Strange. 3gb of ram of 4gb?

[DecomposingStar]

I just installed a new mobo with 2x1gb ram extra on top of my other 2gb. Now i have 4x1gb sticks. Windows says that i'm running 3326mb of memory, but CPU-Z and my Bios say im running 4gb.

What do i beleive? how do i check/test? what the hell is going on?

The mobo is a P5K-deluxe wifi, and the ram is all OCZ platinum 1024 sticks (800mhz)

[Davion]

Got Vista 32bit ? or XP ?
If so, that's normal.

Only with a 64bit OS you can use the full 4Gigs.

[dk04_2]

If youve only got 32bit Vista then i think that the maximum is 4gb, some of this is used up by the Processors cache and the memory on the graphics card. If someone can confirm this?

Davion beat me to it

[DecomposingStar]

so it's basically just wasting the other 700mb or so then?

I'll try get ahold of a 64bit vista soon i guess.

Damn

[dk04_2]

If i remember correctly it still uses it but reserves it for other hardware (Graphics)

[DecomposingStar]

oh ok... well thats not such a waste then. I'll still get 64bit, drivers seem more stable for it these days.


Thanks guys!

[kidzer]

Yeah, a 32-bit aware OS is only able to access 2^32 (4096MiB in total) memory locations I beleive, some of which are taken by GPU/BIOS/IO - therby limiting RAM Address Space and as such, useable RAM.

[Mit321]

can 64bit OS run games e.g. Crysis and BF2142. I'm guessing it can be just wanna check. Also, is 64bit any faster?

[dk04_2]

Yeah, Crysis is faster in 64bit. But be careful of your drivers - some drivers might not work such as Webcams etc.

[Agent]

can 64bit OS run games e.g. Crysis and BF2142. I'm guessing it can be just wanna check. Also, is 64bit any faster?

64bit is only faster when doing 64bit calculations (not very often at the moment)
You can play games fine, provided you have the drivers

[Rosaline]

Not all games run fine under 64 bit versions of windows. Typically, however, it is less the game to blame, but rather the copy protection. Oblivion's downloadable content, for example, will not work under 64 bit due to the poorly designed copy protection they decided to use. As a rule, where there are problems, there are warnings out there with respect to them, thankfully

[Fraz]

64bit is only faster when doing 64bit calculations (not very often at the moment)

Not strictly true, as 64-bit processors can "double-up" certain 32-bit instructions, so they are processed in a single cycle.

[DecomposingStar]

It's a similar story to DX10. Until companies start fully utilizing it, it's pretty much sitting there, doing nothing.

You will be able to find drivers for almost everything these days.

And- Crysis will gain 15-20% performance with dual cores, and 20-40% on quad cores when using it in 64bit. Just goes to show, Crytek are willing to take the leap in order to gain performance and push forward new technology!

[Agent]

Not all games run fine under 64 bit versions of windows. Typically, however, it is less the game to blame, but rather the copy protection. Oblivion's downloadable content, for example, will not work under 64 bit due to the poorly designed copy protection they decided to use. As a rule, where there are problems, there are warnings out there with respect to them, thankfully

Oh yeah
Copy protection is an entirely different, evil ball game.
You may also have issues with DOS based games.
This isn't a 64bit issue as such, but more due to the change in the way Windows works (You'll get quite a lot of the same issues under Vista 32bit)

Not strictly true, as 64-bit processors can "double-up" certain 32-bit instructions, so they are processed in a single cycle.

True, but its quite a specific set of instructions and circumstances that must be met for it to happen. Furthermore, not a huge number of app's are going to make use it (after all, why not just compile direct to 64bit?). Its nice to always have speed gains for free, but from what I've read (I have no direct experience with it), it will make a fairly small difference.

[Lucio]

Can you buy a 2nd Vista licence and dual boot between the two types? That'd be one way to cover yourself.

[DecomposingStar]

Can you buy a 2nd Vista licence and dual boot between the two types? That'd be one way to cover yourself.

You can probably dual boot. Although it would be a pain. You'd probably have to use the 64bit and 32bit completely seperately (use different HDD's and software etc) otherwise you'd get some conflicts. Not sure if it's practical.