Member Avatar for CleverBrekka

Hey guys i just installed 4GB of ram, only show's up as 3GB in XP though, no idea why, i have a Geforce 8600GT if that's anything to do with it not showing it in full? If there's a solution to this then great! Anyone know any =]?

But with this ram some guy said i should set my page file to at least 10GB, would you reccomend this or do you suppose i keep it lower/higher?

Thanks =]

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by jah_ives

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Short summary and practical next steps (adds to what , and said)

What you’re seeing is a common 32‑bit limitation: a portion of the 4 GB address range is reserved for hardware (PCI/graphics/etc.), so the OS only maps the remainder into usable RAM. The reserved ranges come out of the same 4 GB address space that RAM uses, which is why a card’s framebuffer or other device MMIO can make “4 GB” appear as ~3.x GB to Windows. See Microsoft’s writeups on virtual/address limits and the general PCI‑hole explanation for background. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/performance/ram-virtual-memory-pagefile-management) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_hole)

Pagefile guidance (practical): a huge 10 GB pagefile isn’t needed just because you installed 4 GB of RAM. Windows’ virtual memory exists for handling peaks and for crash dumps; the main reason to size a pagefile larger than normal is to guarantee a full memory dump after a crash. If you need full crash dumps, keep a pagefile on the boot volume at least large enough per Microsoft’s dump guidance; otherwise let the system manage virtual memory or keep a sensible fixed file and monitor commit usage. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/performance/configure-system-failure-and-recovery-options)

Quick checklist (do these in order)

  • Run msinfo32 to confirm “Installed” vs “Available” and note “Hardware Reserved.”
  • Check BIOS for a Memory Remap / DRAM remap option (useful only if you move to a 64‑bit OS).
  • Update the motherboard chipset drivers and BIOS; sometimes chipsets change how much space is reserved.
  • If you must see/use the full 4 GB for apps, move to a 64‑bit Windows build; that’s the reliable fix.
  • If you need crash dumps, size the pagefile on C: to cover the dump requirement; otherwise leave pagefile managed or set a modest fixed size and watch Commit/Peak in Task Manager.

This expands on ’s and ’s points with diagnosis steps and Microsoft references so the behaviour and the safe choices for pagefile sizing are clear.

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Member Avatar for mechbas

Installed ram and page file (ram) is apples and oranges. Try letting the OS govern the page file size.
How the system board sees ram and how the OS sees ram is two different views. The system COULD be sucking up some of your physical ram as some sort of buffer, etc.

Member Avatar for jah_ives

If you are using 32-bit windows XP then it will only show 3GB of RAM, this is natural and you have nothing to worry about, obviously if you want it to see the full 4GB and your RAM to fully run at 4GB i would recommend upgrading to a 64 bit of windows. (preferably Vista, as there are more drivers and support etc for this.

Your page file should usually be 1.5x the amount of RAM you have in the system.

I.e. 3gb of RAM would be equal to a page file size of around 4.5 - 5.0GB

Your operating system should define this using these calculations by default anyway!

Increasing your page file to 10GB is most definiately not recommended unless you have at least 5GB of ram. This can cause sluggish and worse performance.

Hope this helps

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