4 Gig RAM in Windows XP Pro

[Guest]

Morning people,

I’ve just built me a new system that consists of the following…

AMD® ATHLON® 64BIT 3700 (San Diego) 1MB L2 Cache (939 pin)

4096 MB DDR400 PC3200

ASUS® A8N-SLI SE: DUAL DDR, S-ATA, 2 x x16 VGA, 3 PCI

2 x SATA II 80 GB HARD DISK @ 7200rpm 8mb cache on Raid 0

After a clean install of windows XP pro only 3.25 Gig of RAM is recognised
by the OS despite all being counted by the BIOS.

Does anyone know what the score is with XP and Memory i.e. how much can It
have and if there is there some sort of performance switch to tell the OS
that it can run flat out.

Cheers

 

[James Long]

Nice system - however, so far as I'm aware the 32-bit version of Windows XP
is unable to address more than 3GB of physical RAM. The only real
alternative for a desktop system is to upgrade to the 64-bit version (which
supports up to 12GB I believe).

Regards,

Jim

 

[Micky]

Nice system - however, so far as I'm aware the 32-bit version of Windows XP is unable to
address more than 3GB of physical RAM. The only real alternative for a desktop system is to
upgrade to the 64-bit version (which supports up to 12GB I believe).

32-bit supports a maximum of 4GB, not 3GB.

Perhaps one of the RAM modules is faulty? The BIOS check is
only a rudimentary check. Try each module on its own.

 

[Tim Slattery]

4096 MB DDR400 PC3200

After a clean install of windows XP pro only 3.25 Gig of RAM is recognised
by the OS despite all being counted by the BIOS.

I know it does this sometimes. Here's a KB article that discusses it:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888137/en-us

 

[Glen]

I think there is an issue with some motherboards not recognising the whole 4
GB. Have a look in the mobo manual (download it if needed) and read it. I am
sure I've seen it discussed in other Asus manuals.

 

[Guest]

It can’t be the motherboard cos it is all counted in the POST.

I have been installing other applications etc and the system seems to run
quick and stable. I had a look at using 64 Bit Ed but was put off by a lack
of driver support for almost everything and it kept freezing during
installation anyway.

I think I will see how it goes from here.

I think there is an issue with some motherboards not recognising the whole 4
GB. Have a look in the mobo manual (download it if needed) and read it. I am
sure I've seen it discussed in other Asus manuals.

 

[Uncle John]

Windows XP always reports 4 GB Ram as 3583 MB because it takes into account
the Ram it has used for internal tasks. So if this was your system reports
you have got 4 MB correctly installed.

--
Uncle John

It can't be the motherboard cos it is all counted in the POST.

I have been installing other applications etc and the system seems to run
quick and stable. I had a look at using 64 Bit Ed but was put off by a
lack
of driver support for almost everything and it kept freezing during
installation anyway.

I think I will see how it goes from here.

 

[Plato]

It can’t be the motherboard cos it is all counted in the POST.

As an aside. POST can count ram, but POST does NOT test ram to see if
its actually usable.

 

[Guest]

With respect, how can I know for sure that this is true? Do you have a
source?

Thanks!