Motherboard Selection Help!

[Guest]

Please provide any advice you have. I currently have an Asus P5AD2-E Premium
motherboard with Pentium 4 670 processor and 64-bit Windows Vista. When I
upgraded my memory to 4GB (motherboard max) it only shows 3.2GB due to memory
mapping. I've tried everything to get it to show the full 4096 MB but no
luck, even with 64-bit Windows. Therefore, I want to get a new, relatively
inexpensive mother board (8GB max) that will show all 4 GB with 4 x 1GB DDR2
533MHz DIMMS installed (non-ECC). I was looking at the Asus P5B and the
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3. I can't get a hold of Asus, and Gigabyte told me that
the motherboard still won't show all 4 GB but will use it when needed (that
didn't make since). If my mother board won't show all 4GB, then Windows
never will. I want all 4 to show in both the BIOS and Windows. Currently,
neither will. Please advise on motherboards you know will work. If
necessary I could upgrade to a Pentium D or an entry Core 2 Duo, but I'm
trying to wait a year before upgrading my entire system.

 

[Guest]

I'm not running XP. I'm running Windows Vista 64-bit. Windows XP x64 and
Windows Vista x64 will both enable use of over 3GB....a lot more.

 

[Guest]

Xp only allows 4GB of memory,even though youre close (4.96GB),youre over
the limit,xp then reads only allowable memory which it will not read some due
to being over the limit....So if you purchase a board with 8GB
limitation,even one
with 16GB (if one existed),xp would still only show 3.2GB....

 

[Peter Foldes]

Andrew

4096 MB is 4 G not 4.96

 

[Bob I]

Jeepers Andrew E. can't you be more wrong? Please at least do a simple
Google search before you post more incorrect information. Nothing you
posted in this message is correct. XP has nothing to do with allowing
anything, it can only address 4GB, it has nothing to do with what's
installed, so the 4GB claim is wrong and XP will display all the memory
that is not assigned to hardware addressing so each hardware
configuration will be different so the 3.2 GB claim is wrong. And please
see the link for motherboard as to your 16 GB claim being wrong.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=motherboard+16+GB+ram

 

[Guest]

Noone has any suggestions for motherboard? I think I'm going to take a
gamble and try the Asus P5B...I looked and at least its BIOS shows a memory
remap feature that can be enabled.

 

[Bob I]

What remapping are you going to try to do and for what purpose? XP works
with 4 GB address space, period. The addresses occupied by the hardware
for XP to communicate reside in that 4GB space, and thus can't be used
for RAM usage. If you want to address more physical memory, move to
64bit XP or Windows 2003

 

[Guest]

Haha...Is noone reading my initial question? I'm not running XP. I'm
running 64-bit Vista...and just like what was said it is supposed to address
more memory. Unfortunately, my MOTHERBOARD will not show more than 3200,
therefore Windows can't access any more than that. If you get a newer
motherboard that supports over 4GB of memory (8GB or 16GB) some have a remap
feature that will allow you to have your memory mapped in the area above 4GB
so it doesn't interfere with the stuff your PCI and PCIexpress devices are
running on.

 

[Dave]

Maybe because you posted in a windowsxp newsgroup?

 

[Guest]

Crap...not sure what happened. I just noticed right now...so I apologize. I
posted this in the Vista one, so I'm not sure what happened. Even so, I'd
take any advice on motherboards that would show all 4 GB under Windows XP
x64. It appears to be a BIOS issue and not an OS issue at this point though.