Gigabyte H55N-USB3 - disabling onboard gfx?

jmp_78 · 17 Mar 2011 at 12:45

I recently bought this M-ITX board and installed an i3 560 and 4GB Corsair RAM.

The BIOS sees all of the RAM, as does Windows 7 (64-bit), but it can only use ~3.75GB.

Is this something to do with the onboard graphics on the i3 chip? I have a Radeon 4870 1GB installed as the primary display device so assumed that the CPU wouldn't take up any RAM?

There is a FRAME-BUFFER setting in the BIOS, but you can't disable it completely.

Any ideas??

1Day · 17 Mar 2011 at 13:06

I think that some of your ram is being allocated to the GPU anyway. Not sure how to disable that. On my M-iTX board like your one that I had in my HTPC system I had the same thing with a HD4550 card. But since it did not make any difference to the performance I did not worry to much about changing or finding out what or why.

jmp_78 · 17 Mar 2011 at 13:34

Agreed that it will make very little difference, if any at all.

Just one of those things that bugs me! I don't care if I can't change it, I just wanna know what it is!

1Day · 17 Mar 2011 at 14:04

So true bugs me too. Have subscribed to this thread in case some wiser head has an answer for us.

jmp_78 · 17 Mar 2011 at 14:17

Am gonna have another look tonight - something to do with the FRAME-BUFFER option in the BIOS I reckon. I think you can decrease it but not disable it.

I've already selected the BIOS option for use PCIe graphics primarily, and don't bother with integrated graphics.

That extra ~250MB might be needed one day.
Perhaps.
Probably not...
Still - bugs me

Glad to hear it's not just me!