Why does installing NVidia 9600GT graphics card, take 1GB of RAM away from Windows?

Posted by Nick G on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Nick G
Published on 2010-03-22T19:54:39Z Indexed on 2010/03/22 20:01 UTC
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Hi, I've changed graphics cards in my PC and now Windows 7 (32bit) is reporting that I have a whole gigabyte less physical RAM in my PC. Why is this?

Firstly, the machine has 4GB of physical RAM. The old card was an ATI 2600XT with 256MB and the new card is an NVidia 9600GT with 512MB.

With the ATI card windows sees 3326MB. With the NVidia card, windows sees 2558MB.

I realise that due to address space restrictions I will not see all 4GB with 32bit windows, but why is there such a massive loss of RAM when simply changing cards (bearing in mind BOTH cards have their own RAM and borrow no main memory like some built on chipsets do). Would using 64 bit windows solve this?

Thanks Nick.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Why does installing NVidia 9600GT graphics card, take 1GB of RAM away from Windows?

Posted by Nick G on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Nick G
Published on 2010-03-22T19:54:39Z Indexed on 2010/03/22 20:01 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 366

Filed under:
|
|
|

Hi, I've changed graphics cards in my PC and now Windows 7 (32bit) is reporting that I have a whole gigabyte less physical RAM in my PC. Why is this?

Firstly, the machine has 4GB of physical RAM. The old card was an ATI 2600XT with 256MB and the new card is an NVidia 9600GT with 512MB.

With the ATI card windows sees 3326MB. With the NVidia card, windows sees 2558MB.

I realise that due to address space restrictions I will not see all 4GB with 32bit windows, but why is there such a massive loss of RAM when simply changing cards (bearing in mind BOTH cards have their own RAM and borrow no main memory like some built on chipsets do). Would using 64 bit windows solve this?

Thanks Nick.

© Super User or respective owner

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