Win7 64 - Installed 8GB, it sees 8, but only 5.3 physical memory used

I was really hoping for at least 6 or 7....is this "normal"? The ram is good, in Bios there is no remap option, my board is an Abit IP35 Pro, I have reflashed the firmware to the latest one as of 2010, and there is no memory remapping option available in BIOS.

My video card is an 8800 GTS with 512MB DDR3 memory. Is my video card really taking up the reset of my ram? Is there an area I can tell it *no* lol?

Hi.

It depends but I'll tell you no, not normal, for now.

The memory could need more voltage.

You can use CPU-Z to see which exact memory modules you have. Then you can visit the manufacturer's site to get the proper voltage needed.

How many physical sticks of RAM do you have installed?

Please tell us what you find and we can take things from there.

it sees 8, but only 5.3 physical memory used

A screenshot of device manager's performance tab (with CPU and memory usage) would be good.

I have 8Gb total of which ~2Gb are typically being used unless I load my system. If your bios and task manager both show 8Gb, the memory is probably Ok.


CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

If the voltages were wrong, you would not see the full 8Gb. I agree that if TM and the BIOS show the full 8Gb, and CPUz reports it is all there, then you are fine and it is probably how your graphics card is "sharing" the rest. But as TorrentG states, it depends - Where are you seeing that it is using only 5.3Gb? Ideally, you don't want to "use" all your RAM as that would mean you need more. And with 8Gb, that should be more than enough for the vast majority of people.

I haven't changed voltages since installing the first sticks, which were 4GB. I installed the same make/model of ram, so now I have 8GB installed.

In Bios it sees the ram. As far as I can tell the ram is showing fine.

The places I looked was System Info, and the Resource Manager.

CPUz - I noticed, the original ram, which I have in slots 1 and 3, shows identical except for the tRC JEDEC #2 column, where it shows 23 instead of 24 for both the old sticks. So....I have the exact same memory/model but they're different?

Also I'm not sure if it's different now but it actually seems to be using the ram now -- so that's good. I think I misunderstood the available physical memory - I guess it means "what's left of physical memory"?

Yeah, it looks like it is all there to me. If you right-click on Computer and select Properties, what does it say there for Installed memory (RAM)?

Originally Posted by sandi

I haven't changed voltages since installing the first sticks, which were 4GB. I installed the same make/model of ram, so now I have 8GB installed.

In Bios it sees the ram. As far as I can tell the ram is showing fine.

The places I looked was System Info, and the Resource Manager.

CPUz - I noticed, the original ram, which I have in slots 1 and 3, shows identical except for the tRC JEDEC #2 column, where it shows 23 instead of 24 for both the old sticks. So....I have the exact same memory/model but they're different?

Did you set timings in bios to automatic, or did you adjust them manually?

(Memory Timings Explained)

Originally Posted by sandi

Also I'm not sure if it's different now but it actually seems to be using the ram now -- so that's good. I think I misunderstood the available physical memory - I guess it means "what's left of physical memory"?

It is a little more complicated than it may look at first glance:

Measuring memory usage in Windows 7

Overview of Performance Monitoring

might also be worth matching the BIOS timing settings of the slowest ram for all of them and making sure there's no "performance" tweaks enabled in BIOS until the systems is working correctly

The BIOS is set at defaults ever since I flashed it, I made sure after I flashed/updated that it was set to factory defaults. Should I go in and change it so that they match? (not sure if I can even do that, I know I can set voltages).

Thanks for being so helpful!!!

Timings should be set to automatic but I will repost once I check what the defaults are in BIOS.

The My Computer - shows 8.0