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Solve : 6 gb of Ram Installed but Windows 7 x 64 says only 3.25 are usable????

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Hello and I hope I am asking in the right place!!

I built my PC several years back. It has an Intel D945PSN board with an Intel Pentium D processor. The board supports up to 4 gigs memory in a 32 bit system and supposedly more with a 64 bit. I recently upgraded my hard drive to a 500 GB sata drive and added a sparkle hd video card with 1 GB memory on it. I was running 2 gigs of ram when I was running XP pro. I purchased and installed Windows 7 pro and decided to upgrade my memory. I had 2 one GB sticks installed one in each dimm in the same channel. I added two 2 GB sticks, one in each of the dimms in the second channel. When I go to system info it says that there are 6 GB of memory but only 3.25 usable. My bios is also picking up the full 6 GB.

Does anyone know why this is or what I can do to fix it?? THANKS in advance for any help!! Quote from: turinj5677 on March 12, 2011, 10:26:26 AM

Does anyone know why this is or what I can do to fix it?

According to Intel, the maximum amount of RAM supported by the Intel D945PSN motherboard is 4 GB whatever OS you install. Both Intel and all the 3rd party memory upgrade suppliers I went to agree on this. I don't know where you got the idea that this could be changed by using a 64 bit OS. Even if the 6 GB is "seen" it seems you can only use 4 GB of it. You can't do anything to fix it.

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d945psn/sb/CS-026977.htm

Quote
Intel® Desktop Board D945PSN

System memory

* System Memory Features
* Supported DIMM Configurations
* Tested Memory


Updated: December 31, 2007


System Memory Features
The board has four DIMM sockets and support the following memory features:

* 1.8 V (only) DDR2 SDRAM DIMMs with gold-plated contacts
* Unbuffered, single-sided or double-sided DIMMs with the following restriction: Double-sided DIMMs with x16 organization are not supported.
* 4 GB maximum total system memory




Either check that you definitely have 64-bit windows 7 installed or check your manufacturer motherboard. Also check for up to date bios updates on your manufacturer website as these can increase your ram usages. alternatively if you cant upgrade, you can use the full 4gb ram no matter whether 32 or 64bit by following these instructions: http://www.pallab.net/2009/12/30/enable-more-than-4gb-memory-in-windows-vista-7/Yeah because kernel patching is always a good idea.

Don't people realize that the 32-bit limit in windows is artificial? It's there for a reason, too- 32-bit drivers often aren't written in a manner that allows them to access addresses outside of 4GB; that is, while the 32-bit architecture does allow for the use of memory above 4GB, if you're drivers are going to be BLUE SCREENING it's not EXACTLY that good an advantage.

I still love it though- Hey, I'm using a 32-bit OS, I have 4GB or more of memory, INSTEAD of doing the sane thing and using a 64-bit version of windows to run on my obviously 64-bit computer, I'll hack around with kernel mode drivers using hex patches, it's so fail-proof! Nothing can go wrong!

None of that of course matters because

A:) they have a 64-bit OS
B:) the limitation is the Motherboard



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