Windows Vista 32 Bit only shows 3GB of 4GB of ram in the system

My bios shows all 4 gigs of the ram but for some reason my windows only
detects 3 gigs.

Does anyone know how to correct this? My motherboard is a Gigabyte
GA-59SLI-G5 so i know that isnt the issue. Is it just a flat out bug in
Vista because it should read all 4GB of ram. Also, Im running 2 Nvidia
GeForce 7950 GT Superclocked graphic cards with 512 MB of ram each so its not
stealing ram for resources. The Ram is 4 1G Crossair PC gaming sticks.

When I first installed the ram and then installed vista it only showed up
with 1 GB of ram. I then removed one stick of ram and rebooted it. It then
showed up with 3 GB of ram. I then installed the 4 stick back in and
restarted and it still only shows 3 GB of ram.

 

I assume you're running the 32bit version of Vista. This is normal. The
system will use all RAM up to 4GB, but some is used by the hardware, and
thus not seen in Vista. The exact amount that's not available to the OS
depends on the specific hardware. Normally Vista (or XP) will see between
2.7GB and 3.5GB.

Search the newsgroup posts for this issue or do a Google search. It's been
discussed many times.

 

32-bit XP can use up to 4GB. However the 4GB address space has to be
shared with memory used for other devices. So Windows (not just XP but
all 32-bit versions, including 32-bit Vista) can't use that entire 4GB
for itself.

How much it can use is around 3GB, but depends on what devices are
installed. It's normally a little more than 3GB. So installing more
than about 3GB of RAM is usually a waste of money.

 

Install Vista x64.

Vista x86 can only address 4GB RAM. Each hardware device has its own
memory address range it uses. This is subtracted from the 4GB RAM so
that it can still be addressed. What you're left with is 4GB - Memory
devices use.

 

You are running the 32 bit version of Vista. In order to natively access
greater than 3GB, you have to run the 64 bit version of Vista.

Honu

 

John

Here is an article that details why you are seeing less RAM than you expect.

Windows Vista reports less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605