just a question about ram

stabfacestabface
edited August 2005 in Hardware
Hi i have a hp pavilion which was a very nice gift for a free computer.
The rig is the hp amd 64 3300 160 gig,

any way it said that it came with 512 mb of ram, and then when i actually booted the beast up it only showed something like 480 mb of ram, i know that is not something new, so i added another 512 but this is a better quality stick and it showed as actually being 512. giving me 996 or something, but then I reformated the drive removed as much of the hp garbage as possible and when it loaded back up i now have 1024 of ram. i was wondering why this would make a differance? why reinstalling a clean windows would give me more ram? any ideas

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited August 2005
    stabface wrote:
    ...it said that it came with 512 mb of ram, and then when i actually booted the beast up it only showed something like 480 mb of ram...
    There is probably onboard video, which shares (steals) some of your system ram. I bet if you go through the BIOS you'll see an entry like Video Shared Memory = 32MB.

    480MB + 32MB = 512MB :)
  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited August 2005
    stabface wrote:
    , but then I reformated the drive removed as much of the hp garbage as possible and when it loaded back up i now have 1024 of ram. i was wondering why this would make a differance? why reinstalling a clean windows would give me more ram? any ideas

    This does seem really strange. Are you reading this from windows or from the BIOS startup screen?

    If its the BIOS startup screen and its listed in KB (kilobytes) Then 1024MB of ram (2x512) is actually 1 048 576 KB since everything is based on binary (base 2) arithmetic.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited August 2005
    Did you by any chance add a graphics card to the computer when you upgraded the ram? If so, it automatically disables the onboard graphics and you would then see the extra 32 MB ram shown on your system, since the onboard graphics would no longer be using the system ram.
  • stabfacestabface
    edited August 2005
    yes actually i added two graphics cards, to power both of my monitors that is interesting. thanks
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