useless ram?

R

randallkubin

New Member
i finally got my new computer from Dell. I had them upgrade it, to 4 Gigs @ 800 MHz - what they didn't bother telling me, was that Vista Home Premium, only recognizes a max of 3 Gigs. They really should have warned me.

Is that other 1 Gig like completely ignored... or does it get utilized when I do something outside of the OS... like... play a game or something.

Are there anything I can do to make Vista recognize the entire 4 Gigs? Maybe like an update or something?
 
so... i don't necessarily need to upgrade to Ultimate... I need a x64 bit edition. I'll upgrade to SP1... if it isn't there already. Maybe that'll do the trick. The thing is... as long as the system reports that it has 4 gigs of physical memory - I'm cool. Just... so long as i can see it's there. How much it actually uses I'll worry about another day.

i tried reading the "askdan" link you sent... it was all pretty much over my head. but I think the gist of it was... i pretty much just don't need 4 Gigs.

And... maybe I read it wrong... but was he saying that new hardware, like graphics cards, or whatever - that have their own memory - detract from the total usable system memory? i mean... say I have 3 gigs system mem... and a 1 gig video card. Is he saying that now I'm only going to be able to use 2 Gigs of system memory?

He was totally over my head.
 
The thing is... as long as the system reports that it has 4 gigs of physical memory - I'm cool. Just... so long as i can see it's there. How much it actually uses I'll worry about another day.
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That's really the same thing. Software other than windows can tell you that there are 4GB present, but 32bit windows can't address it all so it doesn't really matter. The BIOS should tell you how much RAM is present as well so you can tell it's all there that way.
And... maybe I read it wrong... but was he saying that new hardware, like graphics cards, or whatever - that have their own memory - detract from the total usable system memory? i mean... say I have 3 gigs system mem... and a 1 gig video card. Is he saying that now I'm only going to be able to use 2 Gigs of system memory?
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No. The address for hardware is taken from the top first, so in that situation you will most likely have 3GB of usable RAM.
 
You're pretty much correct when assuming you don't actually need 4gb installed. I've been running everything here with 2gb of memory. Most of the 32bit games and apps were never written to run on systems with more then 2-3gb in the first place.

As far as going with a 64bit edition you still have to see SP1 as part of the update process. For the redistributable 434mb download there are separate links for both 32bit and 64bit seen on the download page.

On the older boards with the older socket types you would see the option to increase the aperature for the video card. The default was 64mb where increasing the amount took more away from the available ram to some extent. That was the thing being brought up in the older article seen there.

When increasing that yiou would then see more system memory shared with the video card. A 256mb card would see a 256mb aperature size. At this time the cards have progressed where nothing like that is needed since more work is done by the onboard vpu chip and increased memory rather then demands on cpu time.
 
PC eye said:
When increasing that yiou would then see more system memory shared with the video card. A 256mb card would see a 256mb aperature size. At this time the cards have progressed where nothing like that is needed since more work is done by the onboard vpu chip and increased memory rather then demands on cpu time.
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Really AGP aperture didnt share ram like onboard video. You could set it to anything you want and it doesnt hold the ram amount. The only way it would use it would be if the system is not. Plus it was just address space not physical memory And as time went on and Onboard memory increased on the cards you didnt use more aperture you use less because you needed less. When the cards onboard memory got to 128mb up to 512mbs I left mine at 128mb aperture size. But with that much onboard memory on the card you could set it to 32mb and you would not see any performance loss. So really the more Memory the card had the less Aperture you needed.
 
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System memory was shared for seeing an increase of memory available for processing textures and other visual information. The standard default reached 64mb during the Socket A and P4 era and then disappeared since all newer cards saw more then enough onboard memory as well as more work done by the card over cpu time requests.

The idea of seeing it increased when running a 256mb card was done mostly for gaming to increase visual quality. If you ended up seeing any problems you then reset the default 64mb. It was far from an actual performance booster to begin with. If you set the amount of memory shared too high you were left hanging for other things since you were taking away from the available ram.

The most you could accomplish besides reserving memory that never saw the full amount used to begin with was a slight increase in frame rates while gaming. On an old system only running 512mb to 1gb of memory you wouldn't want to see 256mb for a 256mb card tied up.
 
The aperature memory was not taken unless the card ran out of local memory. The memory isn't reserved, it is just made available when it's needed.
 
To make the aperture size relevant to the question. It reserves "address space", so if the installed ram amount is larger than usable space - then the aperture size will reflect on how much ram there will be available
 
PC eye said:
System memory was shared for seeing an increase of memory available for processing textures and other visual information. The standard default reached 64mb during the Socket A and P4 era and then disappeared since all newer cards saw more then enough onboard memory as well as more work done by the card over cpu time requests.

The idea of seeing it increased when running a 256mb card was done mostly for gaming to increase visual quality. If you ended up seeing any problems you then reset the default 64mb. It was far from an actual performance booster to begin with. If you set the amount of memory shared too high you were left hanging for other things since you were taking away from the available ram.

The most you could accomplish besides reserving memory that never saw the full amount used to begin with was a slight increase in frame rates while gaming. On an old system only running 512mb to 1gb of memory you wouldn't want to see 256mb for a 256mb card tied up.
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Thats just a redundant statement that you already said. Partly true partly untrue. Like I said the more Memory the card has the less aperture you need. And it does not hold the memory from the system. It is the amount of address space that its allowed to use up to, and it wasnt held so to say like onboard video memory so your systems not really giving up physical memory. And it didnt disappear when memory got larger on cards, all AGPs used aperture no matter what card you were running or how much memory it had. And its still around with PCIe video cards ( used for a different purpose) and is controlled by the drivers instead of a bios setting.
 
Well, I've installed SP1 last night - and now, my system info shows I have 4 Gigs installed. I feel better about it... even though I don't need it, and it's pretty much useless... but at least I know I can see where my money went.

Now, I have another problem with this new PC. But, this is the wrong thread. Thanks everybody for your help.
 
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