Motherboard ram issues

Discussion in 'CPU, Motherboards and Memory' started by TheClaymore, Oct 17, 2008.

  1. TheClaymore

    TheClaymore Geek Trainee

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    I recently bought a new processor, motherboard, and RAM for my pc, and it all works like a pro save for one issue. I bought an MSI K9N2G Neo and 2GB of wintec ram because I am a college student on a budget and it was cheap. When I started by pc it only showed 1.75GB, so I did a boot memory test. There were no problems detected on either stick. What I did find out, though was that whichever stick I put in first would register as .75GB and the second one (in dual channel configuration) would register as 1GB. I looked in the BIOS settings, and the board read 2GB physical memory, but only 1.75GB usable memory. I looked for some kind of FAQ or troubleshooting guide on the issue and there was none. The only thing I could find was that MSI officially does not support wintec RAM. Does that really make a difference? I did not know before that a MoBo only supports certain RAM. Even if I had noticed before, I probably would have thought it was marketing, like the "nvidia: the way it's meant to be played" screens when you load a game. Can anyone help me? Everything on my system is stable, other than this small RAM issue. I run a lot of digital media apps like Adobe Creative Suite, so I need all the RAM I can get, especially for photoshop.
     
  2. Ghostman 1

    Ghostman 1 Mega Geek

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    This is normal,Allot of times the ram you are missing is used by your Video card...So in your bio's it will say 2 gigs of ram,but in Windows it will say 1.75 of ram... windows will allocate some ram for the video card..
     
  3. TheClaymore

    TheClaymore Geek Trainee

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    Thanks for the info. Is this for the onboard graphics? If so, is there any way to change it since I am not using the onboard GPU?
     
  4. Ghostman 1

    Ghostman 1 Mega Geek

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    Yes, this for onboard video.. And no I don't think it can be changed,At least I have never tried to change it..
     
  5. TheClaymore

    TheClaymore Geek Trainee

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    Once you told me it was being allotted to the onboard GPU, I was able to find the settings for it in the BIOS and it was easily fixed. Thank you, your help was much appreciated.
     
  6. DataSavers Com

    DataSavers Com Geek Trainee

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    Most motherboards will release the missing ram when an offboard Video card is used.
    As in your case, turning off the onboard Video feature in bios did the trick.
    Some of the older 81x Intel boards would hang onto ram occasionally, but newer boards are better at reallocating system resources.
     

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