GA-EP45-DS3R 2.5/4GB
Forum Motherboard & Memory : Gigabyte - GA-EP45-DS3R 2.5/4GB
I have a GA-EP45-DS3R motherboard with 2 2GB chips for a total of 4GB of ram. The video card is an Nvidia 8800GT. Windows XP shows only 2.5GB under System Properties/General and only 2619624K of total Physical Memory under Windows Task Manager. I know XP is a 32-bit operating system but I should still be seeing at least 3GB of ram. Does this Gigabyte board support memory remapping? I'm not seeing it in the bios. A google search showed another individual having this problem and a Video Card bios upgrade "fixed it". My motherboard bios is at the latest version (F10). The memory is in a dual channel configuration.
I'm a bit hesitant to do a video card bios upgrade since it's a PNY card and they don't have an update available. Nvidia's latest bios version is 62.92.24.00.xx.
GPU-Z reports mine as
Bios Version: 62.92.1F.00.51
GPU: G92
Revision: A2
Technology: 65nm
Die Size 330mm
Release Date: 2007
Transistors: 754M
Device ID: 10DE-0611
Subvendor: PNY (196E)
Memory Size: 512MB
GPU Clock 600mhz, Memory 900mhz, Shader 1500mhz
So, is there anyway of getting at least 3GB of usable ram in Windows?
Hello, a common question. Take a gander -
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html
Basically hardware addressing takes up a lot o' memory, and a 32 bit OS can see a -MAX- of 4GB, so some of that is used for the hardware.
To more directly answer your question, no on the remapping.
Message edited by ghmage on 11-01-2008 at 07:32:54 AM
I read that article but there's a big difference in 2.5gb and nearly 3.5gb. I typically read about 3GB+ being available after any hardware addressing -- not 2.5gb. Why is this board/video card combo taking a larger hit?
Out of curiousity, is PAE enabled? You can see this in System Properties, or it can be enabled in boot.ini. Granted - PAE is really for 4GB+ systems but there IS a little bit of memory above 4GB which could be used.
Do you have a lot of cards in the system? If you go into the Device Manager, and go to View -> Resources by type, and expand on the Memory option, you can see what is taking up your memory.
Just an FYI: My PNY 9600GT 512MB is taking up 318898172 bytes, in four different segments. Out of 4GB I see 3.4 gigs total in task manager on WinXP 32bit, and system properties shows 3.25. I've got a P35-DS3L motherboard, and only one expansion card besides the graphics card, a FusionHDTV card.
PAE is enabled -- I'm using XP SP3 and I believe that is the default now and shows as such in System Properties/General. I have no cards in the system except the video card which I already mentioned. The CPU is a Q6600 and I have 3 SATA drives and a SATA DVD drive though.
The Memory options you mentioned will take a bit of analysis to figure out what is taking more memory. My hex addition and subtraction is a bit rusty.
My hex was rusty too, I used an online converted. Just remember to add up the ranges of memory.. ie, not 0 to E5FFFFFF but rather A0FFFFFF to E5FFFFF etc. I'm using http://www.easycalculation.com/hex-converter.php atm. It was a pain, and actually there is surely software that makes this task easier, but I don't know of anything offhand.
OK -- using calculator in scientific mode -- ugh, I think the video card is taking up
1,090,650,108 bytes in 4 regions.
A0000: 1FFFF
A0000000: 1FFFFFFF
C4000000: 1FFFFFFF
C6000000: FFFFFF
=================
Total: 4101FFFC
So, there's a gigabyte of lost ram I guess but the card has only 512MB ram.
I wouldn't really worry about it if you've got a machine primarily for gaming. I know it's annoying, but you won't use 2+gigs for gaming unless you've got some sort of memory leak or program that doesn't release old memory (mmorpg's are infamous for sloppy memory management.)
But - if you do find information on how to tweak the memory usage of your card, I (and others) would certainly appreciate the educational value.
Well, I temporarily replaced the 8800GT with an ATI X800XL and Windows is now showing 3.25GB. The ATI card has 256MB ram so if the 8800GT was working properly -- I should have 256MB less or around 3.0GB rather than 2.5GB. So, maybe the answer really is a bios update as reported via that google search.
If you flash your card first make a backup of the current BIOS and put it on a dos 6.22 boot floppy http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm with the autoexec.bat coded to autoflash it back as you won't have a display. Or you can boot up on a PCI card, etc.
Is she still under warranty? There's always that route if things go horribly wrong.
PNY cards are pretty ref, so you could go with an nVidia BIOS. Of course, use this at your own risk, blah blah blah.
Message edited by ghmage on 11-01-2008 at 05:44:42 AM
Well, I got lucky. I found a PNY Bios 62.92.23.00.51 which is a rev04 dated October of this year at
http://www.mvktech.net/component/o [...] 67/page,4/
I updated the BIOS successfully and Windows XP is now showing 3.25GB of RAM available.
The Bios rev I had was rev03 62.92.1f.00.51.
So, if you have PNY Bios rev 03 -- update to rev04 to gain about 750MB more RAM in Windows XP.
I still have a PNY BIOS on my PNY card with the same default clocks so I feel pretty good about this but I haven't tested it to any degree.
Awesome. Test the performance, and see if it gives the same perf as when it took 1gig? I'd imagine so, it's just a riddle sort of thing.
Edit: Interestingly enough, I've got Version 62.94.11.00.51 on my 9600GT 512MB and you've found out why it wasn't hording a gig of memory.
Very nice work deltam, and welcome to the forums.
Message edited by ghmage on 11-01-2008 at 07:22:29 AM
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