Only 3gb Usable out of 4gb Memory in Windows 7

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.

ocean

Distinguished
Jul 3, 2008
11
0
18,510
I had a problem which I never addressed in windows XP. I installed 4GB of ram, but my XP used to see only 3gb. Now I thought installing WIndows 7 would solve this, but no again only 3gb is usable out of the 4. Here is the specs of my machine, any help is appreciated.

Healthy Relationships

Free Relationship Advice


Running Windows 7 on following:

Handwritten Letter Service

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7200 @2.53GHz

Installed Memory: 4.00 GB (3.00 GB Usable)

System type: 32-bit Operating System

Motherboard:Gigabyte mATX Intel G31 775 DDR2-800 GA-G31M-S2L

New Relationship Advice

Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT


Please Help.


Side questions for windows 7
1. Can i use vista drivers to install my monitor? because right now windows 7 sees it as pnp monitor, and on Dell's website my monitor drivers are not available for Windows 7 only for Vista. I have the Dell sp2208wfp
2. Can I use Google Chrome? the Vista version? for win 7?
3. Are there any tweaks that i can use in order to boost the performance for windows 7, it seems a bit slow on my machine.

Here are the results:
Windows Experience Index follows:
Processor: 5.9
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 6.8
Gaming Graphics:6.8
Primary hard disk:5.9
Healthy Relationships

Any help appreciated.
 
K, I found a solution... weird though...

I was using MSCONFIG to make sure windows started with all four cpu cores (i.e. msconfig / Boot / Advanced Options / number of processors).

I guess I also selected use max memory option as well.

In windows Resource Monitor 1026 MB was set aside for "Hardware Reserved"

I unselected the "use max memory" and now Win7 reports the full memory and the Hardware Reserved dropped to zero. :)

Hope it helps someone else.
 

You found a solution to what? This is your first post in this discussion. Your problem or system hardware may be completely different from that being discussed so far in this topic.
 
I responded to the original problem. I tried all of the solutions posted without success. ...so my post was to provide a possible solution to the original post which wasn't addressed up until now.
 
Hey everyone... here's one... I just upgraded to Win 7 Ultimate from Vista Ultimate (both x86) on my Sony VAIO VGN-280E which was shipped with Vista Home Prem x86 and Sony state that it is capable of 4GB RAM. I have just upgraded from 3GB to the full 4... and of course only 3 usable according to System Properties. You all say that it's cos x86 OSs aren't capable of 4GB RAM but that's just not the case with everyone, I've read other forums where people have... and also where x64 users cab't access all their 4GB, only 3 or 3.xGB. I have run Linux x86 on here, which uses the full 4, and have an OS X Leopard install which also detects and uses all 4GB. My BIOS detects all 4 too. Is there ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that I can get Win 7 to use the full 4GB DDR2 (PC-2 5300 667) RAM I have installed? Further system spec:

Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family
Core 2 Duo 667MHz T5450 CPUs
Intel GMA X3100 Video (total available graphics memory: 358MB - 64 system, 294 shared)

Any help appreciated - if I have to upgrade to Win 7 x64, can I upgrade install or will it have to be clean?
 
Okay, so if I upgrade to Win 7 x64, and the full 4GB RAM is utilised by the system, isn't the trade-off that an x64 OS is more demanding on system resources including RAM? ie. Probably performance-wise I'm not any better off??
 
The benefits of a 64-bit OS far outweigh the shortcomings. I use 4GB of RAM with 64-bit Windows in just about every system I build and the performance is always excellent. I don't see any reason to use a 32-bit OS on a new system. The 32-bit OS not only limits the total available RAM for the system to 4GB, it also limits each application to a 2GB limit. A 64-bit OS only uses very slightly more RAM than a 32-bit OS.
 


Hang on - you just contradicted what you said earlier, ie that a 32-bit Win OS can't use a full 4GB RAM, yet now you say it "limits the total available RAM for the system to 4GB". Sounds like there's a way to get the full 4 working?
 
No, there's not because everything with RAM is deducted from the total. Your graphics card and motherboard components deduct from the 4GB total. You can never fully use 4GB of RAM with a consumer 32-bit Windows OS. Whether you like it or not, those are the facts. There is no way around it.
 


Yeah so my mobo and video are using the extra RAM, right? So ok it's not available to my apps etc but it's being made use of, that's the important thing. Hell I don't care if AVG+Nero 9+Cubase all working hard can use it or my video crd can use it. It all helps. fact is, even though I multitask pretty hard, I barely ever (if ever) get beyond the 3GB I've had.
 


Heyyy I wanna try that... but in MSConfig boot panel nothing clicks. No buttons will be depressed. I can't access the Advanced options (??). I use MSConfig a lot to take the crap off my startup etc, but never tried to get to Advanced Options there where you're saying. What am I doing wrong? Cheers
 
No, the RAM is not physically being used. Those devices are just using address spaces, not your actual RAM. A 32-bit OS can only address a total of 4GB. Other system components get their own physical memory addressed to them before the system memory, which just gets whatever is left over after all the other components are taken care of.

You should really do a Google search for something like "32-bit Windows RAM limit" or something since you don't understand how the memory mapping works. It's more involved than I can post in a forum thread. The bottom line is that there is absolutely no way to fully use 4GB of RAM with a 32-bit consumer OS - period.
 

That guy was using 64-bit Windows, so he was able to fully use all 4GB of RAM.

Here's the link:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/35501391/win7-shows-only-3gb-usabl.aspx

"I have got Win7-64bit installed on a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P with a Q9550 and = 4GB or memory. 2xHD3870 ATI video cards

Win7 shows that only 3GB is usable... how do I fix this problem? = Vista64 used all 4GB of memory with exactly the same hardware!"
 


Okay, I'll take yr word for it! Cheers
 
Intel 965 chipset supports 8GB physical address space and supports memory remapping required to use all 4GB installed RAM with 64-bit OS. Whether the system BIOS implements support for memory remapping or not is a separate question.

It is true that 64-bit OS (particularly one that supports 32-bit side-by-side as opposed to strictly 64-bit only) will have substantially increased memory usage and footprint.

This may or may not be counterproductive on systems limited by the hardware to 32-bit addressing model, where you might only get 3.00GB-ish useable (or less) out of 4.00GB installed. There is a trade-off but whether it is still positive or negative would depend on a few individual factors.

64-bit isn't necessarily greater just because you have it. Many alleged "64-bit ready" applications are just the 32-bit application with pointer handling cleaned up and legacy 16-bit code removed so that it will be 'compatible' with 64-bit Windows. Doesn't necessarily mean it will utilize the processing resources of 64-bit CPUs.

Even where an application may utilize 64-bit, doesn't necessarily mean its going to be faster. e.g. how much 'faster' can Notepad or Wordpad get?

In the browser testing that shows 64-bit browsers performing better than 32-bit browsers, they have to open more than 100 windows or tabs in order to show any benefit. Who has 100+ browser windows or tabs open? I'm sure there are some people who do (and probably amount to about 1% of the computer using world), but seriously. I rarely have more than 20 browser windows or tabs open simultaneously.

Some applications really benefit from 64-bit but a whole lot of them just don't under typical mainstream usage.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.