Reserved memory from startup

[Mifffo]

hello just bought a new computer with a pci express card and athlon 64 and i wonder why is a part of my 1 gb ram reserved right away from startup. I have dual 512 sticks run in dual channel mode

about 256 mb of ram is reserved at all times is this something which is reserved for the pci express card? this is according to memtest 86 and from the task manager it also appears as if only 768 mb of ram is available for the rest of the system

 

[MadModMike]

2 things:

1: What kind of Motherboard
2: What kind of video card

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[Mifffo]

motherboard would be Asus A8N SLI

graphics card Asus N6800GT Extreme

 

[Mifffo]

just bumping once to see if anyone knows aabout this. and the first time i wrote it i left out some important ifo. my bad

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Goto Device Manager

View menu

Resources by connection

Expand the Memory branch out (highlight it and press *)

Maximize to fit as much information as possible.

Screenshot it, and post to your webspace, then link the image in your reply.

Given those address ranges, and CALC.EXE with hex/decimal mode, should be able to enlighten a few ppl, and maybe even fix the damn issue.


ALSO:

Run, MSCONFIG

Check BOOT.INI tab for anything like /MAXMEM=768


ALSO:

Which Operating System are you running ? (as exact as possible, screenshot a Start, Run, WINVER if you can too).



EDIT: If MemTest86 can only see 768 MB, that means you are running 2 different sized modules, or Dual Channel mode is being forced and the modules are actually very different internally / and not logically laid out the same. - You may have answered your own question in your original post. - So CLEAR CMOS, Reset BIOS defaults, and start over after double checking both your DIMMs are identical in size and logical presentation.

Maybe one of your DIMM slots is faulty, but if so Dual Channel mode shouldn't be kicking in, and no indication that it is on should be presented to the user.

 

[Mifffo]

memtest can see 1 gb of ram but it only tested 768MB becouse 256MB was reserved and i ran the memtest86 in boot up. not in windows there is a version which can start from windows i think. if it was run from windows i wouldnt be surprised if windows had reserved some for itself. greedy little bastard

and also windows task manager sees 1gb of ram but "available" and "system cache" never goes above 768MB not right after start up either

what kind of ram might also help. its a 1GB kit Kingston HyperX 400mhz (with amazingly bad timings compared to corsair). And what you tabris say about the modules not being the same. Id be surprised if kingston didnt supply matching modules when sold in kits.

Device Manager



Maxmem is at 1024mb in boot.ini


hmmm seems asif myimagespace distorted the picture by quite alot well its still good enough to read the text

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Windows is seeing, addressing and able to use all 1 GB of your memory by the looks of that.

Well, all of it excect 528 KB, which is likely a shadow of your BIOS, 100% normal. (See the total in WINVER.EXE window, it is 1,048,048 KB, only 528 KB short. So it appears it is only MemTest86 env that is affected.... which is good news for you.

Also remove /MAXMEM=1024 from boot.ini, you don't need it, and if you install more RAM and forget about it, it'll cause you problems.

MemTest86/MemTest86+ has different ways to detect / poll the system memory. You can press 'c' to configure it, and there are usually 2 or 3 ways to poll the total system memory. Normally when it screws up the total onboard video is involved, or those new video cards with nVidia TurboCache and ATI HyperMemory features.

Are you sure it is 256 MB reserved, and not just 256 KB ?

Your video card isn't the kind that takes memory is it ? (Still 256 MB in a MemTest86 environment is alot to go missing).

A GeForce 6800 series shouldn't be using system memory in a MemTest86 env, if you are using SLI and dedicating a range of memory to it (usually 256 MB) that might be way, but that 256 MB should be of unused memory address space, and not affect total memory unless you try to run 4 GB in a 32 bit OS / Win32 .... you may need to disable that in the BIOS, test the RAM, then re-enable it.... but I doubt that is actually the cause.

PS: Because I use Firefox I can zoom images if they are larger than the browser, or autofit to browser window (detail loss). MS Internet Explorer can do this aswell, but it is far more difficult to toggle image zooming in MSIE than Firefox.

 

[Mifffo]

i dont know if my video card does reserve some memory for itself, and i dont have 2 video cards

ill just have to hope that my computer can actually utilize all the 1 gb of ram. so that not 1 quarter of it is never used. considering how much ram games want. that would be a rather large preformace decrease. espessially in bf 2 which seems to require 4 gb of ram to not have to resort to the pagefile

and also what is strange is that in task manager total physical is 1024 mb but available is at 768 only goes below never above. on my former computer with 512 mb ram i could have at times 512 mb of ram available from task manager. how is it for you tabris can you have the full amount of your ram available sometimes. seen from the task manager and i mean the "available" column

i also use firefox but i dont mean the viewable size of the image but rather the picture quality. and on my computer the picture has much better quality then what it is hosted on myimagespace wheter it be full size or cramped.


well thank you for your help

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Above, when I said memory address space, I mean just that.... it should not cramp or lower the addressable memory ceiling on a PC with just 1 GB free.

For example, if I boot Windows XP Pro (Win32) with 4 GB of RAM, as I have so many devices on my PCI bus, SLI options, etc, each that use 'address space' my memory ceiling is 2.75 GB.... even though I have 4 GB installed.

Checking Task Manager now

Physical Memory:
Total: 2,882,144 KB
Available: 2,175,180 KB (Memory assigned to non paged parts of the Kernel will most likely affect this figure btw)
Cache: 2,310,676 KB (includes available, and often larger than available if reserving a minimum amount of memory as disk cache, but equally often smaller, especially if less reads have occured than you have physical memory. )

So I've got: 710,224 KB of memory that can't really be used for anything. , but there are reasons for that that make my machine very different from yours. .... Sometimes I call them 'PTE's (check Microsoft website, but getting off topic)

Commit Charge:
Total: 632,624 KB (or current)
Limit: 4,816,944 KB (Physical memory + pagefile basically)
Peak: 1,000,280 KB (Peak usage so far, this session / boot)

Note: Commit charge excludes cache usage.

So this session I've only needed about 1 GB RAM, plus decent sized cache and I wouldn't noticed any performance difference.

Screenshot your Task Manager, Performance tab after say, an hour of BF2, and then post a link here. I suspect it might explain a few things.

Notes:
SP2 handles caching a little differently from SP1 aswell.
Forcing Large System Cache on, or Disabling Paging of Execuables may also 'mess with' the stats Task Manager shows (and rightfully so).
PTE isn't going to be an issue for a Win32 system with 2 GB RAM or less - (OK, one less thing to look into).

WINVER.EXE reports the physical memory the OS has available to it (in total), and my WINVER reports 2,882,144 KB (2.75 GB) the same as Task Manager. (This is only because I am in Win32 atm, and 1280 MB of my address space is going to various things on the PCI bus. You can actually see them in the screenshot I asked you for earlier, but your logical ceiling should be nearer to 4 GB than me, assuming the board can handle 4 GB that is). In fact I would almost go so far as to say WINVER.EXE is the most overlooked Microsoft application.

Within reason, I am fairly confident your PC is working fine, as Firefox alone can burn over 128 MB (available count will drop).

Check in processes tab, view menu, select columns (I'll say tick all to save time) sort by VM size or Memory Usage, then screenshot it aswell.

According to those images, with 4 GB installed, your Windows would put the memory ceiling at either D0000000 (3.25 GB) or C0000000 (3.00 GB), which is not going to limit you if you only have 1 GB installed.

It also appears you are running 2 x GeForce 6800 in SLI, as there are 2 x 256 MB (not memory per say) addressable memory ranges being used to communicate to video cards..... normally there is only one.

If I therefore conclude you are running SLI, am I correct ? (and you also have the right BIOS options set for maximum SLI performance by the looks of it, but I can't say if the cards are 'physically' bridged per say without looking at the PC).

 

[Mifffo]

and well iw played bf 2 now and taken some screens and yes on one of the task managers there is actually 820 mb available of ram so it would seem asif i can use all 1 gb

i do know what i put into my computer when i built it and that was only 1 geforce 6800, i couldnt have by a misstake managed to put 2 in there without noticing it id think

Task Manager

Processes

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Notice how small the cache shrinks (hurts performance in game) and how commit charge peak (the highest it has got that session) shots up when BF2 is loaded.

People don't joke when they say that game needs 2 GB to perform.

But yeah, everything looks in order. Although I didn't examine the process list one by one, just total memory count, etc.