Less RAM reported when I inserted additional PCI video card


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Hi guys. I have something weird going on on my computer.

I have 4gb of RAM and under Windows XP Pro initially it was reported as 3.7Gb which is fine because of the i875 chipset limitations. But after I added Diamond Stealth Ati 9250 256mb PCI card in the computer with Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic, Windows started reporting that I have 3.25gb of RAM. This is very strange. I took out the graphics card and Windows reported 3.7Gb as usual.

The 9250 card has 256mb of video memory but it looks like for some reason it's eating into my system memory. I just can't figure out why this is happening.

Even weirder when I switched the card into a different PCI slot, Windows reported 3.12 Gb of RAM..WTH?!

Can someone enlighten me here about what might be happening.

Thanks.

  James_T said:
hmm. very weird.  :huh:

maybe you should check bios settings if it is possible to manually disable the onboard graphics, and check if the "primary graphics" setting is set to "PCI".

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Well the primary graphics is set to AGP right now because I have X800XT PE in AGP as primary card. 9250 is the secondary card so I can use more monitors.

  gummyz said:
when the PC boots, does the startup screen count to 4GB as normal?

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Actually no it doesn't. It shows the decreased value as well. I think it's a hardware thing when all 4 dimms are in there, but what I don't understand is why is it that when the card is in one PCI slot it reports 3.3Gb and when it's in the other PCI slot it reports 3.12Gb. This is very confusing.

That was my thought about the TurboCache thing.

Also you might want to poke around in your BIOS to see

if you find a setting that talks about a frame buffer size or

something to configure. It is usually called Apeture size or

something along those lines.

Pull your RAM out, blow dust and crap away etc and try to reproduce your results. If you keep getting strange inconsistant ones like above, you either have dodgy DIMMs or something on the motherboard is faulty.

If you keep trying and reproduce the same results everytime then you know you have some BIOS/hardware limitation etc.

  lloydo said:
Pull your RAM out, blow dust and crap away etc and try to reproduce your results. If you keep getting strange inconsistant ones like above, you either have dodgy DIMMs or something on the motherboard is faulty.

If you keep trying and reproduce the same results everytime then you know you have some BIOS/hardware limitation etc.

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Believe me, I have done everything you suggested. The mobo is not bad at all and I have another spare one here too. The memory is definitely not nonamea and I tried with Corsair XMS LL TwinX 2x1gb packs..same thing...it just changes RAM availability if I switch between PCI slots, but it's always 3.25Gb (~3.3Gb) and 3.12 on the other PCI slot. Aperature size in BIOS is set to 64mb as suggested in their manual 1/4 of the total video ram.

  Boz said:
Believe me, I have done everything you suggested. The mobo is not bad at all and I have another spare one here too. The memory is definitely not nonamea and I tried with  Corsair XMS LL TwinX 2x1gb packs..same thing...it just changes RAM availability if I switch between PCI slots, but it's always 3.25Gb (~3.3Gb) and 3.12 on the other PCI slot. Aperature size in BIOS is set to 64mb as suggested in their manual 1/4 of the total video ram.

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how many monitors do ya want hooked up cause ATI cards support up to 3 monitors on 1 card

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