4gig RAM showing up as 1,938mb in windows xp after I installed two video cards..help

L

LivermoreRisen

I recently installed the following video cards into my windows xp professional based system:

1 Matrox MMS g200 quad video card (8mb per monitor)
1 All-In-Wonder ATI dual video card (128mb per monitor)

I have six Aopen monitors.

my 4 gigs of OCZ RAM is showing up as 1938mb in windows. My video cards are using my system RAM, apparently

Is there anyway to stop my Video Cards from eating up my System RAM? Can I stop the sharing of my system RAM with my video cards somehow?

Thanks
 
Your video cards are not consuming your RAM.

Many, many systems will use only 2GB of RAM even if 4GB is installed. You can probably get your system to use 3GB if you include the /3GB switch in your boot.ini file.

WinXP x64 remedies this.

You should Google this topic... there is much info on it.
 
Damn Windows! Reminds of the fiasco back in the '80s with Windows3.1 not being able to address more than 32mb on 486 machine... Of course, MS was very mum on this... But I found some notes on BBS's about it and verified by checking out the Photoshop swap-file. It shrank for a certain standard image as I increased RAM... up until 32mb, at which point adding more didn't help any.

Some basic AGP cards use system-RAM for their display. You can set this in the BIOS settings. Usually 16-32mb works fine, more doesn't seem to help the display any.
 
Well I do have AGP video card supporting two monitors and another Matrox Card supporting 4 additional monitors for a total of 6 monitors in my setup. The problem I'm having is that I have 4 gigs of OCZ RAM installed but my system is only detecting 1900MBs in RAM. This is a HUGE difference. I troubleshooted a little moving RAM cards around on my motherboard to discover that all the RAM is working and all of my RAM slots on my motherboard are working too. It's jsut when I put in 4 gigs at a time, I have a problem with my system only detecting 1900MBs. If someone could help me find a solution to this problem, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks

Quote from DannoXYZ:

Damn Windows! Reminds of the fiasco back in the '80s with Windows3.1 not being able to address more than 32mb on 486 machine... Of course, MS was very mum on this... But I found some notes on BBS's about it and verified by checking out the Photoshop swap-file. It shrank for a certain standard image as I increased RAM... up until 32mb, at which point adding more didn't help any.

Some basic AGP cards use system-RAM for their display. You can set this in the BIOS settings. Usually 16-32mb works fine, more doesn't seem to help the display any.
More...
 
I had similar problems.

To me it sounds it has nothing to do with your graphics card.

I would say it is an issue with your mainboard and these specific RAM modules. You should go to your dealer and exchange 2 of them and see if it works then.
 
just out of curiosity, why do you need 4 gigs? I run 1 gig, 4 monitors, broker software, ensign, and net surfing. I usually don't use more than 30% of resources except when i'm moving the mouse around. 2 gigs would be overkill for my uses anyway.

just wondering if you are doing some serious number crunching.
 
Quote from Jayford:

just out of curiosity, why do you need 4 gigs? I run 1 gig, 4 monitors, broker software, ensign, and net surfing. I usually don't use more than 30% of resources except when i'm moving the mouse around. 2 gigs would be overkill for my uses anyway.

just wondering if you are doing some serious number crunching.
More...

I was wondering the same thing.
 
Quote from LivermoreRisen:

Well I do have AGP video card supporting two monitors and another Matrox Card supporting 4 additional monitors for a total of 6 monitors in my setup. The problem I'm having is that I have 4 gigs of OCZ RAM installed but my system is only detecting 1900MBs in RAM. This is a HUGE difference. I troubleshooted a little moving RAM cards around on my motherboard to discover that all the RAM is working and all of my RAM slots on my motherboard are working too. It's jsut when I put in 4 gigs at a time, I have a problem with my system only detecting 1900MBs. If someone could help me find a solution to this problem, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks
More...

Please read 2 posts above your post....
 
does your board support 4gb of ram?

your video card manual will say it will share system memory. otherwise, there's something else going on.

does 3gb works(3 strips) & detect as is? assuming its DDR
or
does 2gb works(2 strips) & detect as is? assuming its DDR2

how much memory does your BIOS tell you? if you dont know what i'm talking about... consult someone around you that has the appropriate knowledge


4gb? ... why do you need so much mem besides you have more disposible income?

512 is the min for running XP w/many apps opened. and i'm comfortably sitting on a computer with 1.5gb & a laptop w/1.25gb

at this year's WWDC, i saw MacPros with 16GB of memory... I still have working computers at home that has 10GB hard drives.


quote

Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature.

quote

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx


Quote from LivermoreRisen:

Well I do have AGP video card supporting two monitors and another Matrox Card supporting 4 additional monitors for a total of 6 monitors in my setup. The problem I'm having is that I have 4 gigs of OCZ RAM installed but my system is only detecting 1900MBs in RAM. This is a HUGE difference. I troubleshooted a little moving RAM cards around on my motherboard to discover that all the RAM is working and all of my RAM slots on my motherboard are working too. It's jsut when I put in 4 gigs at a time, I have a problem with my system only detecting 1900MBs. If someone could help me find a solution to this problem, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks
More...
 
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