# 8gb shows as 6, 3.5 usable. 64bitOS wtf??



## Cruise51 (Oct 3, 2012)

I'm having a problem with 8gigs of ram only showing as 6gigs and only 3.5gigs are being used by windows. I'm not sure how to fix the problem. I took a *screen shot below*.

The system has these specs:

Win 7 Ultimate *64bit*
A8-3870 apu
Gigabyte *a75n-usb3* motherboard
*8gb*(2x4gb) Patriot ddr3-1600 mem
Samsung 1tb drive
Silverstone 450w PSU

Any ideas how to fix this?


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## Pehla (Oct 6, 2012)

i gues ur igpu use some of that memory!! but why on cpu-z it show 8gb and on windows 6gb..., i wana know why is that too!!


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 6, 2012)

because widows can only utilize 6gb cuz motherboard has set asside  ram for graphics of the apu


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## Hood (Oct 7, 2012)

Because it's AMD.  Intel systems let you designate RAM for iGPU but it's still available to the CPU as well.  AMD, not so much.  That's why Intel parts cost more and perform better, their architecture is much more efficient and evolved.  AMD is all about the graphics, and if all you do is play games, that's fine.  But if you want fast number crunching, Intel is far and away the better choice.  If AMD doesn't get busy, the gap will widen after Haswell debuts next year.  I like the new A10-5800K, it's a step in the right direction, but still falls way short on the computing side.


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## agent00skid (Oct 7, 2012)

The iGPU is probably reserving 0,5 GB of memory, as I think that's the default for them. On my Gigabyte board, 1 GB is the maximum that can be reserved for iGPU.

Check bios to see what it shows.
Reseat memory. Check each stick. Reseat APU.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 7, 2012)

You have any proof of that
Fyi AMD is working on Steam Roller n putting more focus on it.




Hood said:


> Because it's AMD.  Intel systems let you designate RAM for iGPU but it's still available to the CPU as well.  AMD, not so much.  That's why Intel parts cost more and perform better, their architecture is much more efficient and evolved.  AMD is all about the graphics, and if all you do is play games, that's fine.  But if you want fast number crunching, Intel is far and away the better choice.  If AMD doesn't get busy, the gap will widen after Haswell debuts next year.  I like the new A10-5800K, it's a step in the right direction, but still falls way short on the computing side.



youre an idiot, this issue happens to intel users too so get bent and piss off punk!

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=173440


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## TRWOV (Oct 7, 2012)

windows key + r, then type "perfmon.exe /res" (without quotes) and go to the memory tab. Tell us what's there.


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## qubit (Oct 7, 2012)

I can't believe that AMD would force the OS to reserve 2.5GB for the IGP. There's something else going on here. Perhaps a duff bios setting somewhere?

Try running msconfig and check if the memory has been limited there. You could give Windows just 512MB to play with if you wanted to there.


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## Solaris17 (Oct 7, 2012)

Hood said:


> Because it's AMD.  Intel systems let you designate RAM for iGPU but it's still available to the CPU as well.  AMD, not so much.  That's why Intel parts cost more and perform better, their architecture is much more efficient and evolved.  AMD is all about the graphics, and if all you do is play games, that's fine.  But if you want fast number crunching, Intel is far and away the better choice.  If AMD doesn't get busy, the gap will widen after Haswell debuts next year.  I like the new A10-5800K, it's a step in the right direction, but still falls way short on the computing side.



ill assume you got that info from a bad pdf translation or something.

anyway go into your bios look for a setting called memory gap, memory hole etc then make sure IGP is disabled and that pcix or pciE is set to the default video device at boot.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 7, 2012)

Nah ill be direct he is being fanboyistic.



Solaris17 said:


> ill assume you got that info from a bad pdf translation or something.
> 
> anyway go into your bios look for a setting called memory gap, memory hole etc then make sure IGP is disabled and that pcix or pciE is set to the default video device at boot.


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## Derek12 (Oct 7, 2012)

I fixed similar issues reseating RAM or cleaning RAM or slot contacts. Also clear CMOS might help. also try each stick individually & see if 4 GB for each are detected.


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## stinger608 (Oct 7, 2012)

Derek12 said:


> I fixed similar issues reseating RAM or cleaning RAM or slot contacts. Also clear CMOS might help. also try each stick individually & see if 4 GB for each are detected.



that is what I was thinking as well. Might also want to run Memtest as well. Sounds like a problem with the memory set to me. 
Of course just my two cents worth.


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## cdawall (Oct 7, 2012)

Nah man probably just cause AMD sucks and Intel is better. I bet that's got a lot to do with ram.

If the board has 4 dimm slots try another pci of slots on the ram.


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## Solaris17 (Oct 7, 2012)

cdawall said:


> Nah man probably just cause AMD sucks and Intel is better. I bet that's got a lot to do with ram.
> 
> If the board has 4 dimm slots try another pci of slots on the ram.



i switched to SPARC processors because all 5 of my gtx680s were bottle necked by this board






also my fav board.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 7, 2012)

solaris17 said:


> i switched to sparc processors because all 5 of my gtx680s were bottle necked by this board
> 
> http://www.ixbt.com/mainboard/images/sis748/kx18d-pro2-board.jpg
> 
> also my fav board.



nfII, man it bites they died same with SOYO


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## Widjaja (Oct 8, 2012)

I'm at the stage where seeing 5 PCI slots on a motherboard looks strange.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 8, 2012)

Widjaja said:


> I'm at the stage where seeing 5 PCI slots on a motherboard looks strange.



its cuz PE replaced them, its the same architecture, just higher Bandwidth, AGP was totally diff though


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## IamEzio (Oct 8, 2012)

Widjaja said:


> I'm at the stage where seeing 5 PCI slots on a motherboard looks strange.



I have two of them on my H77-D3H and i think they look strange...


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## Cruise51 (Oct 9, 2012)

Well... I tried looking through the bios for the memory thingy but couldn't see anything like it. Eventually I tried the following:

Removed 1 4gb Patriot stick and replaced with a mushkin 2gb stick.
Windows saw 4gb and used 1.5gb.

Then I removed the second Patriot 4gb stick.
Windows saw 2gb and used 1.5gb.

Then I swapped out all ram for a 2x4gb mushkin kit.
Windows saw 8gb (yay!) and used 7.5gb.

So I'm guessing this means one of the Patriot sticks is bad??? Should I test them in another system or just throw em in the trash?


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## qubit (Oct 9, 2012)

Cruise51 said:


> Well... I tried looking through the bios for the memory thingy but couldn't see anything like it. Eventually I tried the following:
> 
> Removed 1 4gb Patriot stick and replaced with a mushkin 2gb stick.
> Windows saw 4gb and used 1.5gb.
> ...



That's a weird result. Try those Patriot sticks in another PC and see if the readings look right? One of them might indeed just be faulty. However, you'd expect the PC to crash or just not boot in most cases, wouldn't you?

I know that mobo manufacturers publish a QVL, but still all memory is made to an industry standard, so should work whether on that list or not.

When you run msconfig, does it show Windows as using only part of the installed memory?


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## Lionheart (Oct 9, 2012)

This has happened to me before but my problem was related to the RAM's voltage settings, when I'm messing around with the settings I forget to set my RAM voltage to 1.5v when the bios defaults it to 1.65v and when I boot up in windows it doesn't show all my RAM, so I restart, change the voltage settings, boot up and it's back to normal  Not sure if this will help your issue but its worth a shot


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 9, 2012)

Lionheart said:


> This has happened to me before but my problem was related to the RAM's voltage settings, when I'm messing around with the settings I forget to set my RAM voltage to 1.5v when the bios defaults it to 1.65v and when I boot up in windows it doesn't show all my RAM, so I restart, change the voltage settings, boot up and it's back to normal  Not sure if this will help your issue but its worth a shot



plausible answer, memory can be finniky at times


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## Aquinus (Oct 10, 2012)

Cruise51 said:


> Well... I tried looking through the bios for the memory thingy but couldn't see anything like it. Eventually I tried the following:
> 
> Removed 1 4gb Patriot stick and replaced with a mushkin 2gb stick.
> Windows saw 4gb and used 1.5gb.
> ...



That's really strange. It almost sounds like it is having trouble addressing anything over 2Gb per DIMM. Is the BIOS up to date?

If you're on F1, there are two BIOS updates ahead of you. One helps DDR compatibility and both have CPU code updates which could impact the IMC and memory.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 10, 2012)

Your board Model

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4030#ov


Use this as a base ref of memory modules tested with this board

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4030#memory support list

Personally I feel what needs to happen first is to see if the motherboard is actually detecting all of the ram or if Windows is screwing up

On Page 37 of the Motherboard manual there is a Bios Screen Called Standard CMOS Features

In the BIos of the system on the Main Screen go to Standard CMOS Features and Look at Base Memory and Extended Memory- Report both of those values to us here

Ya Anything relating to Memory Hole or Video Bios Shadowing or Memory Shadowing doesnt exist in the BIOS atleast reading the manual online.

there is no:

 PCI VGA Palette Snooping or VGA Palette Snoop: This option allows the compliance of older higher resolution video cards to the VGA standard. As presently all video boards are compliant to this standard, this option must stay disabled

Hard Disk Type 47 RAM Area or Extended ROM RAM Area or Extended BIOS RAM Area or Scratch RAM Option: This option configures how BIOS scratch area in RAM is accessed. There are two options: "DOS 1 KB" that reduces the 640 KB conventional memory to 639 KB and that uses this 1 KB area to access scratch area; or "0:300" that uses address 300h to access this scratch area. The first option is preferable once second option can frequently cause a conflict with the network board, as network boards often use address 300h to communicate with the processor. Presently this 1 KB memory loss is negligible.

System BIOS Cacheable or System ROM Cacheable or System BIOS Cacheable: This option allows access to BIOS using memory cache speeding up the computer. We suggest you leave it enabled.
Video BIOS Cacheable or Video Cacheable Option or Video ROM Cache: Same for Video board ROM memory. Enable this option.

System ROM Shadow or Main BIOS Shadow or Adaptor ROM Shadow F000, 64K or F Segment Shadow: Shadow is a technique whereas ROM contents are copied into RAM which is then accessed in lieu of the ROM. This is done in order to improve computer performance, as ROM access time is longer than RAM. This option enables BIOS shadow, causing BIOS contents to be copied into RAM when the processor will then access BIOS copy stored in RAM and no more ROM memory Naturally we suggest this option stays enabled.

Video ROM Shadow or Adaptor ROM Shadow C000, 32K or Adaptor ROM Shadow C400, 16K: Same for Video board ROM memory. We suggest this option stays enabled.

Other Shadow options: The remaining shadow options should remain disabled, as there usually no further ROM memories in the computer, therefore there is no need to enable shadowing of other memory areas.

Assign IRQ for VGA: This option forces the utilization of an interruption request line by the video board. If this option is disabled, video board will not use an IRQ, freeing the space to be used by another peripheral device, which may be convenient in some cases, as is the case of computers plenty of peripheral devices creating interrupt request conflicts with the video board. Though this may seems interesting, DOS programs and particularly games will not be able to access video with more than 256 colors if this option is disabled. Therefore, we suggest you leave this option enabled. Furthermore this is the solution of the classic case you're not succeeding in setting up more than 256 colors in your favorite game.

Graphics Aperture Size: AGP video boards can use RAM memory to store z-buffering and texture data. This option defines how much RAM these video boards can use for themselves. Generally you may leave this option setup with its default, but you may try to change this value in case you're getting errors in 3D games. 

System BIOS Cacheable or System ROM Cacheable or System BIOS Shadow Cacheable: This option enables the utilization of memory cache when access BIOS. As BIOS is accessed all times and as the memory cache increases computer performance, this option will also increase computer performance. Therefore we suggest this option stays enabled.

Video BIOS Cacheable or Video Cacheable Option or Video ROM Cache: This option is equivalent to previous option except for the video board ROM memory. We suggest this option stays enabled improving video performance.

Run OS/2>= 64 MB or OS Select for DRAM> 64 MB: If you use OS/2 operating system, you must enable this option to access more than 64 MB RAM memory. As most users use Windows 0x, disable this function, or set it as "Non-OS/2").

Memory Hole or Memory Hole At 15 MB Add: Creates a memory hole between 15M and 16M in order to have the PC compatible with some old ISA video boards using this memory area. As this options results in a loss of 1 MB of memory, we suggest you keep it disabled.


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## Aquinus (Oct 10, 2012)

Widjaja said:


> I'm at the stage where seeing 5 PCI slots on a motherboard looks strange.



Solaris' fav has 6 so it must be extra strange.


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## Peter1986C (Oct 10, 2012)

Hood said:


> Because it's AMD.  Intel systems let you designate RAM for iGPU but it's still available to the CPU as well.  AMD, not so much.  That's why Intel parts cost more and perform better, their architecture is much more efficient and evolved.  AMD is all about the graphics, and if all you do is play games, that's fine.  But if you want fast number crunching, Intel is far and away the better choice.  If AMD doesn't get busy, the gap will widen after Haswell debuts next year.  I like the new A10-5800K, it's a step in the right direction, but still falls way short on the computing side.



Lolwhat? Someone's RAM is not properly detected and adressed by the person's mobo/OS and you spit out this? Try to help or STFU & GTFO.



Lionheart said:


> This has happened to me before but my problem was related to the RAM's voltage settings, when I'm messing around with the settings I forget to set my RAM voltage to 1.5v when the bios defaults it to 1.65v and when I boot up in windows it doesn't show all my RAM, so I restart, change the voltage settings, boot up and it's back to normal  Not sure if this will help your issue but its worth a shot



Indeed, best check the voltage settings and if "memory remapping" is available in the BIOS. Also, _never_ put anything that is RAM related on "auto" but manually enter the settings (or at least those things listed in the specs like voltage, clock freq. and the first 4 latency values).


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## qubit (Oct 10, 2012)

Chevalr1c said:


> Indeed, best check the voltage settings and if "memory remapping" is available in the BIOS. *Also, never put anything that is RAM related on "auto" but manually enter the settings* (or at least those things listed in the specs like voltage, clock freq. and the first 4 latency values).



Indeed. I do normally leave it on auto, but I discovered to my cost what happens if you do, with an old Abit AN8 Ultra mobo when I tried upgrading the 2GB RAM in it to 4GB a while back. It just never ran completely stable until I set the RAM settings to manual and even then it was debatable, lol. Proper hair puller this one.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 10, 2012)

qubit said:


> Indeed. I do normally leave it on auto, but I discovered to my cost what happens if you do, with an old Abit AN8 Ultra mobo when I tried upgrading the 2GB RAM in it to 4GB. It just never ran completely stable until I set the RAM settings to manual and even then it was debatable, lol. Proper hair puller this one.



ever since Intel came out with XMP things have been like throwing a wrench in the gears. SPD was enough.

But Ya ever since I learned about overclocking ive set my stuff to manual, even my brothers machine


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## Peter1986C (Oct 10, 2012)

Some modules do not have a decent SPD (e.g. DDR2 Crucial Ballistix).


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## OneMoar (Oct 10, 2012)

noobs again.......
check  the vram size in the bios


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 10, 2012)

Chevalr1c said:


> Some modules do not have a decent SPD (e.g. DDR2 Crucial Ballistix).



wouldnt most DDR 2 modules drop to 667/800 with SPD where as DDR 3 would drop to 1333? Aka JEDEC?


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## OneMoar (Oct 10, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> wouldnt most DDR 2 modules drop to 667/800 with SPD where as DDR 3 would drop to 1333? Aka JEDEC?



most boards will kick ddr2 all the way down to 533 if it detects something is wrong
and by wrong I mean with some board/dimm combos the spd can get misread


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 10, 2012)

Ya SPD was to simplufy configuration just like IRQs in windows since 98SE. XMP too. I say automatic works about 95% of time...



OneMoar said:


> most boards will kick ddr2 all the way down to 533 if it detects something is wrong
> and by wrong I mean with some board/dimm combos the spd can get misread


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## Derek12 (Oct 12, 2012)

Cruise51 said:


> Well... I tried looking through the bios for the memory thingy but couldn't see anything like it. Eventually I tried the following:
> 
> Removed 1 4gb Patriot stick and replaced with a mushkin 2gb stick.
> Windows saw 4gb and used 1.5gb.
> ...


Yes the second one is bad (or dirty, even new, did you clean the contacts?)  do you use a onboard video card? if so configure RAM assignment to GPU in BIOS to a lower value (I think you have now 512 MB) if the -512MB bother you.


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## cdawall (Oct 12, 2012)

It honestly sounds like windows is kicking memory to the GPU I am pretty sure my mother-in-laws AMD kicks out the same thing in windows with the iGPU and ram...

Normal non-iGPU AMD rigs do not kick that out...


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## Derek12 (Oct 12, 2012)

cdawall said:


> It honestly sounds like windows is kicking memory to the GPU I am pretty sure my mother-in-laws AMD kicks out the same thing in windows with the iGPU and ram...
> 
> Normal non-iGPU AMD rigs do not kick that out...
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/121012/Capture018.jpg



Yeah here you will know


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## Peter1986C (Oct 12, 2012)

If it is IGP related than the BIOS should have a way to set the amount of VRAM lower.


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## cdawall (Oct 12, 2012)

Derek12 said:


> Yeah here you will know



Yup that is one of them fancy memory sharing cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCache


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