Question PC has 4GB of RAM installed, but Vista only shows 3.5GB

[MajorPager]

I recently installed 4GB of RAM on my Dell Inspiron 530 and BIOS says it's 4GB, but when I boot to Vista it states that I have 3.5GB of RAM. I just want to confirm if this is the doing of Vista, since I have the 32-bit version which only supported up to 4GB. Is it just defaulting down to around 3.5GB since you can't technically use every bit of RAM?

 

[Lutfij]

It's due to the OS being 32bit, if you went 64bit, you'll see 4GB's of ram at your disposal once you go into the OS.

 

[kerberos_20]

but going 64bit with just 4GB will be counterproductive as 64bit eats way more ram than 32bit
btw you can map that 0.5GB as ramdrive, then create swap file on it

 

[MajorPager]

It's due to the OS being 32bit, if you went 64bit, you'll see 4GB's of ram at your disposal once you go into the OS.

Thank you, I just wanted to be sure.