BIOS sees 4GB, Windows sees 2.96!

[jrawlings]

I recently put in 4 sticks of the Twinx 1024-XMS3200C2PT memory... two sets of the matched pair 1GB for a total of 4GB of RAM. I changed the voltage to 2.775 (didn't have a 2.75 option and I read somewhere that as long as I was below 2.9 I'm ok) and am running the ram at 2-3-3-6 timings.

When I go into BIOS, I see that each slot has 1024MB of memory and I'm in dual channel mode and everything looks great. However, in windows when I look at either the properties of "my computer" or if I run dxdiag, it tells me I only have 2.96!

Any ideas?

I'm using an Intel D875PBZ motherboard and I know the ram is compatible.

[RAM GUY]

This is a chipset and O.S. limitation. The MB will see a max of 4 Giga Byte 4000 M-Byte not 4096 M-Byte of memory and the memory used for cache will come off the top like for cache on your CPU and memory in your Video card. In addition, what ever you have the AGP aperture size set too will also come off of that number as well.

Originally Posted by RAM GUY

Example:
4-1,0 Gig = (4096) Giga Bytes X 8 = 34,359,738,368
Any 32 Bit O.S. or Chipset will only see 32,000,000,000 Bits
Then it would have to subtract any other memory used in the system like for your Video card and or cache on your CPU, LAN or Modem, and the MB bios may reserve some for caching as well. That would make the total size of memory accessible to your system, something between 2.6 to 3.2 Gigs of available memory.