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

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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.

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Running Windows 7 on following:

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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

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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
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Any help appreciated.
 
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So, er, what ARE the benefits of an x64 OS? And will it run all my normal x86 software ok? It sounds like a big hassle for nothing-- am I right? That extra GB of RAM will probably not give me any extra performance sice x64 uses more system resources. So which apps "really benefit" from the x64 environment, and will the rest just run as normal our actually be hampered?
 
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At this point the best reason for x64 is memory. Not only can you use more ram, but each individual program has access to more memory. For example, using the /3gb switch will allow a program to use up to 3GBs of ram MAX. While this is fine for most programs, there are some that want more. Memory fails me how much a 64bit program can access, but I think its more then 16GB. If you have a program that can use it, this is wonderful. There are a few games that around 3GBs and given enough time this will change as well. 3 or 4GBs of ram isn't very much.
 
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So worth me doing, even if I can only get 4GB max? My rig should theoretically run better, or at least the apps should? My dad's on XP x64 with 2GB RAM and it's much slower than an x86 version of XP running on 1GB or even just 512! He does have a gamer's rig though, with 17" screen, NVidia GForce, top soundcard etc. I'm guessing thats where it's all going. But as for me, in yr opinion is it worth the effort upgrading to x64 Win7 so I can get the 4th GB of RAM going.... my graphics card is fairly basic (uses about 300 MB)... will I get better overall performance on some/most apps or is it just for the prestige? :pt1cable:
 
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I multitask pretty hard - Photoshop quite large images, burn DVDs a lot, download, several browser tabs open, video conversion (Nero 9 Ultra, Blaze Media Pro etc). I just don't wanna go thru the hassle of a clean install only to find that Windows is actually SLOWER overall because its x64 not x86
 
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Windows shouldn't be slower just because your using x64. There will be some differences due to drivers, but it shouldn't be much. While what you listed sounds like a lot, I have no idea how much memory each of those tasks takes. I'll also assume that you don't do all of that at the same time.
 
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Yeah I meant i often do that much at one time. My fans are going crazy. (and I'm no celebrity haha). Have 3GB RAM and Core 2 Duo... Audio/Video conversion uses a lot, so does burning dual-layer DVDs. But basically my Graphics card is not a gamers one or anything (Intel GMA X3100 using about 300MB) and have a v basic single-duplex Realtek soundcard. Ie my hardware ain't very demanding, but plenty of my software is. And I multitask hard sometimes. Verdict? (See further up for my system spec/mobo chipset etc)
cheers mate
 
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I just did the upgrade to x64 and they were right, all of a sudden all 4GB of my RAM are now operational. But it seems that even if you're running an x64 OS 2 other probs might be preventing full RAM usage. One is a graphics card thing (follow link from digitalpbk above); the other is to enable memory-mapping in your BIOS. To quote someone else:

On some systems, even when you have a dedicated video card with (it's) own onboard ram, Windows will still show a lesser amount of ram than what is actually installed. The solution, in my case, was to go into the BIOS under the "Advanced Chipset" option, and set "S/W Memory Hole Remapping" to "enabled". Once I did that and rebooted, the computer then showed the full 4gb of ram as being available, where as it previously showed 3.25 usuable. This was done without the need for a BIOS update. I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.

A last resort would be to update yr BIOS but this is dicey and generally not necessary unless all else fails. Sometimes it may actually give you LESS RAM, but BIOS updating is revertable.

Hope this is helpful :)

Also: another post further up describes a solution involving the advanced options in msconfig. Worth a try
 
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Specifically where can I go in Win 7 x64 to control RAM allocation to apps/ a particular app? You mention the /3GB switch, where is that and how can I go beyond it if necessary? Will x86 apps be able to use as much RAM as they need or just the x64 ones?
Thanks
 
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Where's the switch?? And can I assume that my x64 apps will useas much as they need?
 
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The points where you can 'read' usage data differ in how they measure and report data. Often counting cached and swapped data as 'in memory'. While this is technically accurate from a software perspective, it does not directly relate to actual usage of the physical DIMMS.

The easiest way to get an overview of what is going on is to open Resource Monitor - There is a tab for Memory usage which is pretty self explanatory:

Hardware Reserved (gray) This is physical memory that is set aside by the BIOS and other hardware drivers, and can not be used for anything else.

In Use (green) In active use by Windows, running processes, or by device drivers. This is the number that matters: If you consistently fill this green bar across the entire length of the graph, then you are trying to push your physical RAM beyond its capacity. Consider upgrades if that is the case.

Modified (orange) This represents pages of memory that can be used by other programs but would have to be written to the page file before they can be reused.

Standby (blue) This is the amount of memory that Windows 7 is using for cacheing ('Superfetch', etc). It tries very hard to keep this as full as possible. If you start a new process that needs memory, the lowest-priority pages on this list are discarded and made available to the new process. This is transparent to the user and to applications, and should not interfere at all with performance.

Free (light blue) As I pointed out above, Windows Vista and 7 try very hard to avoid leaving any memory completely free. Over time, Windows will use idle cycles to slowly fill this up with items it thinks you may use. This is at a very low priority and will not interfere with system performance.
 
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As Mike implies above - The /3gb switch applies to the operating system, and does not exist in an x64 environment because it is not necessary. It also does not alter the parameters of your installed programs. Your installed apps will use whatever their creators programmed them to use. If you insist your installed apps use more resource, then you should contact the engineers at the company who wrote the software and ask them to make the necessary changes. Should they take you up on your offer, be prepared to buy the new version once it's released.
 
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YIKES!

There is a lot of data / reading in this Thread for a novice like myself, to absorb.

I have read and reread it but I am still confused.

Will someone help me using the following Data Table for me?

It will help me decide if I will upgrade my existing System or purchase a new one.

My current System has an Intel P-4 641 installed with EM64T, without Hardware Virtualization.

I want to use a 64-Bit O/S and also use Hardware Virtualization if available.

Scenarios: One - Two - Three
Hardware: 32-Bit Processor - 32-Bit Processor with EM64T - 64-Bit Processor
Software: 32-Bit O/S - 64-Bit O/S - 64-Bit O/S
O/S Versions: XP-Pro - Vista Ultimate - Vista Ultimate
"" Vista Ultimate - Windows-7 Bus. - Windows-7 Bus.
"" Windows-7 Bus.
Memory:
Usable Limit: 3.25GBs - 3.25GBs - Lots
Installed: 4.0GBs - 4.0GBs - Probably 8.0GBs
$'s needed: $75 - $200 - $500

Assumptions: No Gaming, No Business Applications, Internet Surfing, Email, MS-Office, Picasa.
What performance will the 3 scenarios above generally provide using this scale: Good Better Best?

Best regards,

Mike Lynch

YES! The Forum edited out the blanks that separated the columns so I had to insert dashes for readability.
PLEASE give it try.

 
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Well I'm confused as to what you've already got and what you (might) want. But basically, avoid Vista like the plague, use 64-bit hardware and OS(s), and the more RAM the better. Then again if money's tight and like u say you're just web-surfing, emailing, using Office and some photos, a 32-bit OS and hardware is fine but like everyone states, you're limited to max 3.2(ish)GB RAM. But given the stuff you want to do, this should be plenty. If money's not a problem, go 64-bit. It's the future and all OSs will be soon. And XP is looking very very old now. And if you want to run it you can do that in a virtual machine like VMWare Player, fully functional, and not slow either if you've got a new powerful machine. (I run XP Pro inside Win 7 64-bit purely so I can use my old scanners). Personally I like to dual-boot between Win 7 64-bit and Mac OS X Leopard which is very fast and stable, being Unix-based (like Linux).

Good luck
 
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BTW I don't think 32-bit hardware will limit you to 3.2GB RAM as long as you've got a 64-bit OS installed, as long as you've got a motherboard chipset that will support more RAM. My VAIO Intel mobo supports up to 4GB but only 3GB were usable until I upgraded to Win 7 64-bit, now it's all being used. But there are other reasons why x64 OSs are better - security, for one. There is far less backwards compatibility so many security issues still dogging x86 OSs don't apply (which doesn't mean that oldish x86 software won't work on Win 7 - some won't, but I've found that it has an excellent (auto) compatibily-mode, far superior to Vista's actually)
 
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There's no reason to avoid Vista except that if you don't already have it and will be purchasing a new OS, you might as well buy the current OS version rather than the previous version. Windows 7 is nothing more than Vista 2.0. Slightly improved in several ways but not hugely. Its like Windows 98 vs. Windows 95, or Windows XP vs. Windows 2000. Its a minor - very minor - version upgrade. All independent reviews show practically no difference between Vista and Windows 7 in performance.
 
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I'd argue that there are more differences then that. There are some big differences between the OSes you mentioned as well. The easiest way to point out a big difference between Vista and 7 is that 7 will allow you to load two different video drivers while vista will allow just the one.

I do agree overall. Little point in upgrading to vista now. Its had its day, its done.
 
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Are you kidding??! Vista (which my Pc was shipped with and which I used for ages) was unreasonably demanding on system resources. When I switched to Win 7 (x86 to start with, now I have x64), the performance of my machine is significantly better - before I upgraded the RAM. Win 7 may be based on Vista, but I saw plenty of people quoting it as "Vista that works properly". I have friends still usig Vista that are needing 6 or 8 GB RAM just to get the performance they need to play games etc. That's outrageously demanding. I have 4GB RAM and everything purrs along great now - and I multitask hard, use many media apps/video & audio exraction/conversion/Photoshopping uncompressed images etc etc. Vista looks nice but if you want yr CPU or it's cooling fan to have a long life I would go straight to 7. Vista sucked; why else did everyone downgrade to XP Pro and then jump on Win 7 ASAP?? Like the guy above says, it's had it's day (and it was a short one)
 
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Support for heterogeneous multi-adapters is a "big" improvement, for the minute percentage of users who need it. Few would want to mix adapters from different vendors other than out of sheer necessity, not preference. e.g. you need to buy a second graphics card in a pinch and that's all you could get on such short notice. It is much more preferable to have display adapters that use the same driver, for a number of reasons.

Mixed adapters doesn't come without a price. One of the improvements in Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 and WDM architecture was to reduce memory consumption to a single video memory allocation for each top-level window and eliminate the extra system memory copy for every window that was enforced in WDDM 1.0 on Windows Vista. However, when you use heterogeneous multi-adapters in Windows 7, this improvement in memory consumption is disabled (i.e. it reverts back to the behavior of WDDM on Windows Vista). Oops.


And its really too bad that you can't provide any objective evidence to back this up. Again, multiple independent reviews have looked into this. At best, Windows 7 brings very modest improvements in "demand for system resources", including memory consumption and footprint. And whatever Windows 7 does improve insofar as system resource consumption, nobody has been able to show there is any real-world performance benefit to it. Windows Vista and 7 perform comparably in objective tests.

Vista looks nice but if you want yr CPU or it's cooling fan to have a long life I would go straight to 7. Vista sucked; why else did everyone downgrade to XP Pro and then jump on Win 7 ASAP?? Like the guy above says, it's had it's day (and it was a short one)
Click to expand...
As has been proven over and over (by informed persons), there was an anti-Vista bandwagon that for whatever reason became very enticing for people - mostly ignorant people - to jump on without much basis for their complaints. When there was a basis for their complaints, it was just as often (if not more often) because their hardware completely lacked Vista drivers, the early Vista drivers were buggy, or their Windows XP applications were buggy (or just wouldn't work) on Vista because the vendor hadn't released any patches or updates for it (e.g. trying to run an older "designed for Windows XP" application that was released in 2003 or 2004 but had long been replaced by a newer version, which the user didn't want to pay for). None of these factors can be blamed on short-comings in Windows Vista.

People are still complaining about Windows 7 on slower, lower-end computers and downgrading to Windows XP. Check the support forums at HP, Dell, Gateway, and all the other OEMs. Downgrading to XP is still happening, even though many of these downgraders are using newer hardware with substantially better performance than people were trying to run Vista on two and three years ago. Here is a great example that I recently encountered: Windows XP and HP G61-511WM

Even if Microsoft literally relaunched Windows Vista as Windows 7 without any modifications at all, you would still expect far fewer people to complain about the performance of Windows 7, the lack of drivers for their hardware, or application compatibility, because THREE FULL YEARS worth of new hardware and software launches have come and gone in the meantime.

And guess what can be found on every support forum? Yup....

"My printer/sound device/video capture/scanner/wireless adapter doesn't have drivers for Windows 7/ or the drivers for Windows 7 are buggy/ or the application is glitchy under Windows 7. Everything works perfectly on Windows Vista. Guess I'll have to go back to Windows Vista until the hardware/application developers get their drivers/applications working with Windows 7."

HAHAHAHAHA! Guess that means Windows 7 sucks and Vista is greatness?
 
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