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Not getting full use of my RAM ?


crp

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Installed 4G (2 sticks of DDR2) RAM.Upon bootup only 3448Meg is reported.Looking into the BIOS i found this:Processor: Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2160System Memory Total 4096 Approbiated 648 Available 3448What is the Approbiated 648? It is not the video, that is only 8M. who/what is 'stealing' 648M of RAM?searches for "System Memory Approbiated" turned up nothing

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Installed 4G (2 sticks of DDR2) RAM.Upon bootup only 3448Meg is reported.Looking into the BIOS i found this:Processor: Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2160System Memory Total 4096 Approbiated 648 Available 3448What is the Approbiated 648? It is not the video, that is only 8M. who/what is 'stealing' 648M of RAM?searches for "System Memory Approbiated" turned up nothing
Question: Do you have a 32 bit operating system or a 64 bit OS? The reason I ask is that a32 bit may not see all the ram but a 64 bit will..Just a thought.. :hysterical: jolphil
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Question: Do you have a 32 bit operating system or a 64 bit OS? The reason I ask is that a32 bit may not see all the ram but a 64 bit will..Just a thought.. :hysterical: jolphil
Hi crp, it looks like your processor is 64 bit capable so you should be able to run a 64 bit OS.If your running a 32 bit Operating System there is a physical limitation to how much ram you can use.The articles below with explain this and then some.Download and run this free program "Belarc Advisor".http://www.belarc.com/free_download.htmlIt will display info about your computer including your processor specs.See below for my system specs.th_Untitled-34.jpgYou will see that my processor is 64 bit.It is designed to run 32 bit OS's as well.I have two different 64 bit Linux Operating Systems's installed on this machine that I can boot to in a multiboot configuration.My Windows version is Win 7 Home Premium 32 bit.I have 4 GB of DDR ram installed, (2) 2 GB sticks for a total of 4 GB. I only have 3 GB of user accesible ram of the total 4.This is normal behavior when running a 32 bit Operating System. It is also the situation with my 64 bit linux operating systemseven though in theory the 64 bit operating systems should be able to allow the user to use all 4 GB.My restriction is due to my chipset not supporting all 4 GB in a 64 bit environment.Your BIOS must support 4 GB or greater ram in a 64 bit environment.Now for some reasons for this 32 bit limitation.See the MS article below.http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605And this for more info.http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.htmlThis limitation is valid for any 32 bit Operating System. It is a physical limitation.The theoritical limit for 64 bit hardware and a 64 bit operating system is enormous (several Exabytes).As the MS article explains your computer is placing some memory out of reach to support you hardware.Now for practical considerations.It may seem like you have about 3400 MB of ram available, you do have two identical 2 GB sticks (I'm assuming here)Because of that it is running in synchronous dual channel mode.This means increased speed over single channel mode or dual channel asynchronous mode.See this article about dual channel.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture
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Hello,Do you have the latest BIOS firmware installed for the computer's motherboard?Regards,Aryeh Goretsky
thanks. it is an ASUS P5GC-MX 133.just updated the BIOS from 0207 to 0413still getting the " Approbiated 648 " :(The DVMT is taking up 128M, I suppose I could look around for a video card and get back some of that RAM.Still leaves 520M 'missing'.
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searches for "System Memory Approbiated" turned up nothing
Being as approbiated is not an actual word, maybe searching for "system memory appropriated" will turn up more appropriate :thumbsup: results?You're looking in the BIOS and probably thinking, "At this point the OS doesn't matter." - which is more or less correct - but the object of the game is to successfully boot to an OS with support for all of the memory - not just take note of what the BIOS sees. And doing that will require BIOS settings and OS boot parameters that match up.

Would you please let us know exactly what OS(s) you're booting or intend to boot?HTH.Good luck.

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What is the Approbiated 648? It is not the video, that is only 8M.who/what is 'stealing' 648M of RAM?
You are using the onboard video. The 8MB is initially the shared memory. When needed, the onboard graphics adapter can use more, up to 648MB (the maximum DVMT, 'Dynamic Video Memory Technology'). To get all your RAM, use a PCI-E card. In the BIOS, set that card as the Boot Graphics Adapter. Also disable Internal Graphics Mode. That should disable DVMT.About DVMT:
The amount of video memory is dependent upon the amount of pre-allocated memory set for your system plus something called Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT). DVMT, as its name implies, dynamically allocates system memory for use as video memory to ensure the most efficient use of available resources for maximum 2D/3D graphics performance.The amount of video memory allocated depends upon the amount requested by the operating system. When the memory is no longer required, it is returned to the operating system for use by other applications or system functions. DVMT allocates memory based on system needs.
Underscoring mine.http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-010488.htm Edited by b2cm
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Being as approbiated is not an actual word, maybe searching for "system memory appropriated" will turn up more appropriate :( results?
THANKS! :-Dwonder why i didn't get one of those "did you mean ..."
You're looking in the BIOS and probably thinking, "At this point the OS doesn't matter." - which is more or less correct - but the object of the game is to successfully boot to an OS with support for all of the memory - not just take note of what the BIOS sees. And doing that will require BIOS settings and OS boot parameters that match up.Would you please let us know exactly what OS(s) you're booting or intend to boot?
64bit CentOS5.4, Linux 2.6.18-164.9.1.el5xen on x86_64.
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THANKS! :-Dwonder why i didn't get one of those "did you mean ..."64bit CentOS5.4, Linux 2.6.18-164.9.1.el5xen on x86_64.
You're welcome.Figured approbiated for a simple typo on your part - then you repeated it - and I figured, 'A Chinese engineer's mangled Ingrish?'Since you're booting to Linux (and I know next to nothing about Linux), let's leave it to the Linux guys to assist. That said, the following link may be useful - The DefinitiveBIOS Optimization Guide (Revision 10.7).Good luck.And have a happy holiday.
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crp,Please post output of this command:
crp_as_user:$ free -m

user]# free -m			 total	   used	   free	 shared	buffers	 cachedMem:		  2981		966	   2014		  0		 69		334-/+ buffers/cache:		562	   2418Swap:		 3999		  0	   3999

hmm, less than 3G?

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V.T. Eric Layton

crp,The important figure in that output is:-/+ buffers/cache: 562 2418This is showing that CentOS recognizes a total of 2980 Meg of RAM = (approx) 3 Gig. Since you have two sticks of 2 Gig DDR2, that tells me that something is up here. You knew that, though... right? ;)Please post the output of:

crp_as_user:$ cat /proc/memory (or possibly meminfo)

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In 'DVMT Mode Select', use Fixed Mode ( to allocate only 128MB).
it is already set to a Fixed 64MB.in the BIOS setup I do not see any references to memory mapping of devices or the such.situation is odd, I tested this pc to see if it could handle the 64bit CentOS5.4 and when it passed with no problems I figured it was all set. Odd that it can do 64bit but can't handle 4G of RAM.What I intend to do is to run the CentOS5.4 64bit with Xen (which is booting and doing fine) and setup a Xen 'device' to run an email server. So 2 machines on one, the primary to do DNS and maybe CUPS and the guest to do sendmail (or perhaps have the primarary do sendmail as well and the guest do scalix).If worse case the Xen won't run properly due to shortage of RAM, I'll just do the one and maybe setup the guest for small stuff (like TinyLinux or the such) to do experimenting.
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crp,The important figure in that output is:-/+ buffers/cache: 562 2418This is showing that CentOS recognizes a total of 2980 Meg of RAM = (approx) 3 Gig. Since you have two sticks of 2 Gig DDR2, that tells me that something is up here. You knew that, though... right? ;)
:rolleyes: figured something was amiss
Please post the output of:
crp_as_user:$ cat /proc/memory (or possibly meminfo)

nope and nope
[root@rh5 user]# cat /proc/memorycat: /proc/memory: No such file or directory[root@rh5 user]# meminfobash: meminfo: command not found[root@rh5 user]# locate meminfo[root@rh5 user]

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V.T. Eric Layton
crp_as_user:$ cat /proc/meminfo

Hmm... one of those should work. Using your file manager (Konqueror or whatever) navigate to /proc and see if there is anything in there referring to memory or meminfo or something like that.

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crp_as_user:$ cat /proc/meminfo

Hmm... one of those should work. Using your file manager (Konqueror or whatever) navigate to /proc and see if there is anything in there referring to memory or meminfo or something like that.

hmm, odd. or does locate data table not look at /proc ?
[root@rh5 /]# ls -l /proc/mem*-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Dec 24 15:52 /proc/meminfo[root@rh5 /]# cat /proc/mem*MemTotal:	  3052544 kBMemFree:	   2118328 kBBuffers:		 31788 kBCached:		 337588 kBSwapCached:		  0 kBActive:		 294980 kBInactive:	   285240 kBHighTotal:		   0 kBHighFree:			0 kBLowTotal:	  3052544 kBLowFree:	   2118328 kBSwapTotal:	 4095992 kBSwapFree:	  4095992 kBDirty:			  76 kBWriteback:		   0 kBAnonPages:	  210992 kBMapped:		  53108 kBSlab:			38652 kBPageTables:	  18952 kBNFS_Unstable:		0 kBBounce:			  0 kBCommitLimit:   5622264 kBCommitted_AS:   674084 kBVmallocTotal: 34359738367 kBVmallocUsed:	  5056 kBVmallocChunk: 34359732607 kB[root@rh5 /]#

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V.T. Eric Layton

CentOS is definitely only seeing 3 of your 4 Gig. Strange. :(Do you have any other op system on this computer, crp? Does it see the full 4 Gig?You might... maybe... could have a bad stick of RAM.

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CentOS is definitely only seeing 3 of your 4 Gig. Strange. :(Do you have any other op system on this computer, crp? Does it see the full 4 Gig?You might... maybe... could have a bad stick of RAM.
Does Centos have a Memtest option in its boot menu, if it does run it at next boot and see if your memory sticks are OK.If not D/L and burn to CD Memtest+ v4.00http://www.memtest.org/#downisouse either the iso .zip file or the .qz, extract the .iso and burn to CD.Boot to the CD and run the test.Using either test (centos or a CD) takes quite awhile so it is best to let it run overnight.If there are problems Memtest will report them.
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The motherboard supports only a total of 2GB (or 1 GB per socket) of DDR2 667/533 DIMMS. That's according to the motherboard's manual.If I remember correctly, 2 GB is the max supported by i945GC chipset.

Edited by b2cm
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Booted up an Ultimate CD based on XP and it reported total 3614avail 3355I then booted up into Memtest-86 v3.5. it is still running, on its screen is:moemory 3447M 3035 MB/sChipset Intel i945P/G ECC: disabledRAM 333 MHz (DDR666)

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The motherboard supports only a total of 2GB (or 1 GB per socket) of DDR2 667/533 DIMMS. That's according to the motherboard's manual.If I remember correctly, 2 GB is the max supported by i945GC chipset.
of course now I can not find the manual for the pc :rolleyes: , but I'm pretty sure it said 2G was ok.It definitely sees more than 2G and it is 64bit capable.The Memtest-86 v3.5 finished with an A-OK.going to see if I have a video card available to put in.
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I put in an eGeForce 7200 and disabled the onboard VGA. That made things worse :rolleyes: the appropiated mem went up to 1152.so went back to onboard VGA only , 1 Meg (instead of 8) and Fixed 64M.got back to 641 appropiated and

free -m 			 total	   used	   free	 shared	buffers	 cachedMem:		  2988		935	   2052		  0		 26		296-/+ buffers/cache:		612	   2375Swap:		 3999		  0	   3999[root@rh5 user]#

so the question to me now is,is this good enough or should I hunt around the office for a pc that can handle the full 4G ;) (and what is this business of a chipset/mb being 64bit capable but not 4G :huh:)

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V.T. Eric Layton

What in the world do you even need 3 Gig for? My system only has 2 Gig and I can run 200 apps on any of my Linux distros and never use more than 1 Gig of memory. Unless you plan on doing some really resource intensive processing, I wouldn't even bother with 4 Gig. Just my opinion...If that mobo, as stated above, only supports 2 Gig, it's pretty interesting that you're actually showing 3 Gig available.

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I put in an eGeForce 7200 and disabled the onboard VGA. That made things worse :bounce: the appropiated mem went up to 1152.so went back to onboard VGA only , 1 Meg (instead of 8) and Fixed 64M.got back to 641 appropiated and
free -m 			 total	   used	   free	 shared	buffers	 cachedMem:		  2988		935	   2052		  0		 26		296-/+ buffers/cache:		612	   2375Swap:		 3999		  0	   3999[root@rh5 user]#

so the question to me now is,is this good enough or should I hunt around the office for a pc that can handle the full 4G :hmm: (and what is this business of a chipset/mb being 64bit capable but not 4G :huh:)

My Acer Aspire 5672 WLMi notebook uses a chipset that was new at the time of build as was the CoreDuo processor.I bought in the early Spring right after the CoreDuo became available.It is 64 bit aware but the CoreDuo processor wasn't.In the fall of the same year the Core2Duo (merom) processor became available.I purchased a 2 GHz (T7200) and swapped out the proc after upgrading the BIOS.Acer made the processor upgrade fairly easy although it voided my warranty.Although the Core2Duo is 64 bit the chipset/BIOS doesn't support more than 4 GB of ram when used with a 64 bit OS.The chipset's sucessor (code named Santa Rosa) does.If the processor were installed on a Santa Rosa chipset then 64 bit Ubuntu would see and be able to use all 4 GB of installed ram.It likely supports more than 4 GB as well.As it is even a 64 bit OS can only see about 3 GB.It has been argued that I could have saved money by installing a 2 GB and a 1 GB stick for a total of 3 GB instead of the 3 GB the OS sees from a matched pair of 2 GB sticks.While this is true the paired ram runs in dual channel mode thereby doubling the effective throughput.An unmatched pair would run in asynchronous dual channel mode with no increase in throughput.I'm actual better off with my matched pair of ram sticks even if I can only use 3 GB of it.I'm happy with this situation and although I have 64 bit capability I chose to install and activate the 32 bit version of Win 7 Home Premiumfor simplicity's sake.I installed the 64 bit Ubuntu's in the hopes of using all the ram but my chipset limitations prevent that.Win 7 is supposed to be the last Windows version to offer 32 bit support so hopefully the hardware makers will be up to speed when Win 8 comes out in 2 years or so.Rumor has it that Win 8 will be 128 bit but that is unlikely. Edited by Frank Golden
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so the question to me now is, is this good enough or should I hunt around the office for a pc that can handle the full 4G hmm. (and what is this business of a chipset/mb being 64bit capable but not 4G huh.)
Look for a PC that does not have a VGA port on the I/O panel at the back.There are Intel 945 chipsets (like the 945G) that supports 4GB of RAM. The 945GC was designed to support only 2GB because it was for budget, entry-level motherboards.
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