Field

So i have 2x1GB sticks of Gskill and 2x1GB sticks of crucial memory for a dell dimension 5150

and i know that with a 32 bit windows you can have a maximum of 4GB

but should i really only be seeing 3.25GB when i look on the system page in the control panel?

I know caches and other devices take up some of the ram in the registry but 750MB seems like alot seeing that the only card slot i have used is for a 256MB nVidea card.

what other stuff would be taking up that much ram?

and IF i should have more available ram is there a compatibilty issue with the Gskill ram and the motherboard? cause i read that my comp only supports 4200 and 5300 DDR2.

I have it insterted in dual channel mode where i got

crucial
gskill
crucial
gskill

is this causing problems? and if not what is taking up 750MB of ram away from what i can see and use?

durch

About 750MB is reserved for MIMO. There's no way of getting around it with a 32-bit Windows OS. Even if you get a 64-bit version, there will still be a memory hole between the 3rd and 4th GB of memory. However, all memory added after that will be fully recognized. On 64-bit Windows, some motherboards will give you an option called "memory hole remapping" which will make the memory between the 3rd and 4th GB accessible to the system, but I've heard this can cause the computer to crash when it tries to address the memory that now "fills the hole".

Here's two articles that might help you understand:
Article 1
Article 2

There's really not many situations that would result in more than 3GB of memory being used, you should be fine for now. But for a future upgrade in a year or two, definitely get a 64-bit OS, quality motherboard, and 8GB of RAM

EDIT: Oh, one more thing, when running two types of memory, ALL your memory will run at the speed of the slowest stick and the timings of the "loosest" set (loose timings are high timings, i.e. 5-5-5-15 is looser than 4-4-4-12). So if you have a set of PC2 4200 in there, all your memory is running at PC2 4200 speeds, and at the timings of the loosest set.

Field

thank you, this is quite informative

Field

i also hardly notice a performance difference between 3 and 3.25gigs. Stepping up from 1GB to 3GB was very noticable though it was nice