# XP 32bit only shows 3GB with 4GB installed



## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

I'll start by saying I know I won't get 4GB, but reading numerous other thread about this here and else were I though I'd get somewhere near 3.2-3.5GB.





So Finding 2GB A-Data mems so cheap just had to try it out for my self. Bios shows 3008MB and Windows 2,93GB as you can see. Turning on /PAE switch didn't help to get any more.

Now things get interesting when I turned on memory remap in bios. I get full 4096MB there, but then Windows only finds 2.00GB!  CPU-Z, PC-Wizard, EVEREST and others so the full 4096MB installed all the time, but doesn't really help. 1GB ramdrive takes the memory off the amount Windows shows and not the 3-4GB range that is physicly available.

So have you gurus any other suggestions besides 64bit Windows? I'm getting a 8800GT in few weeks (hopefully) and installing that would mean 256MB (or something) less memory and I'd be under 3GB and that isn't really an improvement over the faster 2GB kit I have in specs.

I remember reading in some other thread that someone else also could get just 3GB, but no-one really seemed to believe him, it's true  There are many peeps here with 4GB, so you must have done something with the issue.

I know that with Abit IP35 that had 2xHDD, 2xburners, 256MB ATI card, even more USB and 4x1GB got ~3.4GB memory, so I don't understand where mine goes. Is P35 chipset just so much better allocating memory or does my IDE burners take away that much. That computer had everything is SATA.

Next step would be disabling some more stuff, but I already have printer ports, coms, extra usb & other stuff disabled. And then try a BIOS update, but not liking that option that much as this one is rock solid and new ones seem to be betas. Maybe that's enough writing for a thread start post


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## 3991vhtes (Dec 4, 2007)

It only supports 3GB, AFAIK


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## Athlon2K15 (Dec 4, 2007)

mb to gb is sorta trick because most bioses actually show memory size in kilobytes so i can see where that equals 2.93gb in windows


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## hbkl (Dec 4, 2007)

man you  need to install   a windows xp 64 bit   the windows xp 64  its capable to  read 128GB of ram thats the rummors   i install it  cause i have 1,5gb  of ram and  i see alittle perfomance increased  on the  OS   no t in games just in the OS   like   the sistem go up a little more fast  and  looking vids   the sistem is not a little laggy    srry my english is like the trash im latinoooooo bye


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

3991vhtes said:


> It only supports 3GB, AFAIK



Which is that, OS, MOBO, Chipset or something else?


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

AthlonX2 said:


> mb to gb is sorta trick because most bioses actually show memory size in kilobytes so i can see where that equals 2.93gb in windows



Yes that didn't bother me, I'm just wanting few hundred MB more


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## ktr (Dec 4, 2007)

Kinda strange that after memory remap, that windows detected less. 

But i have a similar problem. With my nforce3 mobo, windows detected 3.5gb, now with my nforce4, only 3gb....What can i do


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

hbkl said:


> man you  need to install   a windows xp 64 bit   the windows xp 64  its capable to  read 128GB of ram thats the rummors   i install it  cause i have 1,5gb  of ram and  i see alittle perfomance increased  on the  OS   no t in games just in the OS   like   the sistem go up a little more fast  and  looking vids   the sistem is not a little laggy    srry my english is like the trash im latinoooooo bye



That would fix the momery issue, but haven't read good things about 64bit drivers and game performance. I'd rather have solid system with maxium performance, than 1GB more mem. Still haven't got to OCing these puppies, luckily I'm on 800FSB processor so losing some latencies is the only thing. And you English was fine (at least I understood it)


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

ktr said:


> Kinda strange that after memory remap, that windows detected less.
> 
> But i have a similar problem. With my nforce3 mobo, windows detected 3.5gb, now with my nforce4, only 3gb....What can i do



So it has something to do with chipsets :/ Anyone with P965 that has more than 3GB in 32bit?

I'm sure this will become more and more common with these memory prices. These mems where 50€/74$/36£ a piece, so 100€ total (and my 2x1GB kit cost more..).

Seems to be even cheaper in US (not a big suprise). Mine are almost these, but not a kit (DQVE1B16)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211188


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## 3991vhtes (Dec 4, 2007)

OnBoard said:


> Which is that, OS, MOBO, Chipset or something else?



The OS.


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## ktr (Dec 4, 2007)

OnBoard said:


> So it has something to do with chipsets :/ Anyone with P965 that has more than 3GB in 32bit?
> 
> I'm sure this will become more and more common with these memory prices. These mems where 50€/74$/36£ a piece, so 100€ total (and my 2x1GB kit cost more..).



It definitely has to do something with the chipset reporting to the os. But it could be different on other board with the same chipset. Perhaps the bios to blame.


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## Morgoth (Dec 4, 2007)

mine goes up to 4 gigs i am using 3 gigs of ram 512mb vram and 2gb of pagefile  and doest bother me it says i have 5 gigs of ram XD


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## deathvirus_me (Dec 4, 2007)

x86 OS can address a max of 4 GB mem. , thats including the physical RAM , and the page file .. lower ur page file and see if it helps .. but to properly utilize all the RAM , a x64 OS is definitely recommended ..


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

Morgoth said:


> mine goes up to 4 gigs i am using 3 gigs of ram 512mb vram and 2gb of pagefile  and doest bother me it says i have 5 gigs of ram XD



That got me an idea, I have a 1.26GB parition (from fastest part of HDD) just for 1GB swap file, but I need to add more swap to see if it does anything. 1GB swap for 4GB mem seems outbalanced, not that I'd need "any" swap if I could use all the mem.



deathvirus_me said:


> x86 OS can address a max of 4 GB mem. , thats including the physical RAM , and the page file .. lower ur page file and see if it helps .. but to properly utilize all the RAM , a x64 OS is definitely recommended ..



So I'll do both  and see if there is any change ->


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

Done with swap file testing:

1024MB page file was the start

512MB page file -> no change to physical memory
5120MB page file -> no change to physical memory

Then I tried the minimum 2MB of allowed and things got weird again




Now it shows I have 6GB commit Charge limit, somehow I have a 3007 MB page file, even though I have 'No paging file' set on all drives besides that 2MB.

Seems Windows took matter in it's own hand and made a 2.93GB swap on C:\. If that amount seems familiar it's the same what Windows report as my RAM. Suggestion is 4.5GB C: would have that free, but swap seemed to find the same memory max even with /PAE enabled and I could manually set 5GB swap.


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

Seems I'm not alone

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx..._id=1&model=P5B-E+Plus&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

And ASUS has it even on FAQ

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?no=D06D6034-D5C9-49C4-5E1B-CF724DB5C000&SLanguage=en-us

Seems if I get really desperate I could take out my Audigy, to get more mem 

Those (lucky) of you who get more than 3GB, don't go changing your motherboard, if you want to keep it that way  Well in the future we'll all be in 64bit and problem gone at least for 10 years.


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## panchoman (Dec 4, 2007)

sorry if this has been said before,(too lazy to read through) but heres what you need to do: 

go to c:/boot.ini and add


```
/pae
```
to the end, so that it goes from: 


```
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer
```

to 


```
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer /PAE
```

this will tell your cpu to use all 4 gigs, but only 3 gigs will be detected.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx
for more info


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

panchoman: yes I have /PAE switch on (in the first post ) but I do have DEP disabled a long time ago (had some compability issies with games). Seems DEP also enables PAE, so don't know if it works without it. So I'm going to test with DEP (and PAE) on now.


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## ex_reven (Dec 4, 2007)

Even if you have /PAE enabled you still wont be able to use all your ram anyway. Pagefile, video card memory etc eats into your 4gb limit.


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## panchoman (Dec 4, 2007)

but with pae you dont have the 4 gig limit?


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## OnBoard (Dec 4, 2007)

ex_reven said:


> Even if you have /PAE enabled you still wont be able to use all your ram anyway. Pagefile, video card memory etc eats into your 4gb limit.



PAE should make it 36bit and all that extra "crap" should go to that 64GB+ range.

But with DEP (+PAE) enebled didn't help either, still same 2,93GB and 2,00GB with memory remap in bios.

edit: messing around with bios settings didn't seem to anything either. Now I have to take out my soundcard if I'd get some change at least.

edit2: no soundcard and not a byte more memory, i give up


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## hbkl (Dec 5, 2007)

yeah  the 64 bits driver sucks   cause   if you drive daily  with  hardware like cell phones cameras etc i recomend you  be quiet with xp 32bits


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## suraswami (Dec 5, 2007)

Its ur board.

Just wondering are you running Database on that box?  Or Virtual servers?  Don't know if any app would use more that 2GB.


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## panchoman (Dec 5, 2007)

hmm why does your bios say that you only have 2.9 gigs of memory? this seems more like somethings wrong with your ram/board rather then windows?


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## OnBoard (Dec 5, 2007)

suraswami said:


> Its ur board.
> 
> Just wondering are you running Database on that box?  Or Virtual servers?  Don't know if any app would use more that 2GB.



Well if you got 2GB windows takes some and rest is for games, If you got more than 2GB the you got that whole 2GB for games  (and some games are designed or patched to support more than 2GB with some large switch that they had to have).

My idea was to make 1GB ramdrive out of memory and use it as additional swap, that would have still left 2GB for games and rest for Windows. Then there is Vista and DX10 (that will come mandatory some day) and 2GB goes tiny. Sure 3GB would be enough as well, just didn't want to go with 4 sticks of mem.


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## OnBoard (Dec 5, 2007)

panchoman said:


> hmm why does your bios say that you only have 2.9 gigs of memory? this seems more like somethings wrong with your ram/board rather then windows?



That's where you need that memory remap option, then it shows full 4gigs, but that somehow messes windows to lose 1 more gigabyte of memory.

Should try those black slots as well someday just to be sure, they haven't been is use yet. But don't have the energy now, got my OC working with these modules too 417MHz goes with 1.9V at least TPU stable  5-5-5-15 compared to 4-4-4-12 with G.Skills, so don't know if this was a upgrade or a downgrade


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## Athlon2K15 (Dec 5, 2007)

it has to do with pci devices they memory allocated to them and whats left windows or whatever os gets


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## OnBoard (Dec 5, 2007)

A little update, the other stick of the memory died after 12hours, so now I've really got just 2GB  Couple hours of BF2142 gaming was fine, it was smoother with 3GB than 2GB and closing the game resulted in no hdd swapping like it usually does. Then after 9 hours programs started getting errors, then crashing, then blue screens.

Win memtest gave 156 errors in 1%, tried with just 1 stick and hardly could start Windows, antivirus crashed istantly and said definitions are corrupt. So I'd say it's pretty much done, but will do memtest later. Now surfing with the other one just fine, have to try and "brake" this too


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## Oliver (Dec 9, 2007)

*Been there done that*

I've tried playing around with the concept 4g in 1g sticks..............to no avail so I took out the extra 2g and am running fine as is. X86 32bit systems simply don't run much better with more than 2g of Ram (you might see a benefit in multimedia intensive apps).

I was running 2 xms2xpc6400c4 corsair 2 g kits never had errors and never blasted them (never  over v'd them more than .2v more than given max of 2.1v)

here's thlink to the post on BE
http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?p=244817#post244817

Take care and have fun........


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