4 gig of ram but only 3.50 showing ???????

[JRO7563]

hi all,

ive just put another 2 gig of corsair ram into my system but when i right click on "my computer" properties it only shows 3.50 gig ??????? which i find quite odd, is this correct or not ????????
there 2 x 2 gig of twin x matched memory pairs (MY-039-CS)

many thanks for any help offered

[aidanjt]

Its a windows limitation.. Why in God's name would you even install 4GB of RAM?

[JRO7563]

hi

thanks for that, as for the ammount, i do a lot of 3D work on my pc (vue, cinema 4D etc) and get "not enough memory" messages more often than not before the program crashes, hence the upgrade, though knowing the sofware, they'll still crash, maybe its time to get a mac.

[aidanjt]

naw, if you're doing 3D you're much better off on a PC platform.. Increase the size of your virtual memory, and you might even consider getting yourself a U320 SCSI controller and 15,000RPM hard drive for this purpose if you're serious into modeling 3D landscapes.. Also, given time when your 3D software begins releasing 64bit binaries you can install Windwos XP x64 on an Athlon 64/X2 system and use your memory fully.

[JRO7563]

15000 rpm hardrives are a bit pricy, im using two 74 gig raptors at the mo, having just stuck a new one in as they run out of space real quick what with all the texture files i use. will look into windows XP64 though, then my CPU can start doing whats it was made for LOL

[mike_w]

Make sure all your software and hardware is supported when you move to Windows XP 64bit - not all hardware or software is supported yet.

[TiG]

Are you sure its the windows OS?, i can't remember 3.5Gig being a limit of windows?.

I would suspect 3.5Gig being a limitation of the motherboard you have installed it into. With that causing you a limitation. Check your motherboard documentation to see if there is any configuration that will allow 4Gig.

Some Windows OS like win2k3 advanced server will support 6Gig of memory i believe.

TiG

[aidanjt]

raptors are good enough too.. you could throw in a 250GB 7,200RPM disk for your textures and renderings.
a good way of setting it up would be

Raptor 1: Windows, software etc
Raptor 2: Windows swap file only, 8Gb+ (3D software is extremely memory intensive i know)
250Gb Disk: All your data.

Sounds good?

[aidanjt]

I would suspect 3.5Gig being a limitation of the motherboard you have installed it into. With that causing you a limitation. Check your motherboard documentation to see if there is any configuration that will allow 4Gig.

Some Windows OS like win2k3 advanced server will support 6Gig of memory i believe.
TiG

win2k3 uses virtual addressing, IA32 architecture can only map a certian amount of memory. Its limit is suppose to be 4GB but operating systems go funny when aproaching this limit. But anyway, when running an AMD64 in native mode the addressable memory raises.

[JRO7563]

sorry, i should have listed my system, which im sure would help.

athlon 64 4000+ cpu, 2 x 74 gig WD raptors, 4 gig corsair twin channel ram (or is that 3.50 gig LOL) radeon x800xt graphics card, MSI K8N Neo 2 mobo, windows xp pro.

just double checked the board manual and it supports a maximum memory size of upto 4 gig with ecc (whatever that is ???)

[aidanjt]

Error Checking and Correction, its more expensive stuff used in servers. But thats irrelivent what the board thinks since the memory controller is built into the athlon 64.

Anyway, thats a decent system.. if you're still having memory problems with your 3.5GB of memory, then open task manager while the 3D programs are running, and enable the "VM Size" on the Processes tab, you'll be able to see how much memory is being used overall and where you can improve things.. you may find that even an 8Gb swap file is too small with really big projects.

[JRO7563]

hi again,

just went into bios, under standard cmos features, and its showing, system memory 3670016k and total memory 3670016k so does that mean i am half a gig short ????? as im sure youve noticed, im really not up on these things. i like the idea of puting a larger 7500 HDD in there too, for storage as i think my other half is going to want to start ripping her CD's soon (ipod for chrimbo, big mistake) )

thanks for all your help on this

[Blackspeech]

just went into bios, under standard cmos features, and its showing, system memory 3670016k and total memory 3670016k so does that mean i am half a gig short.

My new mobo manual (ASUS A8N-E) states the following on page 1 - 15:

'Due to chipset resource allocation, the system may detect less than 4 GB of system memory when you installed four 1GB DDR memory modules.'

I see you have 2 x2 GB sticks - maybe the answer will come under installing RAM in your MOBO.

Hope this helps - I am unsure as to whether this means it cannot use the .5 GB or not I just remember that it said this as I only read it last night.

[JRO7563]

i think your right, ive just had a good read of the manual and it says the same thing with regard to using 4 x 1 gig sticks of memory "the system density will only be detected upto 3+ GB, not the full 4 GB.

[JRO7563]

just one more thing if you dont mind, with regard to a swap file, just to confirm, is that a paging file under virtual memory ??????? ive just been looking at the forums here and ive read its best to have it set up on a hard drive other than the drive windows is on.

many thanks

[aidanjt]

Yes, the swap file is the Windows 'paging' file, or virtual memory. And yes, its more ideal to set the swap file to somewhere Windows isn't going to be reading from often. However thats only a guideline, and not gospile truth.

For example, if you have 2 drives, 1 with windows, and the other for data, if your data drive is making a ton of I/O transactions while a program is working on something, then your swapfile is much better off on the windows drive, since it will not be doing much work other than loading binaries and light ammount of data. It all depends on your setup and milage varies.. also ignore these stupid RAM*2.5 virtual memory schemes, they're total and utter crap, you set your virtual memory to whatever you need during typical usage.