bpoling
asked on
4GBs of RAM, but only Showing 3GB
memory?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
make sure that motherboard support up to 4 GB look at data sheet
rbowall is partly correct. 32 bit OSs can only address 4 GB of RAM. But windows gives each application 4 GB of RAM address space even though most will never come close to using it. The pagefile is used to store things that are in RAM but not used much. One of my servers has 2.25 GB of RAM and a 3.5GB page file. And the total available RAM (as reported by Task Manager under "Commit Charge (K) in the performance tab is roughly 5.75 GB (5800816).
a 32bit cpu can only address 4G maximum. This includes your bios rom, video memory, io-mapped ports (usb/ide etc)
I am pretty sure that it is actually a limitation of windows XP that it can only actually use 3 gigs of memory. This article helps a bit.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx
Also, it depends on the OS you are running, and also if you have onboard video, it can be configured to "Borrow" memory and that can affect how much you have available.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx
Also, it depends on the OS you are running, and also if you have onboard video, it can be configured to "Borrow" memory and that can affect how much you have available.
You could remove the page file by setting its size to zero, in which case you will see the full 4GB.