Shared memory too much

[Devildjinn]

Hi all,
Have an old hp dv2 1001 laptop.
decided to fix it up a bit with a windows 10 installation.
i upgraded from a 2gb single stick to a 4gb single stick, which the mobo supports.
windows reports 4gb installed, but only a measly 3.09gb usable.....wtf?
thinking it is probably the radeon x1250 intergrated graphics, i loaded up gpu-z which reports its only using 128mb from shared memory.
i flashed my bios to latest version, and checked if there was an option to adjust the shared graphics memory, but there isnt, which is quite unusual.
can anyone tell me why im losing so much ram? 1gb shared to my graphics seems massive overkill for such a weak gpu.
if anyone can shed some light, i would really appreciate it.

 

[jasonkaler]

did you install 32bit or 64bit windows?
32 bit windows has an upper limit of 3GB usable RAM.

 

[Viktor_1994]

Did you update to windows 10 32 bits or 64 bits?

 

[Devildjinn]

thanks for the quick replies.
yes, it is a 32bit install. My understanding was 32bit only could address up to 4gb?
my processor is a neo-mv40, which is a 64bit processor, so i could install a 64bit version.
bit concerned over drivers though, had to manually install the display driver.

 

[Viktor_1994]

thanks for the quick replies.
yes, it is a 32bit install. My understanding was 32bit only could address up to 4gb?
my processor is a neo-mv40, which is a 64bit processor, so i could install a 64bit version.
bit concerned over drivers though, had to manually install the display driver.

32-bit Windows has a limit of 4gb RAM. But a part of this is used by the system and your integrated graphics. That's why you had 3,09.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

"had to manually install the display driver".

You make it sound like manually installing drivers is an unusual thing to have to do.
Not so, it is a very commonplace and simple process.

 

[jasonkaler]

thanks for the quick replies.
yes, it is a 32bit install. My understanding was 32bit only could address up to 4gb?
my processor is a neo-mv40, which is a 64bit processor, so i could install a 64bit version.
bit concerned over drivers though, had to manually install the display driver.

The maximum a 32 bit system can address is 4GB, unfortunately some of that address space needs to be used for things other than ram.

Things like virtual memory tables, video ram, io address space all need some of that 4GB address space, so the standard was to set aside the entire top gig, although some systems set aside even more than that.