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Win 7 only showing 15 gb!

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Hi all,
yesterday i reseted the bios to optimized defaults cuz i wanted to start over (ocing).
but when i booted into windows i noticed windows utilizes 15.3 gb instead of 16 its a small diffrence and the performance is the same. but still i find it weird cuz it always displayed the full 16 gb and not 15.3 gb.
i played with some settings in the bios but with no effect.
anyone know what can cause this ?
Screen:


Thanks in advance!
sys specs below.
 
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maybe when you reset the bios it enabled the igp on the cpu and that ram its for that.
 
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It's because of the system reserved memory. You can see that Windows indeed shows 16GB in the system properties: "16.0GB (15.0 GB usable)"
 
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The IGP on Sandy Bridge has no integrated RAM to work with. As such, it will assign some of the system RAM to itself. This assignment happens in the BIOS/UEFI, and thus windows won't report the assigned RAM as useable.

In order to get the 0.7 GB back you need to disable onboard graphics in the BIOS/UEFI.


The real question is do you need the 0.7 GB? If you're running a board with Virtu installed the power savings could be beneficial. The integrated graphics cover almost all of the office software and desktop needs, while the GPU gets turned on for gaming. It's not a huge power savings, but taken over a year can save some money.



Edit: TRWOV said it better than I did. The system reserved memory is the issue, and this is most commonly (in my experience) the IGP.

Edit:

Idiot move on my part, I missed the P67. Sorry about that.
 
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brandonwh64

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But he has a P67. Should it not have onboard GPU?
 
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Did you put memory remapping on in the BIOS? If I didn't then my Win7 installation would also state that there is 4 GB total, 3.xxx usable.
 
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Did you put memory remapping on in the BIOS? If I didn't then my Win7 installation would also state that there is 4 GB total, 3.xxx usable.

nope i did not.
 
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But he has a P67. Should it not have onboard GPU?

Correct, i have the p67 chip wich has no gpu support for the i7 2500(k)/2600(k)
The H67 or the z67 and some other i believe has gpu support
 
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The IGP on Sandy Bridge has no integrated RAM to work with. As such, it will assign some of the system RAM to itself. This assignment happens in the BIOS/UEFI, and thus windows won't report the assigned RAM as useable.

In order to get the 0.7 GB back you need to disable onboard graphics in the BIOS/UEFI.


The real question is do you need the 0.7 GB? If you're running a board with Virtu installed the power savings could be beneficial. The integrated graphics cover almost all of the office software and desktop needs, while the GPU gets turned on for gaming. It's not a huge power savings, but taken over a year can save some money.



Edit: TRWOV said it better than I did. The system reserved memory is the issue, and this is most commonly (in my experience) the IGP.

no that can't be it because i have the p67 chip so that option is disabled from factory.(or not integrated)
 
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The system reserved memory isn't for IGP only, it's an amount of memory that Windows reserves to ensure that its processes will have enough available memory.

You can see in the task manager how the memory is being utilized:
-Hardware reserved
-In use
-Modified
-Suspended
-Free
 
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hmm guess what, when i disable xmp profile in the bios and then boot into win 7 it says 16 gb, and if i enable xmp i have 15.3 gb, but i noticed somehting just now in windows built in "monitor station"
screen:


so apparently my system reserves some mem voor "hardware", the gpu on the cpu can't be active because, again the p67 does not support that. so it cannot be mem sharing.

any other suggestions?
 

95Viper

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First try this, quoted from "The usable memory may be less than the installed memory on Windows 7-based computers":
1. Click Start, type msconfig in the Search programs and files box, and then click msconfig in the Programs list.
2. In the System Configuration window, click Advanced options on the Boot tab.
3. Click to clear the Maximum memory check box, and then click OK.
4. Restart the computer

bootopt.png

Some other info:

The Mystery of the Missing Memory -or- It Pays to Know Your Hardware
Pushing the Limits of Windows: Physical Memory
Investigate memory usage with Windows 7 Resource Monitor
 
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yeh i know but if i uncheck that it takes longer to boot, so it comes down to;
1. slower boot times but with all 16 gb usable.
2.faster boot with a little less ram.
i choose option 2, but i find it strange,win 7 did not do that sooner, i have this ivy setup for about 5/6 months now.

ohh well 15.3gb is still overkill haha.
thanks for the advice all!

/close
 
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http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978610

This is expected behavior on computers that are running Windows 7. The reduction in available system memory depends on the configuration of the following:
The devices that are installed in the computer and the memory that is reserved by those devices
The ability of the motherboard to handle memory
The System BIOS version and settings
The version of Windows 7 that is installed (For example, Windows 7 Starter Edition only supports 2 GB of installed memory.)
Other system settings
For example, if you have a video card that has 256 MB of on-board memory, that memory must be mapped within the first 4 GB of address space. If 4 GB of system memory is already installed, part of that address space must be reserved by the graphics memory mapping. Graphics memory mapping overwrites a part of the system memory. These conditions reduce the total amount of system memory that is available to the operating system.


As I said, you're not missing anything, it's just reserved memory for whatever the OS might need.
 

95Viper

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Don't know the answer to that one, for sure; but it may take Windows a few boots to learn the background and priority boot order of the devices.

Try flushing your prefetch and let windows rebuild it.
And, give it a few boot ups to see if it gets back up to speed.

EDIT:

There are a lot of variables to Windows OS.
And, your personal preference of how you setup, control, tweak, and etc. your OS.
I would say... you are not memory limited in any way with that amount of usable memory... run with it, the way it is.
 
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newtekie1

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As I said, you're not missing anything, it's just reserved memory for whatever the OS might need.

Almost 1GB of system reserved space is way to much, all of my systems stay under 50MB.

And since disabling XMP causes the space to be drastically reduced, this is not just a case of Windows reserving ram for hardware use, as XMP would have nothing to do with this.

What is more likely causing this is the RAM being slightly unstable, or the IMC being slightly unstable, when running the XMP memory profile. Disabling it runs the RAM at a slower speed, making everything stable and happy, and hence gives access to all 16GB.

So I'd disable XMP, which will give a slower boot as it will drastically lower the RAM speed, then tweak the RAM settings manually back up as close as possible to the XMP profile to get the speed back.
 
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Almost 1GB of system reserved space is way to much, all of my systems stay under 50MB.

And since disabling XMP causes the space to be drastically reduced, this is not just a case of Windows reserving ram for hardware use, as XMP would have nothing to do with this.

What is more likely causing this is the RAM being slightly unstable, or the IMC being slightly unstable, when running the XMP memory profile. Disabling it runs the RAM at a slower speed, making everything stable and happy, and hence gives access to all 16GB.

So I'd disable XMP, which will give a slower boot as it will drastically lower the RAM speed, then tweak the RAM settings manually back up as close as possible to the XMP profile to get the speed back.


alright i uppped the mem voltage by 0.2 volts its running @ 1.52v now with xmp enabled and i have the full 16 gb of usable memory!

still i find it strange because it ran fine for awhile with xmp enabled @ default mem voltage.

problem solved.
Thanks all!
/close
 

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The memory might just be starting to degrade ever so slightly, so it needs a little more voltage to run stable. If it needs more voltage again later on I'd consider RMAing the RAM.
 
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The memory might just be starting to degrade ever so slightly, so it needs a little more voltage to run stable. If it needs more voltage again later on I'd consider RMAing the RAM.

Yeh that's what i thought, cuz i have these ram sticks for about 5 months now.. and i did not do any heavy duty ram ocing. so i guess i just have bad sticks.

i will monitor this issue, if they start to fail im gonna upgrade to a couple of ripjaws
 
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