Paul Caldwell
New member
Over the past weekend I have been bringing up a new system. This machine is a AMD dual core, with 4GB of total ram installed. The board is a Asus A8N-SLI.
After XP was installed and all hotfixes, and SP2, when you go to device Manger and look on the main screen, there is only 3GB of total ram. You can go to system resouces and see that actually 4GB is installed and when the box boots, all 4GB is shown. I know that you will never see all 4GB here, but on older machines I have built up most times you can see 3.2, 3.4 available.
I called Asus, (one note, you can actually call them and talk to someone), and asked them about why this was happening. We went though several checks on the bios, but after about 20 minutes, they asked what video card I had installed. This card is a PCI express 512 mb card. The person I was talking to said, that was the problem. The 512 or at least 256 mb of it was being addressed out in XP thus taking away more available ram.
What are others thoughts here? For my work, I would easily let go of the card for the extra ram for CS2. I also don't think that video ram can be addressed by CS directly and it is really only helping me on resolution and screen paints both of which I can do fine with a 128mb card.
Good news is this board ran the 3GB switch with no modification other then adding /3GB to the boot.ini.
Thanks
PFC
After XP was installed and all hotfixes, and SP2, when you go to device Manger and look on the main screen, there is only 3GB of total ram. You can go to system resouces and see that actually 4GB is installed and when the box boots, all 4GB is shown. I know that you will never see all 4GB here, but on older machines I have built up most times you can see 3.2, 3.4 available.
I called Asus, (one note, you can actually call them and talk to someone), and asked them about why this was happening. We went though several checks on the bios, but after about 20 minutes, they asked what video card I had installed. This card is a PCI express 512 mb card. The person I was talking to said, that was the problem. The 512 or at least 256 mb of it was being addressed out in XP thus taking away more available ram.
What are others thoughts here? For my work, I would easily let go of the card for the extra ram for CS2. I also don't think that video ram can be addressed by CS directly and it is really only helping me on resolution and screen paints both of which I can do fine with a 128mb card.
Good news is this board ran the 3GB switch with no modification other then adding /3GB to the boot.ini.
Thanks
PFC