258 Mb memory ony 229Mb???

MrJones · Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 1:41 pm Post subject: 258 Mb memory ony 229Mb???

Hi.

I just bought a new Epia M motherboard and a 256Mb DDR dimm (2700).
After installing the memory everything works fine except for the fact the the BIOS setup tells me that the extended memory is only 228532Kb. Is there a logical explaination for this???

The motherboard is a Via Epia M 9000 with Award BIOS.

/MrJones

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DMW · SirTweaksabit Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 457

Well, couple of things come to mind...

Did you check in the OS (or haven't you gotten that far?) to see what the pysical memory size is?
Remeber that the bios itself has a few things that it needs to load up and may consume a small percentage.

Also...just in the way HDDs are made...each maker has a different way of calculating the space...Bios writers may vary slightly as well.
It boils down to a different math formula.

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

Remeber, this product has on-board videocard that shares the system memory. This will affect the posted memory, because the other "missing" is used for the onboard video.
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DMW · SirTweaksabit Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 457

yupp.. I looked for that as I glanced over the board specs but didn't notice it.

Sharing mem. will always make some "disappear"....lol

MrJones · Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 4:58 pm Post subject: Thanks...

Thanks for the inputs.... :)

I haven't yet installed an OS. I'm doing that tomorrow. Probably going with Win XP. I've read that it should work fine with this platform.
I too read that the chipset support the DDR266 (PC 2100) memory. However, since I'm a rookie at these things I asked in the store where I got the memory. They told me that the PC 2700 memory should work just as fine since it is backward compatible.... (I think it spelled that way *lol* sorry for my weak English). In this case they could be wrong since they weren't familiar with my motherboard.
Hopefully it is due the shared video card, and not due to the fact that I'm using PC 2700 memory.
I'll see what happens when I install the OS.