i interpret that as Windows Vista eating 800mb of your RAM to run itself, so its only reporting 3.2GB.

So you havent wasted your money on the memory, you've wasted it on Vista, which is a bloated pig of an operating system.

twoodster · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:07

Cold Fusion said:
Well i interpret that as Windows Vista eating 800mb of your RAM to run itself, so its only reporting 3.2GB.

So you havent wasted your money on the memory, you've wasted it on Vista, which is a bloated pig of an operating system.

I like it

ooEy · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:10

@ Cold Fusion: Tit! , wearing your i hate M$ t-shirt are we?

rpstewart said:
Take a look at the product page:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ConRoeXFire-eSATA2

Specifically the bit "Due to the chipset limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® XP, Windows® XP 64-bit, Windows® Vista™ and Windows® Vista™ 64-bit"

^^ Your right dude, Chipset limitation.

So yeah youve basically wasted your ££ on the extra GB.

twoodster · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:21

Whats the point the mobo having 4 slots if only 3 actually bloody work then

Pain in the arse!

ooEy · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:24

All 4 would work, if u used 512MB sticks :rolleyes:

Defcon5 · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:25

what chipset does the mobo use?

twoodster · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:25

ooEy said:
All 4 would work, if u used 512MB sticks

They haven't been used since the stoneage

twoodster · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:27

Defcon5 said:
what chipset does the mobo use?

Urmm Northbridge: Intel® 945P/945G I think

Cold Fusion · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:32

I dislike Microsoft and I dislike Vista. I dislike them charging £220 for a disk, I dislike them claiming Vista is such a leap forward, I dislike Microsofts new licencing rules and I dislike them making DirectX 10 Vista only

Quite frankly when i see an advert on TV claiming windows is more secure, easier to us and 'fun' (what the hell does more fun mean) I realise how little there is in Vista to promote it.

Ask yourself is this 7 years worth of OS development ?

ooEy · 8 Feb 2007 at 14:37

Bless, Its been out for 10 days, there are driver issues so its automatically "blah blah blah boo bad Microsoft Blah Blah".

I take it your hatred of MS means that you are a Linux user ?

As for £220, i hardly think thats a lot for the main part of any PC is it?

matja · 8 Feb 2007 at 15:01

Someone has already determined that it is a chipset limitation. Any excuse to start the OS-bashing wars :rolleyes:

stoofa · 8 Feb 2007 at 17:49

Cold Fusion said:
I dislike Microsoft and I dislike Vista. I dislike them charging £220 for a disk, I dislike them claiming Vista is such a leap forward, I dislike Microsofts new licencing rules and I dislike them making DirectX 10 Vista only

Quite frankly when i see an advert on TV claiming windows is more secure, easier to us and 'fun' (what the hell does more fun mean) I realise how little there is in Vista to promote it.

Ask yourself is this 7 years worth of OS development ?

For the millionth time - Vista doesn't cost £220.
For the millionth time - You're paying for the OS license, not the disk
They aren't just claiming Vista is a leap forward, it is a leap forward - how deep are you looking at this OS?
No new licensing rules - the rules on Vista are the same as they were under WinXP.

So basically you hate MS for making DirectX 10 - wah, wah, wah

paradigm · 8 Feb 2007 at 18:11

Actually, there are new licensing agreements for vista, but they would only affect you if you are receiving it through an MSDN subscription or similar.

For end-users buying retail or OEM, no the licensing stays the same.

Minstadave · 8 Feb 2007 at 22:16

This is gone totally off topic so I'm closing it, the chipset is the problem here, not Vista.