RAM trouble

Death

Poster Extraordinaire
I've recently noticed that my computer is only noticing 4 gb of the 6 gb. I don't know whats causing this, but I'm guessing that one has gone bad. If anyone knows that would be great.
 
I Don't know 100% about tech stuff with computers and stuff but i doo know enough about computer tech stuff. If your running 32BIT Vista thats most likely why. My old pc has Vista 32BIT with 4GB's of RAM but only noticing 3.8GB's or RAM. It's strange to me. What i was told is 64BIT for Vista is like having 32BIT for Windows 7 for the RAM to notice. I Honestly don't know. But thats i can only think of. But wait until phobus to reply. He replys to tech stuff all the time. He's a tech master. But add more details about what your running?
 
If you download CPU-z, you can see if all your memory if functioning. And yes, the post above mine is correct. 32 bit OS do not support over 4GB
 
I Don't know 100% about tech stuff with computers and stuff but i doo know enough about computer tech stuff. If your running 32BIT Vista thats most likely why. My old pc has Vista 32BIT with 4GB's of RAM but only noticing 3.8GB's or RAM. It's strange to me. What i was told is 64BIT for Vista is like having 32BIT for Windows 7 for the RAM to notice. I Honestly don't know. But thats i can only think of. But wait until phobus to reply. He replys to tech stuff all the time. He's a tech master. But add more details about what your running?

LOL. Thanks.

Yes, check to make sure you're running either a 32-bit or 64-bit Operating System.
To do this, go to your Start menu, Right click on Computer -> Properties.
It'll say the System Type.
 
For more information on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, you can read here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions

Basically 32-bit has a maximum of 4GB addressable memory. With the 64-bit architecture, they remedied this problem.

If you are running a 64-bit version of windows and you want to check your RAM to see if a stick has failed, then you'll need to run a memory test.

Which version of Windows are you running? If you're running Windows 7, it has a built in memory test application which can be accessed during bootup.

If you're running another version of Windows, there is a program called Memtest86+.

http://www.memtest.org/
 
Last edited:
I know for sure that its a 64-bit Window Vista, and I have checked it with CPU-Z and it says 6144 mb, but says its a dual channel when its triple, also when I run dxdiag, it only sees 4gb. Aand the memory is 6gb 1600 DDR3 corsair dominators. I think I'll just have to take it apart and switch them around and see what it does.
 
Last edited:
i have 4gb RAM but since i have dualchannel it only uses 2gb. Im not 100% what it does and not but ive been told its good and speeds it up a bit.
 
Hmm I think that might have been it, because I updated BIOS and it restarted my settings and now CPU-Z notices its triple channel and is 6gb, and yet dxdiag still says its only 4gb.
 
General rule of thumb is to also clean your RAM slots.
Try booting up with only 2 sticks, try to eliminate which ones might be "faulty"
You could try changing the order of your RAM.
So say you have 4 slots. 1-2-3-4 and each ram is A-B-C-D. So together it's A1-B2-C3-D4.
Try changing the order like so C1-D2-A3-B4
These are little things I've done in the past to fix finicky RAM.
 
Or you may have put the ram in the wrong slots.
Check your motherboard manual to make sure you put them in the right slots.
 
I have had this same exact problem while overclocking. When taking my i7 930 further and further , it increases the ram along with it. Once it reached 15xx mhz, it would only show 4 gb , after some playing around i found that increasing qpi voltage and vcore along with some other tweaking allowed the system to recognize all 6. Now my ram is up to 1870 .
 
I know I put them in the right slots, I checked even before I bought them, I think it could be what dbee said. But I'm gonna switch them around first and see if that works
 
Well now everything sees the 6gb. But when I first switched them and turned on my system, I got no picture, so I took it apart again to see if I could figure it out, switched them again, put it back together. And boom now it works...but I have no idea what prevented it from giving me a picture or what fixed it
 
Back
Top