4gb of ram, but only 3 usable with a dedicated card?!

[kracka]

Hello all,

It's been a while since I lurked the forums.

Anyways, I'm having an issue that has been asked multiple times, but I still have not been able to fix this!

I have an ACER desktop that I have laying around that I brought back to life.

-4gb 667mhz DDR2 Ram
-Radeon 4770 Graphics card
-Win 7 Ultimate 32bit

The integrated 3200 chipset is disabled, the motherboard is a American Mega trends Veriton M420 with the R02-A2 bios. (The Bios reads 4gb)

Any ideas? I can't find any newer drivers.

Thanks,

-Dan

 

[Okedokey]

Windows 32 bit can only address a max of 2^32 = 4GB of memory. This includes ram, hdd memory, graphics and so on.

So you will only have a total RAM available to you that is 4GB minus all the rest, which is in this case is 3GB. Limitation of 32bit os. And btw PAE is only a virtual fix so don't listen to anyone who suggests that. You need a 64bit os to utilise all 4gb.

 

[larsch]

And btw PAE is only a virtual fix so don't listen to anyone who suggests that. You need a 64bit os to utilise all 4gb.

Only virtual? Not really. The reason PAE doesn't make all memory availble in desktop versions of 32bit Windows is because Microsoft made it so. Otherwise PAE can surely do the job.

 

[linkin]

It also depends on your hardware... Some motherboards just can't address it, according to them 4GB is the end of the world.

 

[Okedokey]

Only virtual? Not really. The reason PAE doesn't make all memory availble in desktop versions of 32bit Windows is because Microsoft made it so. Otherwise PAE can surely do the job.

Its virutal in Windows (which is what we are talking about). Iits a licencing limitation set out by It also, requires the applications to able to support this extension. So, in real terms, its virtual on many OSs and applications. As a general rule, 4gb is the max on 32 bit os.

http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/license/memory.htm

 

[larsch]

I am not sure what you mean by "virtual" then. Your article also says "physical", which is what pae is. 32bit applications can be executed on 64bit Windows without supporing a 64bit OS. Right? The same is true aboue PAE.

 

[Okedokey]

Sorry i had to write quickly on my phone earlier today, the point here, is without hacking the kernel, a Windows 32bit os (what the OP is using) is limited to 4gb of addressable space.

PAE does not change the amount of virtual address space available to a process. Each process running in 32-bit Windows is still limited to a 4 GB virtual address space. PAE X86 allows applications using the Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) API set and running on a computer with more than 4 gigabytes (GB) of physical memory to map additional physical memory into the application’s virtual address space. Applications not using the AWE API set can also benefit from PAE X86 because the operating system uses the larger physical memory to reduce paging and thus increase performance. Doing this however is only 'legal' if you are using server versions of 32bit windows - which the OP is not.

A second method would require tuning, which is not for the faint hearted. It would simply be better to use a 64bit version of windows or another os.

I am not saying it is impossible, just its not within forum rules.