I have 5GB of RAM? Really?!

Michael

Michael

Active Member
Long story short; I bought RAM last winter and they were marketed as 1GB x2 (on ebay - Kingston ValueRAM) and I never paid attention to the labels. Vista Ultimate 32bit showed 3GB of RAM, as did XP Pro (which I have now), until after a few updates, then it showed 4096MB of RAM.

So, I opened up my tower and pulled the sticks out and, sure enough, I have 2x 2GB and 2x 512MB sticks of RAM installed!

So, now I updated to XP SP3, and it shows 3072MB of RAM again (3GB), and I'm wondering what happened here.. I'm sure something was overwritten somewhere, but I don't know how to go about fixing it.

I've been reading about something called /PAE, but it's hard to understand where it goes in my boot.ini file, since Microsoft's example isn't exactly what I have in my boot.ini file.

Anyone care to chime in on how to force my 32bit Windows to see 4GB of RAM again? Ideally, I'd like to see 5GB - but I know that's not a reality.

I'm thinking about going back to Vista, but doing 64bit this time, to utilize all 5GB of RAM.. and because I like to change my OS around every once in awhile, and skinning it is getting boring :D ..any other advantages of 64bit?

My hardware setup is in my sig, for reference.

TIA,

-mak
 
well, you need windows xp x64 or Vista x64 to make it use the 5Gb. No idea how you could make it show in 32-bit, but then, not sure how usefull that would be. (showing it is 1 thing,.. actually using it is another I suppose)
 
Vista SP1 shows 4GB on a 32 bit OS, as I'm sure many people were complaining to the computer manufacturers that they paid for 4GB bu are only getting around 3GB.

I heard about the PAE and getting Windows to recognize all 4GB, but as you noticed, without doing some major tweaking Windows 32 bit can only see and use around 3 GB of RAM.
 
I thought so, oh well I guess.

The biggest issue I have is that CPUz is showing my 2GB sticks as 1GB sticks, when they're clearly marked as 2GB on the labels.. no big deal I guess.. at least I'm prepared for if/when I go full 64bit!

-mak
 
I've had no problems with drivers or software to date with x64 Vista. I have 4GB Ram and it runs very well. I think you'll be pleased with it. I've gone back to XP too but I always end up with Vista x64 again!! Anyway, best of luck whatever you decide.
 
i looked into this for xp pro 32bit and i got alot of stuff to try and nothing worked!

as for vista 32bit sp1 patch omega might just be right there, but i went straight for the vista 64 bit because i know as things progress we will be using more ram.

i am happy eith 4gig at the moment
 
Your BIOS will show how much RAM you have regardless what OS you're running. Check there to confirm what you have. If it's incorrect there or the amount fluctuates (in Windows or the BIOS) you maybe have some bad RAM.
 
Some graphics cards "use" some of the system ram for the graphics.. I know this is usually a problem in laptops with integrated graphics, but the alienware area-51 m9750 had problems with dual sli graphics only showing 2.5gb ram.
 
I have a 7600GT w/ 256MB GDDR3 built-in for the video.

BIOS says 5120MB RAM.

I'm guessing it's OS-related. I'm not too worried about it anymore.

-mak
 
unless you run x64 no OS will properley use more than ~3.5gb of ram. Windows x32 will not use over 2/3gb for applications (depending on setup) , and even on x64, most applications wont use the extra memory allowance (in fact, the only app i know which takes use of this sort of thing is MS SQL Server)
 
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