Just installed new 8GB ram, still says 2.75GB usable, please help!

[Stefan Payne]

9 minutes ago, Dijon said:

Ah OK I have CPU-Z at home, Im currently away, when I get home I will take an SS of CPU-Z, maybe you guys can find something on there.

Its the Tab "Mainboard" that is of interest. The rest doesn't really matter.

[Dijon]

3 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Its the Tab "Mainboard" that is of interest. The rest doesn't really matter.

Here it is, sorry for late reply:

CPUZ.docx

[X_X]

4 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Have you any proof? Tried it with something that doesn't have Memory Remapping??? 

It's in the datasheets. For your old x48 Intel® X48 Express Chipset Datasheet

Some excerpts

 

 

Remap Enabled for Z97 with 8GiB RAM

 

Remap Disabled for Z97 with 8GiB RAM

 

Remap Enabled for GE60 Laptop with 16GiB RAM

 

Remap Disabled for GE60 Laptop with 16GiB RAM

 

4 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

@Dijon could download CPU-Z and look at the Chipset tab. There should be the Chipset named...

That might help...

@Dijon already did this IIRC but the tab shows several possibilities. A CPU-z text report might be better. Also a firmware memory map might be helpful too.

 

[agent_x007]

47 minutes ago, X_X said:

Remap Enabled for Z97 with 8GiB RAM

 

Remap Disabled for Z97 with 8GiB RAM

 

Remap Enabled for GE60 Laptop with 16GiB RAM

 

Remap Disabled for GE60 Laptop with 16GiB RAM

 

Are You seriously using Haswell platform to "simulate" what over 12 years old motherboard does ?
FYI : On old platforms, without Remap/Memory Hole enabled, BIOS itself can't adress more than 3GB of memory.
So, regardless of what OS you use, everything above ~3GB mark is locked.
Example of board without/Disabled Memory Remap :

[Dijon]

47 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

Are You seriously using Haswell platform to "simulate" what over 12 years old motherboard does ?
FYI : On old platforms, without Remap/Memory Hole enabled, BIOS itself can't adress more than 3GB of memory.
So, regardless of what OS you use, everything above ~3GB mark is locked.
Example of board without/Disabled Memory Remap :

So basically there is no chance of getting the access to that full 8GB of RAM unless I either get a new Motherboard or just buy a new PC altogether?

[Dijon]

1 hour ago, X_X said:

It's in the datasheets. For your old x48 Intel® X48 Express Chipset Datasheet

Some excerpts

 

 

Remap Enabled for Z97 with 8GiB RAM

 

Remap Disabled for Z97 with 8GiB RAM

 

Remap Enabled for GE60 Laptop with 16GiB RAM

 

Remap Disabled for GE60 Laptop with 16GiB RAM

 

@Dijon already did this IIRC but the tab shows several possibilities. A CPU-z text report might be better. Also a firmware memory map might be helpful too.

 

In terms of updating the firmware, if you go to my previous posts (I believe either the 2nd page or 3rd page) There is no chance for me to update the BIOS. My only other option was to update to Windows 10 64bit but now agent_x007 is saying that it wont make a difference, thanks for the help though.

[X_X]

45 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

Are You seriously using Haswell platform to "simulate" what over 12 years old motherboard does ?
FYI : On old platforms, without Remap/Memory Hole enabled, BIOS itself can't adress more than 3GB of memory.
So, regardless of what OS you use, everything above ~3GB mark is locked.
Example of board without/Disabled Memory Remap :

 

Why not use Haswell, nothing has changed and you are missing the point. Above 4GiB is not locked unless the chipset does not support it. You only have 4GiB installed so yes, without remap your stuck with 3456MB, if you had 8GiB installed with a chipset to support it you would see 7552MB and if you enabled remap then it would go up to nearer 8GB.

[agent_x007]

Trust me, older chipset don't support that.

Here's AMDs Socket 939 under Win 7 x64 (with and without Memory Hole) :

 

[X_X]

AMD is not Intel

[Stefan Payne]

2 minutes ago, X_X said:

Why not use Haswell, nothing has changed

Are you serious?!
With the Core i Series, the Memory Controller moved from the Chipset to the CPU, wich means that there are less chances for Intel to castrate the memory controller and features of the memory controller.

 

Also back in the day 32bit Operating Systems were pretty common or rather the NORM!
As most people still used Windows XP, Windows Vista was rarely used by most people and the first Windows that was mostly used in 64bit was Windows 7 - wich was released around 3 Years after the Core 2 Plattform. the 30 should have been somewhere around 2007 or so.

 

2 minutes ago, X_X said:

and you are missing the point.

No, you are, as you are comparing apple <-> oranges.

You use a Plattform that wasn't designed with 32bit Software and Windows XP in mind to compare something that was designed for Windows XP and 32bit software.

So its safe to assume that there is a big difference in all regards. For example newer Chipsets don't support the "IDE" or "Compatibility" mode for S-ATA, only AHCI and RAID. Nothing more. (not sure about my X79 but I think it was also the case then).

 

Back in the day, AHCI mode cost extra with the Intel Chipsets. So yeah, it is different.

2 minutes ago, X_X said:

Above 4GiB is not locked unless the chipset does not support it.

Have you tried it with the older Intel Chipsets?!

We have some (more) proof from someone who seem to use an Original Intel Board and has experience.

You don't seem to have that experience with that old hardware. I do.
And believe me, the old Intel Chipsets pre LGA1k series were just awful and castrated left and right. Only the highest end X (sometimes P) series Chipsets were pretty OKIsh. Everything else was not...

 

2 minutes ago, X_X said:

You only have 4GiB installed so yes, without remap your stuck with 3456MB, if you had 8GiB installed with a chipset to support it you would see 7552MB and if you enabled remap then it would go up to nearer 8GB.

No it doesn't because that might also be a Compatibility thing for that.

 

As I don't have a decent LGA775 Board I can't really test it, as I said I sold it....

 

So believe people when they say that old Intel Chipsets were different from todays, especially in case of Memory Controller. Intel did some really weird shit.

Look for i940GML, wich is based on the i945G - but without Multi Core Support, with Memory limited to around 2GiB and other shit as well.

 

So the Board Dijon has is probably similar and because it is an OEM Board,nobody thought about 8GiB Memory and it is not implemented. 

A BIOS Update might eventually help but he can't do that for whatever reason (yeah, some older Boards from that time can't boot from USB and you have to know DOS to get your way around that. I would be able to do that because I actively used DOS and even made my own Start Menus in DOS 6.22)...

[agent_x007]

8 minutes ago, X_X said:

AMD is not Intel

I know, I want to show you how it works on older platforms.

I don't have the proper screenshot before and after to prove my point on Intel board (I have more than enough hardware to do this, I just can't use it at the moment), so - that is closest I can get.

You can read comments under the video with LGA 775 guys having less than 4GB available and after using Remap feature they could use more.

[Jay Deah]

there is still a  possibility that if you create the DOS boot disk in a way that works, you can update this BIOS and it MIGHT (probably wont tho) work

 

but the TLDR is that even if you could, you'd still want a new PC

 

[OLD MAN MODE]

ps Stefan is correct, you kids don't know how easy you have it with PCs nowadays

[/OLD MAN MODE]

[Dijon]

2 minutes ago, Jay Deah said:

there is still a  possibility that if you create the DOS boot disk in a way that works, you can update this BIOS and it MIGHT (probably wont tho) work

 

but the TLDR is that even if you could, you'd still want a new PC

 

[OLD MAN MODE]

ps Stefan is correct, you kids don't know how easy you have it with PCs nowadays

[/OLD MAN MODE]

Ah that may be true but it might be able to work either way, if this PC still had the CD-RW working properly, it might just of done it, but I guess I have bad luck xD.

[X_X]

Well it's a problem, finding old HW with more than 4GiB of RAM. I'll have a dig around tomorrow but not optimistic. Do understand though that remapping is because of memory mapped addresses being used below 4GiB. And what is it with this "back in the day"?

[Jay Deah]

i promise you i understand how this works, we are not lying. there are hardware limitations at play here you cannot get around in software.

 

back in the day is relevant as this used to be a thing us old people dealt with. i'm from the enterprise server world where things like PAE, /3GB and all that sort of stuff grew up. hell, i can remember when we had problems with anything above 640K of RAM... lol

[agent_x007]

13 minutes ago, Dijon said:

Ah that may be true but it might be able to work either way, if this PC still had the CD-RW working properly, it might just of done it, but I guess I have bad luck xD.

Just buy a USB floppy or use a Industrial Compact Flash card with adapter to IDE/SATA (industrial part is important, because regular Compact Flash usually doesn't allow DOS booting).
Once you have it, simply copy DOS boot files together with BIOS file and a flashing program.

Side note : SD card on CF adapter might work as well...

[Dijon]

27 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

Just buy a USB floppy or use a Industrial Compact Flash card with adapter to IDE/SATA (industrial part is important, because regular Compact Flash usually doesn't allow DOS booting).
Once you have it, simply copy DOS boot files together with BIOS file and a flashing program.

Side note : SD card on CF adapter might work as well...

Never thought about a USB Floppy, but when in the PC, in the BIOS Sequence what would it say that I would have to select as first?

[Dijon]

29 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

Just buy a USB floppy or use a Industrial Compact Flash card with adapter to IDE/SATA (industrial part is important, because regular Compact Flash usually doesn't allow DOS booting).
Once you have it, simply copy DOS boot files together with BIOS file and a flashing program.

Side note : SD card on CF adapter might work as well...

Also would the Rufus mehtod work this way too?

[agent_x007]

Yes. Select Floppy as first boot and you are good to go.

Rufus should work (NTFS + advanced options for adding fixes for old BIOS).
However, you can't use Rufus to create bootable hard drive (and Compact Flash is seen as Hard drive by Rufus).
Copying DOS boot files manually should be enough to make it work though.

@Dijon Oh !
You could, in theory, create a bootable partition on your hard drive with DOS boot files (and BIOS/flasher) on it.
When such partition is selected as "Active" (ie. boot partition), it should allow to launch DOS on it and bypass the non-USB boot limitation of your board. You only have to correct hard drive in boot list in BIOS.
I highly recommend doing it on spare hard drive though.

[Dijon]

23 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

Yes. Select Floppy as first boot and you are good to go.

Rufus should work (NTFS + advanced options for adding fixes for old BIOS).
However, you can't use Rufus to create bootable hard drive (and Compact Flash is seen as Hard drive by Rufus).
Copying DOS boot files manually should be enough to make it work though.

@Dijon Oh !
You could, in theory, create a bootable partition on your hard drive with DOS boot files (and BIOS/flasher) on it.
When such partition is selected as "Active" (ie. boot partition), it should allow to launch DOS on it and bypass the non-USB boot limitation of your board. You only have to correct hard drive in boot list in BIOS.
I highly recommend doing it on spare hard drive though.

Ah ok well I do have 2 HDD one Im using, 500GB and another one, 250GB HDD. However that one does have the old Nvidia Drivers for my GPU and has everything from the last windows, Windows Vista which I now learned was 32bit. Do I need such data or not? Thanks in advance for the last reply.

[Stefan Payne]

16 minutes ago, X_X said:

Well it's a problem, finding old HW with more than 4GiB of RAM. I'll have a dig around tomorrow but not optimistic. Do understand though that remapping is because of memory mapped addresses being used below 4GiB. And what is it with this "back in the day"?

Oh another Thing I didn't think about/forgot to mention:
With modern Hardware you don't really have direct memory access because of the IOMMU.
With older Systems, you have direct access to the memory while modern map it through the IOMMU, so the thing you see there is not what happens on older systems.

 

There was, however, another "Remapping" Options in far earlier computers: 16MiB Remapping IIRC.

 

 

 

11 minutes ago, Jay Deah said:

i promise you i understand how this works, we are not lying. there are hardware limitations at play here you cannot get around in software.

Sadly no, especially with those old, low end Intel Chipsets that are unnecessarily castrated to a point where you can Intel accuse of planned obsolescence.

 

11 minutes ago, Jay Deah said:

back in the day is relevant as this used to be a thing us old people dealt with. i'm from the enterprise server world where things like PAE, /3GB and all that sort of stuff grew up. hell, i can remember when we had problems with anything above 640K of RAM... lol

Man, you're old...

I only remember the Problems we had with the memory under 640k and the shit you had to do to get some games running...

IIRC Strike Commander was one of the games that needed at least 600k of 640k, wich was impossible with CD-Drivers running.

 

And some late 32bit Games like Gothic 3 had enormous problems with memory allocation, because there was just not enough memory or the memory was just too fragmented...

 

[Dijon]

33 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Oh another Thing I didn't think about/forgot to mention:
With modern Hardware you don't really have direct memory access because of the IOMMU.
With older Systems, you have direct access to the memory while modern map it through the IOMMU, so the thing you see there is not what happens on older systems.

 

There was, however, another "Remapping" Options in far earlier computers: 16MiB Remapping IIRC.

 

 

 

Sadly no, especially with those old, low end Intel Chipsets that are unnecessarily castrated to a point where you can Intel accuse of planned obsolescence.

 

Man, you're old...

I only remember the Problems we had with the memory under 640k and the shit you had to do to get some games running...

IIRC Strike Commander was one of the games that needed at least 600k of 640k, wich was impossible with CD-Drivers running.

 

And some late 32bit Games like Gothic 3 had enormous problems with memory allocation, because there was just not enough memory or the memory was just too fragmented...

 

Damn that is old, im 15 btw just for reference, so no Idea what you lot are talking about xD. I have bad news, you know when I said soon I will be getting £300 to build a Gaming PC? Well that amount has unfotunatly dropped down to £200 due to fiancial problems, which is basically impossible, but I think I have done enough research and I have found what I think for now is a decent Budget Gaming PC build. Here are the specs, btw dont all go crazy I thought for the price this is not too bad xd, :

CPU: AMD Athlon A8 9600 APU

MOTHER BOARD: GIGABYTE GA-A320M-S2H

STORAGE: WD 320GB hard drive

RAM: Patriot Memory Signature Line DDR4 4GB 2400MHz

GPU: Intergrated Radeon R7 Graphics from the APU

PSU: CiT 400W Micro Atx Power Supply

CASE: Rosewill Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit

All this for exactly £192, I did have a few questions though. Even though I did my research, would this build actually work?

Also what FPS do you think I could get if I play games like Fortnite, GTA V and Rainbow Six Siege, at 720p, Medium settings?

Also dont worry, later when I get more cash I will upgrade the RAM to 16GB DDR4 (Since th mobo supports up to 32GB) and will also get a Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 GDDR5, the reason why not a GTX 1050 or 1050Ti, is because I heard that APU will defintly bottleneck it, which I really dont want.

But for now without those future upgrades, what do you guys think?

[Jay Deah]

I think it’s very low end and still won’t be good enough for you. Have a look on your local second hand market and see if there are any deals going.

 

for context i’m Looking at selling a complete i7-3770, 16gb, 1050ti system for £400-500 and that will blow your £200 new system into the weeds.

 

you can pick up useable second hand GPUs for the £50 mark no need to buy a new 1050ti

[Dijon]

11 minutes ago, Jay Deah said:

I think it’s very low end and still won’t be good enough for you. Have a look on your local second hand market and see if there are any deals going.

 

for context i’m Looking at selling a complete i7-3770, 16gb, 1050ti system for £400-500 and that will blow your £200 new system into the weeds.

 

you can pick up useable second hand GPUs for the £50 mark no need to buy a new 1050ti

True but if anything happens I do have 30 day return from Amazon plus a warranty and me messing things up since its gonna be my first ever build, will very likely happen.

[X_X]

On 2/27/2019 at 4:43 AM, Stefan Payne said:

There was, however, another "Remapping" Options in far earlier computers: 16MiB Remapping IIRC.

Do you mean the 15MiB-16MiB hole? IIRC the only time the 15MB-16MB hole meant something was when I ran OS/2, and no it doesn't get reclaimed.

 

Back to the older gen...

 

Gen 4 series with 8GB RAM installed and using pure legacy BIOS

 

Remap enabled

 

 

Remap disabled.

 

 

Some Google returns from 2008-9...
6GB of RAM installed, ~5GB of memory with remap disabled, 6gb with remap enabled.
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68659 

8GB of RAM installed, ~7GB of memory with remap disabled, 8gb with remap enabled.   
https://hardforum.com/threads/p5b-deluxe-only-showing-7gb-of-memory.1471562/

 

Note that both systems above were using a 965 chipset which predates the OP's chipset. The reclaim (remap) process is the same from here to 9th gen, just some changes in register and address sizes.

 

If your BIOS decided to limit addressing to 4GB when re-map was disabled then personally I would take that up with the manufacturer or change manufacturers or modify the BIOS or just leave remap enabled unless there was some obscure reason to disable it.

 

Hopefully this will help someone out there.