Is 2 GB the limit for Win 7 *32 bit

[Aanand]

How to make use of my full 4GB RAM ? I have been using only 2GB since I assembled my system.

any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Sarath]

You get 3.7GB if you put a 4GB stick or higher. Thats the limit for all 32bit versions of Windows, including Win 7

I have 4GB on my desktop. Shows 4Gb on 64bit,

My lappi with 32bit windows shows 4GB as only 3.7GB available

[jkultimate]

Mine also has Win 7 ultimate 32 bit OS. And I have 2 x 2 GB Crosair ddr3 ram. But in my properties it's showing 3.25 GB usable. Not 2 GB as yours.

AMD athlon II X4 645 @ 3.1ghz
Asus m4a88t m le

[Sam]

@Aanand, check how much ram you have dedicated to onboard graphics? if it is above 1Gb, then its normal to have 2Gb ram. anyway check this link

[Ishu Gupta]

Originally Posted by Sam

@Aanand, check how much ram you have dedicated to onboard graphics? if it is above 1Gb, then its normal to have 2Gb ram. anyway check this link

His sig shows a 9400.

[Aanand]

@Sam, Sorry, I am not proficient enough in computers, please tell me how to check ram dedicated to onboard graphics. BTW I have Nvidia Geforce 9400 installed.
Please note that sometime back, When I had Windows 64 bit installed it showed 4 GB.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Ishu Gupta

His sig shows a 9400.

thanks for pointing out.

Originally Posted by Aanand

@Sam, Sorry, I am not proficient enough in computers, please tell me how to check ram dedicated to onboard graphics. BTW I have Nvidia Geforce 9400 installed.

then onboard graphics is already turned off & so it shouldn't take any part of memory from the installed ram.

Originally Posted by Aanand

Please note that sometime back, When I had Windows 64 bit installed it showed 4 GB.

yes, 64bit shows full 4Gb whereas 32bit shows 3.25Gb.

[topgear]

Some mobos has bios limitation and I've seen some mobos showing 2.75GB as usable when 4GB mem is installed under 32 bit consumer grade OS like Xp or vista - may be bios update can fix OPs issue.

Simple Solution for OP is to use 64 bit edition of win 7 with Sp1

[Prime_Coder]

On my laptop, it shows only 2.96 GB usable(out of 4GB), don't know why so..

[xtremevicky]

4Gb in my win 7 64 bit and it displays nothing

[Extreme Gamer]

in 32 bit 4GB is the max usable but if you have IGP as primary accelerator or a dedicated GPU then the available RAM is 4GB- VRAM.

[topgear]

^^ 32 bit OS can support upto 64 GB mem ( for eg. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x86 edition ) but the 4GB limitation is only for consumer grade OS such as xp or win 7 or vista.

Originally Posted by xtremevicky

4Gb in my win 7 64 bit and it displays nothing

open up task manager > performance tab and look at Physical Memory section - there you will get how much memory is usable to your win 7 64 bit

[R2K]

^^
thanks.......That was a new info for me

Originally Posted by Prime_Coder

On my laptop, it shows only 2.96 GB usable(out of 4GB), don't know why so..

Graphics memory might be sharing some of your RAM...check the BIOS

[topgear]

^^ you're welcome bro

[chris]

Some interesting reacd

Geoff Chappell, Software Analyst - Viewer

You need to enable PAE to use more than 4 GB RAM in 32 bit. Winodows 7 32 bit support PAE.

Whether the memory manager in the Windows kernel uses PAE is configurable through the pae boot option. Indeed, 32-bit Windows Vista is supplied with two kernels:

an ordinary kernel which uses 32-bit PTEs without PAE, and has no code for working with physical addresses above 4GB;
a PAE kernel which uses 64-bit PTEs with PAE, and does have code for working with physical addresses above 4GB.

The two kernels are respectively NTOSKRNL.EXE and NTKRNLPA.EXE, both in the Windows System directory. The loader (WINLOAD.EXE) knows how to set up the linear address space for mapping to physical addresses with or without PAE, but each kernel is specialised to one algorithm for the mapping. The pae option tells the loader which kernel to load.

[topgear]

^^ nice link but have you tried that - I've read that many people were not succeed to utilize more than 3.25 GB ram even with the PAE hack on 32bit consumer grade OS like cp, vista or win7.

[Zangetsu]

@Aanand: 32bit uses memory less than 4GB
64bit uses memory more than 4GB

if u wanna test just remove 2GB RAM & then check what will be shown in brackets...

[Aanand]

Now can we say that the remaining memory is shared for the graphics card?
I am still confused ..

[Sarath]

Is the Win 7 basic the one that supports only 2GB RAM? I am not sure but I read that each WIn version supports different amount of RAM.

[d6bmg]

Your graphics is using 790MB of shared memory from the RAM. So, you have a total of 2.7GB usable memory from 4GB memory, which is normal. Go to bios and set the on-board graphics memory to 0.

[topgear]

I think the issue OP is facing is Hardware related - read somewhere that one guy had this issue due to a bent pin on mobo cpu socket though that guy fixed it

@ OP - follow these :

1. if possible check your system with one mem modules at a time and when using one 2GB mem module only see if win 7 shows you 2Gb ram under sys info . Do the same with other mem module.

2. Check each ram slot by installing one 2GB mem module only - repeat the test with another mem module.

3. Physically inspect the mobo cpu socket by properly removing the cpu - if everything is OK then remount the cpu and heatsink properly

4. Check both mem modules by running memtset app.