Usable Memory

[munruss]

Hello. I am runnung an Acer Aspire 5730Z laptop. According to Acer, the laptop is Windows 7 compatible. However, there are no Windows 7 drivers available.

My laptop came equipped with 4GB of memory and Vista Home. I installed 64-bit Windows 7 Pro and used some of the Vista 64-bit drivers and whatever MS had. All seems to be ok, however, Windows only see 2.93 GB of memory.

If I go to the properties of my computer, the O/S shows that I have 4GB of memory installed, but 2.93GB is usuable.

Would this happen due to a driver conflict?

 

[Chiefcrowe]

One possibility is the video card is reserving some of the system memory so that's why it's showing less free ram.

 

[munruss]

One possibility is the video card is reserving some of the system memory so that's why it's showing less free ram.

True, I was thinking that the video could be involved.

 

[Gamingphreek]

One possibility is the video card is reserving some of the system memory so that's why it's showing less free ram.

Well the video card won't be "using" that much per se. There IS probably shared VRAM, but likely <256MB on a laptop.

The part that it, as well as other hardware components are also using is called MMIO. There is a set amount of RAM that is placed aside for MMIO (Memory Mapped Input Output). The video card uses part of the MMIO along with other hardware components.

Additionally, where are you seeing the amount of usable RAM in your system? System Properties? Process Explorer?

-Kevin

 

[munruss]

Task Manager shows a total of 3 and in the system properties, it says 4GB installed, 2.93 usable.

I just installed the latest chip set drivers from Intel, so my video is correct as well as the mobo components.

 

[MrChad]

Is there a memory remapping feature in your BIOS?

 

[Rifter]

check the bios and see how much is allocated to video.

 

[NoQuarter]

Memory remapping/MMIO shouldn't be the issue with a 64bit OS though. When the BIOS maps IO to sub-4GB address space it still maps the rest of the ram to beyond the 4GB address space. It just takes a 64 bit OS to be able to use these addresses.

It is almost definitely shared system memory reserved for video:

"Mobile Intel&#174; GL40 Express Chipset with integrated 3D graphics, featuring Intel&#174; Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M (Intel&#174; GMA 4500M) with up to 1759 MB of Intel&#174; Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0 (64 MB of dedicated video memory, up to 1695 MB of shared system memory*), supporting Microsoft&#174; DirectX&#174; 10
(* depending on size of system memory)"


If you go into the bios you can probably reduce the possible amount of system RAM allocated to the video ram but the technology is suppose to automatically the max possible (1695MB) then free it up as the OS needs it. I'd still throw an upper limit on it though.. don't need more than 256MB with such a poor GPU anyway.

 

[munruss]

I checked the Resource Monitor and yes, 1096MB is allocated to the BIOS and onboard drivers. I checked out my BIOS and there are no settings in their that relate to onboard video. I really can't do much in there.