I have Vista Ultimate 32 bit, I just added to additional sticks of RAM
making a total of 4 GB, System shows 3070 MB, any ideas or sugestions.
Thanks.
The issue is that all 32-bit versions of Windows (XP as well as
Vista), even though they have a 4GB address space, can only use
*around* 3.1GB of RAM. That's because some of that space is used by
hardware and not available to the operating system and applications.
The amount you can use varies, depending on what hardware you have
installed, but is usually around 3.1GB.
Note that it's *address space* that the hardware uses, not RAM. With
4GB of RAM, if the hardware uses .9GB of address space, then there's
3.1GB of address space left for the RAM to map to, and the remaining
..9GB has no place to go. But with 3GB of RAM, there's room in the
address space for all 3GB of RAM plus the .9GB needed for the
hardware.