RAM amount lower than what I installed on XP Pro

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Savage1701

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I recently installed 2 x 1GB DDR2 DIMM's on an Asus WS64 Quartet server board, 975X chipset, Conroe 6600 CPU. I am not tweaking or overclocking this memory. I also have 1 GB total of meory on the video cards in the system. This should have me below the 4GB limit.

Dumb question, but here goes: If I right-click on My Computer and choose "Properties" it says I only have 1.37GB of RAM installed. All other info, such as CPU speed, is correct. If I look at CPU-Z utility, it says I have 2048MB installed, which is, again, what I installed.

Is WinXP Pro not recognizing something? My BIOS post screen also correctly shows 2048MB installed as dual channel, interleaved, etc. Why is it just WinXP Pro showing a lower number? Is there something wrong with my system? Is some memory not available for access? Needless to say, I am not using integrated graphics, so I assume memory is not being stolen for an integrated controller.

Thanks for any info/help.
 
Asus boards are very picky about what types of RAM they will take. This is clearly explained in the ram guide in the faqs/ guides forum.
 
Maybe WinXP Pro has a bug, if you can use all 2048 MB, its probably nothing, just a Window$ bug.
 
Well, here's what's weird. The WS64 board will take 4 PCI Express video cards. If I put (3) 256MB cards in, it recognizes 2GB of RAM. Add the fourth card, and it's down to 1.37GB of RAM. Does this have something to do with PAE settings?

And please, no posts about "why do you need 4 cards?" or garbage like that. I use them for a multi-monitor trading platform, which is what this board is designed for.
 
I'll bet it is your video cards there. Are you the EXTREME gamer who needs that extra graphics processing power? Or do u have enough with the 768 MB of VRAM? If your the gamer or not, either way will work....u can play most games pretty easily with 3 PCI-E video cards. Or do whatever you want.
 
What about your BIOS what does that report?, Also check Task Manager, press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager, Then Performance.. Instead of CPU-Z, try PC Wizard which gives you much more info its also free and can be downloaded here http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php
 
It sounds like one of your video cards uses shared system memory. One example is the GeForce 7300LE 256mb turbocache. It states that it's a 256mb card but only has 128mb on board and "takes" 128mb of your system's memory. If you have 2GB like you stated it can use 512mb which means 384mb of system memory is missing.
 
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