Dell 8400 windows XP sp 2 (Ram)

[SomorPlz]

I upgraded my total ram to 4 gigs, but system propertys say I have 2.5,
whats wrong

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I upgraded my total ram to 4 gigs, but system propertys say I have 2.5,
whats wrong

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB
address space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can
not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB, but with your particular hardware, you are closer to the bottom
amount than to the average.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.

 

[SomorPlz]

I bought the ram for a game I play, did I waste my money? Can I increase the
amount my coputer shows by defraging hard drive?

 

[Daave]

I bought the ram for a game I play, did I waste my money? Can I
increase the
amount my coputer shows by defraging hard drive?

One way to determine if you have enough RAM is to do the following:

Access Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del. Then, click the
Performance tab. Note the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the
lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise you are relying way too much on your pagefile, which will
always slow down a PC.

Another way to determine this is to use the following utility:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Defragging a hard drive should help your performance if it is
significantly fragmented, but RAM doesn't enter the equation at all.

Out of curiousity, how much RAM did you initially have?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I bought the ram for a game I play, did I waste my money?

Probably.


Can I increase the
amount my coputer shows by defraging hard drive?

No. Defragging has nothing to do with the amount Windows can see.

 

[SomorPlz]

Been slowly adding ram, think the computer came with one gig, not sure

 

[Xandros]

The only way to increase the amount of memory your computer "shows" is to
install a 64-bit operating system. However your hardware would have to
support 64-bit and your game might not play on a 64-bit system. So don't
worry about it if the RAM was cheap.