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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
