Ram help

Xymos · 28 Oct 2010 at 23:10

Hi i have bought a pre made system with Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9(1600MHz) Tri-Channel suppose to be 6GB but my computer says i only have 3GB any ideas why? P.s im running widows xp

cmndr_andi · 29 Oct 2010 at 01:51

Hi there welcome to the forums

Are you running 32 or 64 bit windows XP?

Also, what graphics card are you running?

Xymos · 29 Oct 2010 at 10:46

32-bit and gtx480 but i know about physical memory limit in windows and when i check available memory in task manager its around 5gb so its fine i guess. Last question, can i use the unused 1gb of ram for something?

Metroid · 29 Oct 2010 at 10:52

Xymos said:
when i check available memory in task manager its around 5gb so its fine i guess.

This is not going to work well. I recommend to install the 64 bits.

cmndr_andi · 29 Oct 2010 at 11:35

Xymos said:
32-bit and gtx480 but i know about physical memory limit in windows and when i check available memory in task manager its around 5gb so its fine i guess. Last question, can i use the unused 1gb of ram for something?

Yea, thats your problem. If you look here, the total system memory limit for Windows XP 32 bit is only 4GB. This includes system RAM and Video RAM.

Hence you may have 6GB of system RAM installed, but your OS can only make use of ~3GB. The only remedy is to get a 64 bit OS.

The available memory in task manager includes virtual memory (which includes use of the hard disk) so this should not be relied upon to gauge how much RAM windows is seeing.

Personally, I would suggest an upgrade copy of Windows 7 as these tend to be cheaper than OEM licences and considerably cheaper than the full retail version.

Xymos · 29 Oct 2010 at 11:43

Thank you for all your replies i will look into getting windows7.