Asus A8v Deluxe - 3328MB limit ?

[ikonia]

I've recently updated an older machine with some spare ram.

This machine had 2GB of ram in an a8v Deluxe mother board.

I've put in another 2 GB of ram, in 2 x 1GB sticks

putting in one stick (either stick) takes it up to 3072, putting in the other 1 GB stick takes it up to 3328.

Is this a limit of the board (documentation suggests no such limit) I'm using the 1017 bios and about to try the 1018 beta bios for a simple test.

[Agent]

It could be that the board is hard-coded to a 4GB limit including addressing space or its the limit of 32bit addressing kicking in (does it show the full 4GB, but only able to use 3.X?). Gimmie a sec, i'll link you some posts where I've covered this.

[ikonia]

this is at the bios level agent.

While I agree its possible that the board can't handle anything more than 3GB - I a.) can't find anyting documented on this b.) don't see why it can see over 3 GB - but not the full 4.

this isn't at the OS level so even though I'm aware of the 4GB limits, I'd expect this to be a hardware limit, but I can't find anything that suggests this, which is backed up by the fact that it can see over 3 - just not the full 4.

[sawyen]

I think there's an option in the BIOS to set the bar for 4G above DRAM limit.. try that.. I have those on my A8N-SLI.. worth a shot..

[ikonia]

no such option

this is an interesting read.
http://www.motherboardpoint.com/t565...gb-of-ram.html

[Agent]

It can be a hardware limit, yes.

Some boards (your's may be one of them), have a hard-coded limit of 4GB addressable space (they are hard coded with 32bit addressing IIRC, even though they support a 64bit CPU - ridiculous). Out of this must come IO mapping reservations for the graphics card, PCI devices, integrated north/southbridge components like networking, ect...
So if you put 4GB in, you will only 'see' whats left after these devices have had their mappings assigned.

This can probably be solved with a BIOS update, but if they will bother is another story....

An easy way to prove this is to install a graphics card with less RAM and watch the available RAM go up.

[ikonia]

any Agent is the winner

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq_righ...Language=en-us

utter toss old board. I'm not upgrading it but it's also a wate of good ram.

I've got an Asus a8n Deluxe sitting here which I know will take the 4GB, however swapping out the motherboard, cpu and re-wiring....ughhhhh oh yes, I'll need a new video card as this ones AGP, I guess I'll consider doing it at the weekend.

thanks agent

[kidzer]

(they are hard coded with 32bit addressing IIRC, even though they support a 64bit CPU - ridiculous).

So were you to install a 64-bit aware OS, quite capable of addressing 4GiB of RAM along with all the other stuff, you still woudn't 'see' it all?

That's a stupid thing to do!

[Agent]

So were you to install a 64-bit aware OS, quite capable of addressing 4GiB of RAM along with all the other stuff, you still woudn't 'see' it all?

That's a stupid thing to do!

Correct!

This depends entirely on your board though.
I know the better brands like Abit support 8GB as standard (how far back this goes, im not sure, but the QuadGT certainly does)

[BUFF]

The blurb for the equivalent abit AV8 says
" CPU Integrated Dual Channel Memory Controller
Four 184-pin DIMM sockets (Un-buffered Non-ECC DIMM)
Supports Dual Channel DDR 400/333/266 (Max. 8GB)"
http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/mothe...SEARCHTEXT=AV8

now, you can read that as the board or just the memory controller supports 8Gb ...