topic Re: Amount of memory in Operating System - Microsoft

Amount of memory

Brad Parks — Tue, 10 Dec 2002 20:26:58 GMT

My Dad has a HP computer and it has 512MB RAM installed. But when I check the amount under System Properties it only says 480. If I check during system startup it counts all 512MB. I thought it was only his computer (no other machine that I have seen has done it.) But today at Best Buy a couple of HP laptops did the samething. One with 512 showed 480, and one with 256 showed 240MB. Anyone have any insight into this? I tried looking back in the forums, but didn't see anything.

Thanks

Re: Amount of memory

Roger Faucher — Tue, 10 Dec 2002 20:40:01 GMT

Brad:

Typically, when this happens it is because the on-the-motherboard video function is using the remainder of the memory, typically in increments of 8MB, but not always. Check the particcular system's documents to confirm or post the PC model here.

Roger

Re: Amount of memory

Brad Parks — Tue, 10 Dec 2002 21:01:11 GMT

It does have onboard video, but he didn't remember the model right off hand.

Brad

Re: Amount of memory

Roger Faucher — Tue, 10 Dec 2002 22:34:58 GMT

Have him search the system unit (not the monitor) to find a label indicating the model or machine type and post it here, if you want to know definitively.

Roger

Re: Amount of memory

Jon Finley — Wed, 11 Dec 2002 00:12:50 GMT

Yep... Roger's correct. Both systems have "shared" video RAM. 32 and 16Meg.

Which is.... OK.... unless you're into heavy gaming that pushes the video.

Jon

Re: Amount of memory

Michael_207 — Tue, 17 Dec 2002 21:56:56 GMT

just a hint: onboard graphics greatly reduces performance so you might consider getting a card.

Re: Amount of memory

Roger Faucher — Tue, 17 Dec 2002 23:33:19 GMT

FWIW:

What Michael says was historically VERY true. I have seen some literature that implies that the new onboard Intel Extreme Graphics (IEG) video works quite well. An IEG system running with 32MB for video (RAM gets allocated for video dynamically, according to demand) is roughly equivalent to a VGA video adapter with 16MB of RAM. In spite of this, I personnaly would never recommend onboard graphics for gaming.

Roger

Re: Amount of memory

Brad Parks — Wed, 18 Dec 2002 17:00:58 GMT

Thanks for the responses everyone. He doesn't really do anything graphics intensive, but we just wanted to figure out where the other RAM was going. Seems like onboard video should have video RAM on the motherboard.

Thanks again