Memory is being appropriated

memorymotherboard

I am having an issue with my motherboard "appropriating" memory. I have 2x2GB installed (exactly the same chips, brand new). The bios shows 4096 total with 1152 appropriated leaving 2944. When I only have a single 2GB stick in, no memory is appropriated. If I put a 2GB and a 1GB for 3GB total 128MB is appropriated and available still shows as 2944.

I've been all over looking for answers. There are no memory remapping options in the bios. I found that if I change to use internal vga instead of PCI-EX then only 640MB is appropriated. I've tried changing all of the other settings to no avail.

What is going on? Why is this motherboard appropriating memory and how can I get it back?

Motherboard: Asus P5GC-MX/1333
CPU: Celeron E3400
Video card: nVidia 9600GT PCI-EX

I have the latest bios. I dont see any jumpers on the board.

Best Answer

From your motherboard specifications page:

*When installing total memory of 4GB capacity or more, Windows 32-bit operation system may only recognize less than 3GB. Hence, a total installed memory of less than 3GB is recommended.

This is due, as you have found, to your graphics card and other devices needing to be mapped into the 32-bit (4GiB) address space.

Generally this is only seen with a 32-bit operating system, but if the motherboard is particularly old and badly designed then it can happen with a 64-bit operating system as well.

See my answer to What limits a motherboard from supporting more memory?, as well as other questions such as Why does my sytem only uses 3.2GB of my 4GM RAM?

Basically the first thing to try is running a 64-bit OS, for example a Linux LiveCD such as Ubuntu, to see if that can see the full 4GiB. If it cannot then it is a motherboard issue. If the memory can be seen then you will need to reinstall your current Windows version with a 64-bit version to use the whole 4GiB.

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