KB929605 showing reduced RAM value

"normviv73" <normviv73@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:762F7A73-8B5A-4747-803D-EE4E6A78D9D3@microsoft.com...

> MS support uses this KB article to explain why my 4GB RAM shows up as only
> 3326MB but this article also says that a cure is to use Vista 64-bit. I
> tried that but it still showed exactly the same reduced amount of RAM and
> not
> 4GB (4096MB).
>
> So that work around instruction is wrong and cost me a great deal of time
> and data trying it.
>
> Also, if the explanation in this KB article is correct then why doesn't
> the
> problem appear with any amount (½GB; 1GB; 2GB) of RAM?
>
> Norman Castel

The problem is that, with a 32-bit OS, you only have 4GB total to work with.
PCI slots, video memory and other hardware need addresses and must come out
of the
4GB total. With less memory, you won't see a difference since there are
unfilled
addresses for the hardware to use. Do you remember computers of the 1980's?
Take the Commodore 64 for example: There was 64K total that the 6510 CPU
could address and there was 64K RAM installed. In BASIC, though, you only
saw about 39000 bytes since the BASIC ROM, the Kernel and I/O ROMs and other
peripherals took up memory addresses. With a 64-bit OS, the total
addressable memory
is much larger so the hardware can be put outside the 4GB range leaving all
4GB available
as RAM.

Tom Lake