Seen my fair share or weird memory issues but have one at the mo im not quite sure about... Boggo Win XP x86 'should' be able to see 3GB of RAM yes? Just installed XP SP3 on an MSI K9A2 deluxe motherboard with 2 x 2GB sticks of OCZ gold ram but XP can only pick up 1.5GB!!! Dont understand that, it has the latest Bios and drivers etc, I even tried turning on /PAE switch in the boot.ini but its made no difference and still can only see 1.5GB out of the 4GB! Im putting it down to a hardware restriction of some sort, any ideas people?
It looks like you have 3 or 4 9800GTXs on your rig. Thats were all your ram is going. GPUs take up ram.
Yeah its a folding rig and I have 3 x 9800GX2 graphics cards in there which XP see's as 6 separate GPU's BUTTTT XP doesn't use Memory for the GPU's like Vista does I didn't think but having said that I had Vista x64 on this before and it seen the 4GB of ram ok. Hmmmm........
With winxp 32bit and that many 9800gx2's running, they will take up memory first. then the system memory. You wont see the full 4 gb of your system ram unless you get winxp 64bit or vista 64bit or take out the video cards.
Yeah we all learn new things about our PC's. And your lesson today is XP does use GPU's ram. That IS your problem. Look at the good side of it, now you know the problem and can decide on the solution.
Hmmm very interesting stuff, any ideas why or what it uses the ram for?! and why Vista doesn't although Vista reserves a wedge for textures iirc but still shows the proper amount in system info. Appreciate the help chaps
Ahhhhhhh OK ive just thought about it and it makes sense now lol XP adds all memory together including what is on the graphics cards as its limited by the amount of memory addresses! So 6 x 512mb cards will take 3gb off the total, nice!! Need a rethink on this as I want to run a VM on this box as well, hmmmm......
cos vista is known as the most liberating piece of software for a computer right? lawl. Get onto ubuntu 64!! Not sure how folding will go on that though...!
I mean, seriously, a 32-bit OS? You should go at least XP64. Ubuntu is a good choice aswell, but GPU folding isn't possible in anything else than Windows.
This rig was on Vista x64 but it kept randomally rebooting and locking up every couple of days, tried everything, absolutley everything over the last month and couldn't fix it. Most folders use XP x86 as its a lot more reliable/stable left running, end of the day its not like I sit on it and do anything so I dont case what OS its running as long as its reliable & stable. Its been folding now for 3 days without a problem *touches wood* I would like to try Ubuntu 64 but my Linux knowledge is very limited and I have no idea how to get the graphics cards configured and folding, might have to look into in one day though...
